Do You Need A Business Blog?
Business and personal blogs are totally different. The business blog is an extension of your website and your corporate culture. I know, you’re a small business with just a couple employees or even just you, the owner, but your business still has a culture and personality.
Let’s say that you own a small bakery that also caters small events, in addition to having a storefront. Your website will have a more clinical, professional feel. It can still have bright colors and be fun, but it won’t go into too many details. You’ll list a bit of the company history, as well as a handful of photos, and contact information.
The blog that this bakery has will change much more often than the website, perhaps several times a week. This is also the baker’s chance to brag, post sample dishes, tell readers about the great event last weekend or promote a master chef coming to town this weekend. Simply put the website is your virtual storefront and the business blog is your chatty salesperson.
It can start conversations
Getting people out of inactivity is a tricky thing. A business blog can help get people talking. The posts don’t have to be rocket science, but they should have something to do with your main business model.
Sure you’ve catered niche events with spectacular results and you’ve posted them on your website for everybody to see. But, the event was a couple weeks ago and now you need to delete the post from your site. Because a blog lists things chronologically and people expect to see dated content, your photos will live forever online.
Old and dated material on a website is stale and unprofessional.
Old and dated material on a blog tells your customers that you’ve been doing this for a while.
It helps SEO
Because you update your blog much more often than your website it will come to the attention of those web spiders we hear so much about. Those search engine spiders crawl all over the web looking for changes. If you’re writing about content that’s applicable to your business (and not your asthmatic cat) then it’ll mark the blog’s activity which will bring your business name front and center.
If you have a business blog you have clearly marked and cross linked your business, haven’t you?
Aren’t blogs dying?
There was an article in PCWorld that mentioned the death of the blog. We disagree. The article stated that half as many teens in 2010 were thinking about starting a blog, when compared to 2006. If there are fewer Justin Bieber blogs that’s a good thing. While the demographics of blogging are changing, blogs are far from death.
The mass acceptance of facebook and twitter will only help those business blogs that position themselves carefully and professionally. It’s important to say that you don’t need to be Hemmingway to have a business blog; you just need to know your business. You can do video posts, write short sentences or any number of options. The passion and knowledge that you share in the business blog will outshine any supposed weakness that you may think you have.
