Blogging for Business: Best Practices
Some days ago, I did inform my fans on Facebook and Twitter that I would be rolling out some blog posts as answers to assignments which are found at the end of each class taken at Inbound Marketing University in order to get IMU Certified.
The first class is titled How to Blog effectively for Business by Ann Handley & Mack Collier of MarketingProfs and the assignment given was: “Write a blog post about three best practices that you will adopt into your blogging strategy.”
My Answer:
In answering this question, I’d like us to examine what a Blog is and why it is necessary for a Business or Brand to own a Blog.
Blog simply defined is a tool that allows you to quickly and easily create and publish new content. On Wikipedia it is defined as a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
One great benefit of a Blog as against a Static site is the ability to allow readers leave feedback on that content, as well as react to feedback from other readers.
The World’s mostly used search engine – Google loves blog; and this can either be good or bad for your business. This in essence means that if you want people/customers to actually find you via the search engine, if you don’t have a blog where you regularly update/say something about your business/product, then what other bloggers are saying about you (whether good or bad) which you have no control over will appear first before the real you is found.
Yinka Olaito, a Brand Expert in Nigeria in his blog post on Why your Brand suffers without a Blog wrote:
“A blog helps a brand to remain in the radar instead of being out of radar. It helps a brand to stay in touch especially if the blog has become a force in intelligent and relevant knowledge sharing. A great brand blog can help the brands make more engaged customers who are willing to give a referral, positions brand’s expertise, launch a project as well as to experiment with great ideas that the brand may want to push. The instance response to the ideas expressed on the blog can provide a bird eye view opinion of what the future of that brand’s idea look like.”
In other words, it will be correct to say that blogging serves as a communication tool in crisis situations.
Three strategies which I consider as best practices to adopt for your Business/Brand’s Blog are:
- Blog Layout planning
- Commenting System
- Human Resources Issue
Blog Layout: A Blog layout refers to how your blog is positioned, i.e. how it is being viewed in the eyes of a visitor to the blog.
The basic components of a Blog layout are:
The Header, The Sidebar and The Blog Post Area.
A Blog Layout can be a two column layout (sidebar/post coulmn) or three coulmn layout (sidebar/post column/sidebar).
The Header sets the visual tone and has links to information for readers, enhancing proper branding.
Depending on the kind of layout choosen, the sidebar(s) should be properly organised so that readers can figure out what really is going on, on the blog. It should contain valuable information – as value leads to promotion.
Commenting System: One great advantage of a blog as against a static website again is the enablement to get readers feeback on your post or product in general. It is popularly known as Comment. Usually a Commenting system allows readers to input their names, email id and website(if they have one) before finally droping the comment.
How you handle readers feeback/comment on your blog is very important. One way that has been identified to retain readers to your blog is when you address them by their first names. It makes readers have a sense of belonging or feel more comfortable when they are so addressed in your reply to their comment. In other words, It is important to reply to each comment (whether criticisms or praises) droped by readers on your blog.
There are various commenting platform that have been introduced in blogging for maximun interaction between the blogger and reader some of which are Intense Debate, Disqus and Sezwho. (Read more on Commenting platforms here)
Human Resources is another important thing to be considered in blogging for business.
Are you blogging by yourself or employing someone to blog for you? Passion is something to be considered when blogging. Its usually the norm when a blog is being started with all enthusiasm but receives no comment/pageview, that the blogger tends to give up. This should not be the case, therefore a blogger must be one who is passionate about blogging and social media in general; the company/business being blogged about; writing and always happy to connect with customers/readers in order to help solve any issue that crops up.
How to Blog Effectively for Business (GF101)
The Video above provides more insights on why you should have a blog for your business.
If you’ve found this post useful or have any question, feel free to drop your comments.
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NB: The next post in this series would be “why a marketer would want to include SEO in his or her web marketing.“
Thanks for reading.