Quite simply a blog is a website or part of a website which features articles, often themed articles, in chronological order. A blog enables you to include longer, more detailed articles than you can on the likes of Facebook and Twitter and allows you to incorporate photos and videos as well as using it as a way to really tell the story of your business.

Once you know the purpose you want your blog to serve, a blog is an excellent channel to communicate with your customers and there really is no limit to what you can communicate to them.

WHY SHOULD YOU USE A BLOG FOR BUSINESS?

A blog can position you as a leader in your industry
A blog can communicate that you are an expert in your field and will allow you to stand out from the competition. You can write articles about topical issues in your industry, for example if you are a retailer, blog about future trends for the coming season or if you are a tourism business write about the destination that you are located in. The key is to write an article at least twice a month and keep them upbeat and interesting. A word count of 500 – 1000 words is ideal.

A blog improves your SEO
A blog is a great way to optimise search engine optimisation. Hubspot, the USA leading social media experts, have reported that companies who have active blogs receive up to 55% more traffic including higher rates of both organic and referral traffic. The key thing as stated above is to update your blog on a regular basis. Once you post an article the content will be live, so when someone searches on your particular topic your post will be seen months and even years later.

A blog will tell your story
Facebook and Twitter are great ways of promoting your business and Bright Light Marketing would highly recommend that businesses use both mediums. However there are limits to the amount of words you can use but a blog gives you scope to really talk about the trends and topics that drive your industry. Marketing is essentially storytelling using different mediums to get your story across and a blog allows you to tell your story in more detail and you can then use social media and e-newsletters to promote your blog articles. Again research from Hubspot highlights that your social media activity will be more effective if you have a blog which is regularly updated and promoted through your social media channels.

A blog keeps your website up to date
Quite often a website can be like an online brochure. We all know that we should be updating our websites on a regular basis but what do you update it with? This is where a blog comes into its own as it can change your website into a site that is updated on a regular basis with fresh and valuable content.

A blog attracts future customers
At the end of the day all business want to retain existing customers and attract new customers. A regularly updated blog gives your existing customers a reason to revisit your website. If you are writing interesting and relevant articles on your blog it will also attract new customers. Interesting, factual and relevant blog articles gives your potential customers a reason to become aware of you and to engage with you. Over time you build up trust so that when you promote your product and services they are more likely to buy from you.

SOME DO’S AND DON’T’S
We hope you agree that the business case for having a blog is a strong one and once you know what you want your blog to do, the opportunities are endless. But there are some ground rules that you should know about writing a blog. Here goes:

Keep it short
Reading on the screen isn’t as enjoyable as reading on paper so don’t make your blog too long. Ideally 500 to 1000 words is a good goal but shorter pieces of 300 words are acceptable.

Highlight
Often readers can skim through articles so it is important to highlight important pieces of information and content.

Links
We would recommend that your blog contains links to other sites – this gives you the opportunity to link to other work and appropriate quality partners.

Be conversational
Blog writing should be conversational in tone and readers respond well to this more personal style of writing – you can use ‘I’ or ‘you’ and should try hard to express your personality in your blog.

Keep it going
There are millions of blogs on the internet but only a tiny fraction of them are active. Be disciplined and stick to a posting schedule, brainstorm ideas and bank articles in advance ready to roll out.

Tell people
Let people know that you have a blog on your social networking sites, on your email signature and in your e-newsletters.

Comment on other blogs
Be an active part of the blogging community, commenting on other peoples blog posts is a great way of getting people to link back to you and your business.

Guest blogs
Contribute to other high profile blogs as a guest blogger and publish guest blogs from like-minded business partners on your blog too.

Be interesting
And last but certainly not least is be interesting, nobody will read your blog if it’s boring or written badly. Try to develop a real and engaging voice which expresses who you are which people will find interesting and enjoy reading.

Ultimately a blog is a great way for customers to find out much more about your business and enables you to build relationships and trust with customers at relatively little cost. Of course it does take time and effort to run a successful blog but it is well worth the effort. An informative, well written, regular blog will increase your profile, get your story out there, promote you as an expert in your field and make you money.

Whatever business you are in, we hope this article inspires you to start blogging but if you don’t want to do it yourself, remember Bright Light Marketing have all the skills to work with you to deliver interesting and engaging blog articles on your behalf.

For an informal chat just get in touch, call us on 01750 505051 or email info@brightlightmarketing.co.uk.