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Why small business sites need a blog
6 Oct 2014 Dominic Comments Off on Why small business sites need a blog
One of the things I keep seeing time and time again on some small business websites is the complete lack of a blog on the site. A blog is a great way of keeping your customers informed of what Is happening in your company but not only that, it is a great way for you to get across just who you are to your customers – your brand values, your personality and ultimately get them to buy.
Even if a blog does exist, often it falls flat and simply becomes yet another bland piece of real estate on the site – perhaps because of the “too many cooks” method of generating content or maybe because a senior member of the team wants prose written in a certain style which actually is at odds with your customer base?
So – its up to you to have a good look at your company blog and ask if it really does provide a good service to your customers – what does it actually achieve? Ultimately you want it to be so good that plenty of your visitors will want to share it – which then will get your site out there to more people – boosting your SEO as well.
My tips to ensure your small business blog is effective
Simplicity – is your blog simple enough for your audience to actually understand what you are saying? Sounds strange but believe me I have seen plenty of fashion blogs which have been written using prose completely alien to that sector!
Relevance – is what you are writing on your blog relevant to your audience? Will they be interested in the content and what you have to say? You want that audience to be engaged and spread the word – not be put off by postings saying your customer service team will be going home etc. Don’t make the blog too focused on your companies news and events. Instead ask yourself every time “Is this information relevant to my customers?”
SEO – again I have seen too many blog posts which have obviously been written for the sole aim of helping SEO. DO NOT FALL INTO THIS TRAP! The best SEO is to build a brand – get the audience to love you and they will come back. Do not pepper your articles with SEO keywords. You should be aiming to please your human audience and not the Google search engine bots. Just consider how the article reads.
Use your audience – they are a goldmine for you so use them. Are there questions which keep coming up which you could write a piece on? Perhaps they have difficulty with some of your products so use this and post updates for them. Make it useful for the audience. Your audience may actually also include industry experts or other sources which lend credibility to your offering.
Visuals – use visuals where possible as these break up the postings and your audience will be more inclined to share visuals than copy
Humanise – let your audience see who your company are. Get photos of the stylists, the marketing team, make it fun and let the audience see the faces behind the blog. Customers like to feel that they are buying into a nice warm brand – not a faceless corporation
You want your company blog to reflect as positively as possible what you and your company are all about whilst ensuring that your audience are getting as much as possible from the blog that they want to share it and come back for new updates.
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Tags: Small Business Blog
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