Tips For Developing a Popular Business Blog
A blog is a great marketing tool to connect with a specific audience. Blogs allow you to build a relationship, and establish a level of trust, a critical piece in establishing your expertise and creating the desire to connect to you, and your products or services. It is important to establish good practices on your business blog, being certain never to lie or exaggerate your income, popularity, stats, readers, subscriptions, etc on your blog.
There is such a thing as being too honest about your lack of experience as a blog writer, or the fact that your site is new and therefore does not yet have a big following. This can happen by either having a lack of professionalism in the way your blog site is presented, or by your own posts telling your readers that no one ever visits.
Keep low visitor count frustrations to yourself, and treat every blog post like a sales presentation. (This doesn’t mean using a sales pitch. Today’s blog reader is way too sharp for that and will quickly transition away from your blog. What I mean is always put your best, most professional face forward.) Never, ever comment on low blog reader turnout on the blog itself. No one wants to hang out someplace that tells them up front that it is unpopular! Instead, find out why visitor count is low, and fix it!
Take a look at other blogs in your niche, and take note of the ones you find professional. Compare this to your site, focusing on the differences in graphics, presentation, layout, and how they handle business promotion. Also notice if they have a professional theme for their blog. There are many wonderful, professional-looking free themes out there, but you will need to dig around and choose carefully.
When you find a site you like, don’t clone it, but do learn from it. Conversely, when you spot a blog that you don’t like, ask yourself why. Is it a lack of professional design? Does the site have too many advertisements? Does it use flashing or gaudy graphics? These observations will be valuable when analyzing what your blog should look like. Visiting the competition is critical, because it also shows you immediately what your own readers will be reading. Your blog has to stack up, and exceed expectations.
Whether you use a free or fee-based theme, don’t use it straight out of the box. Most themes make it easy to incorporate a new header or logo to help expand your branding efforts, and familiarize readers of who you are. Minimally, consider changing the color scheme so your site won’t look exactly like thousands of others out there. This is most critical if you use a free blog platform like Blogger.com or WordPress.com. These sites have a very small selection of standard themes, and your blog will virtually disappear in your reader’s minds if you don’t customize them!
Do you have a free or low-cost theme resource to share? Don’t be shy, leave a comment or question below. Let’s connect.
Jeannine Clontz, IVAA CVA, MVA, EthicsChecked™, owner of Accurate Business Services is a Virtual Assistant (VA). ABS provides ‘as needed’ marketing and social media support, training and consulting to busy entrepreneurs. Clontz is a writer, author, VA Coach, and speaker on business topics including business ethics. For her FREE 10-Step Guide to Finding the Right VA, or herFREE Report, Social Media Marketing Benefits, visit: http://www.accbizsvcs.com. Find out more at www.VAbizcoach.com or her book website http://www.entrepreneurialfreedom.com
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Thanks, Jeannine. Thanks to this post, I am inspired to further customize the look of my blog. I have been debating whether to link my blog to my website, but I feel it may end up lost if I do. My website has plenty of information already, that I thought maintaining a blog that “mentions” my website would be the way to go. Are you willing to share your thoughts on connecting the two?
Thanks, Jaimie Skultety, A Virtual Assistant 4 You
Web: http://www.avirtualassistant4you.com
Blog: http//yourpartnerinproductivity.wordpress.com
Jaimie – thanks for your kind words. I’m thrilled I have inspired you!
I absolutely encourage you to link your blog to your website – this will help increase your website and blog SEO tremendously. Because blogs are more of an open source, search engines look at them differently.
Because they are easy platforms for us to add content much more regularly than we might with a static website, and because we are able to interact as we are now, through comments, search engines look more favorably upon them.
That being said, the best SEO is inbound links, sooooo, by linking people from your blog to your website, you are immediately positioning both sites to better reach your target audience. Don’t get me wrong, keywords and meta tags are still key on both your blog and website, but the interaction and linking from social media to your blog, and from your blog to your website really completes the circle and gives you the best optimization out there.
So, yes, I believe it’s important to have both a blog and a static website (they serve a different purpose) and that you link in and out of both of them as much as possible.
Hope this helps.
Thanks again, Jeannine! I have linked my blog to my website which is wonderful! I have done the same from my blog back to my website, but I found the only way to accomplish that was by posting a link at the end of each blog post. I have to research a bit further how to get an actual linked “page” to my website within my WordPress blog. There must be a plug-in to do this and I will find it!
I wanted to thank you for your follow up response. I am excited to be a part of your coaching group as well. I have made great progress with my marketing strategies, and I am feeling a positive shift happening. In fact, I sent a survey to the people who had contacted me months ago and I never heard from since. It was a 1-question survey asking them to check off any answers that applied as to why I haven’t heard from them. (I really just wanted some feedback), and lo and behold, 3 people called me as a result … 2 plan to start working with me in the coming months and 1 became a client! I didn’t expect it, but my survey served as a great marketing tool for a built-in audience.
I wish you continued success. Thank you for all your do for the VA community!
Jaimie – GREAT JOB! I am thrilled you gave this a shot – good stuff, and thank you for your kind words.
I am thrilled to have you in my program.
I can’t tell you how many times people choose me as their provider simply because I was the one to reconnect with them. So many VAs respond to prospect requests and then expect that the prospect should make the next move. I always reconnect with them within 5-7 days of the original request and/or my response, simply because sometimes they’re just not ready, or they’re overwelmed by a HUGE response to their proposal.
Obviously they’re overwhelmed or challenged in some way or they would never have reached out looking for support, so by taking the extra step, as you have with your survey, you tell them two really great things about you and the way you do busines…
1. You care enough to want to know how they perceived your response.
2. You care a lot about customer service and are always looking to improve.
This is huge in the mind of a prospect and can tip the scales and differentiate you from the competition – again, Jaimie – GREAT JOB, your business is sure to continue to grow.
Looking forward to having you in the Niche Panel session on the 17th.