Are you a business owner looking to establish a blog for your company or do you already have a business blog and you want to increase your online outreach? You’ve come to the right place. I received a request to write a comprehensive post outlining tips to consider as you prepare to launch a blog, why your business should be blogging and how to engage readers once they start visiting your blog. As companies scramble to get on the social media wagon so as not to be left behind, many have mistakenly forgone blogging and jumped straight into creating profiles on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. I strongly believe that blogging is one of the most important components in building your online profile and it becomes a company controlled venue to feed your readers to from other sites. When it comes down to it, you don’t want to send your customers away from your sites but rather through a funnel of social media channels and onto your blog.

What are the Benefits of Blogging for Business?

Take Control of Your Content Distribution

In the past when a company would put out a press release, they would wait for traditional publications to pick up the story and run with it. Now, companies can create buzz surrounding their news story on their own blog and get direct feedback. Blogging allows you to post real-time updates on your company, events, product releases, product reviews, etc.

Provide People with a Behind the Scenes Look

Why do people love celebrity magazines? It’s because they feel like they are getting a behind the scenes look at the lives of people that interest them. A blog can become the same portal for a company to show their customers information and photos that they wouldn’t normally have access to. For example, if your company is throwing an event, you can provide a live feed on your blog and allow your customers that can’t physically attend the event feel like they are there too.

Position Your Brand as an Expert

Blogging for your business will allow your company to share valuable industry knowledge. Over time this will help people view your company as an expert in your industry and make them come back to your blog for more information in the future. Eventually this will hopefully help increase lead generation and sales for your company.

Gives Customers Direct Access to You & Vice Versa

In the past, if you wanted to get in touch with a company you either had to call their customer service hotline, email their general contact address or speak to someone on their online help chat hotline (if they had one). All of these steps usually require waiting a significant amount of time before getting a response. Blogging allows you to get direct access to some of your customers or possible leads and vice versa. People like to know that they have access to you and that your company will see any comments or inquiries they post to your blog. Corporate blogging allows you to connect in a more meaningful way with existing and potential customers. It lets your customers see a more human side to your company vs a strict corporate side you may usually display.

Additional Benefits of Business Blogging:

• Feedback & Research
• Reputation management
• Separate Your Company from Competition
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Brand Building

How to Promote a Business Blog Prior to Launch

There are various ways to build a brand profile across social networks and the blogging community before launching a company blog. It’s not too difficult to do but it takes time and commitment. Similar to all other aspects of social media networking promotion takes time. It may be free but nobody said it wouldn’t be time consuming.

Here are a couple ways to promote your business blog before you have it go live:

Compile a Targeted Email List

Building this email list will be one of the most important aspects of promoting your blog. Along with your already established email list, you will want to start getting additional contacts by adding an email subscription form to your blog landing page (see below in next section) and in newsletters to current clients. Once you are ready to launch the blog, you can send out an email announcing the launch. B&H Insights did a great job announcing their blog to their email subscribers by describing what the blog content would include and a welcoming letter promoting their other social media accounts.

Build a “Coming Soon” Landing Page

Until the day your blog goes live, you should think about placing a simple yet intriguing landing page that will get people excited about the upcoming launch. Your landing page can include information on the focus of your blog and an email subscription form for people to fill out. If possible, offer something in exchange for the signup such as a giveaway, discount or limited time offer just for those landing on that page.

Comment on Other Blogs

Start building a name for your company by offering your expertise and commenting on other industry blogs. Make sure to contribute in a significant way to the blogs you comment on – do not just say “great post. I agree.” You need to be adding to the conversation in a meaningful way. As you start commenting on other blogs, your expertise will be exposed to the blogger as well as their community of readers. By doing this, once you launch your blog you will have already established a relationship with people that are interested in what you have to say. Depending on the post, feel free to include the URL for your upcoming blog but make sure to not be spammy.

Track Your Brand Online & Respond

Set up notices using Google Alerts for your company name, company executives and industry keywords to see what bloggers are saying about your brand. Google Blog Search is also a helpful resource to allow you to track when people are discussing your brand or topics of interest on blogs.

Develop a strong Twitter profile

First decide if you want to brand your company on Twitter or a company evangelist/employee on Twitter before choosing your handle (aka: username). Once you have a customized profile, start to engage with industry professionals, existing customers and potential customers. Refer to the Twitter Guide for Business for valuable resources you can use to develop a strong Twitter profile that will increase your following base. You should also find industry hashtag conversations and start engaging in conversations with influential Tweeps. If you build a relationship with these Twitter celebs and they like what you have to say, your outreach can expand significantly if they RT your updates to their own followers.

Guest Blog on Relevant Blogs

If you want to get access to readers that would be interested in your blog, think about guest blogging on relevant industry blogs. Find influrential blogs you would want to write for and reach out to them with a blog topic idea and background information on why you qualify to be featured on their site. You can also use My Blog Guest which was launched by Ann Smarty (an SEO specialist who blogs for SEO Smarty) to find guest blogging opportunities. Remember that even though you may be starting to develop your online profile, if your company is a star offline, it can be a star online if you market it properly. You can also submit articles to Biznik which is a site that lets users vote articles up to the homepage as they become more popular. As the saying goes – content is king. Make sure you have great content and start posting it on as many relevant distribution channels as possible.

Blog is Up and Running, Now What?

Keeping Your Content Fresh and Newsworthy

It is vital to the traffic of your blog to continually provide readers with valuable information. I have a rule that for every 10 posts, only 1-2 should be promotional. People read blogs to learn and get an authentic opinion from a trusted source, not to read thousands of promotional articles about your products or company. Take a step back and think about why you read blogs.

I believe a blog should have at least 2-3 blog posts per week but as I’ve mentioned previously in this article, content is king. And while I continue with the cheesy phrases – remember that quality is more important than quantity, there are times when I put a lot of effort into one amazing blog post and that may be the only post I upload to this blog all week. Other times I may post 2-3 short articles with interesting updates on social media news within one week for my readers to look at. The minimum I suggest is at least once a week. You don’t want people coming to check your blog in August and seeing that your last post was back in May.

Sometimes coming up with fresh content is difficult and you will run into road blocks from time to time.

Here are a couple ways to lighten your load:

• Guest Blog Posts – Invite industry professionals/bloggers to submit guest blog posts but just make sure that their article is within the same topic as your blog. If you write a blog about fashion for kids you wouldn’t want someone submitting an article to be posted on your site about search engine optimization. People are always looking to expand their presence online so most often than not if you ask someone to contribute to your blog, they’ll say yes. Build relationships with people in your industry and finding people to guest blog post will come easily.
• Interview segments – This is a simple way to invite new readers to your blog by featuring an industry professional that sheds light on your topic of choice. All you have to do is the preparation work for the questions but the content really is dictated by your interviewee’s answers. Deepak Gupta often does this on his marketing blog and it has been well received. Interview features can do the following to help drive traffic to your site (among many other things):
  • Adds variety in terms of content to your blog
  • Introduce a new (interesting) person to your readers (I recently interviewed Kristin Dziadul from Backupify about backing up your online presence)
  • Give readers more information about an influential person in your industry
  • Give readers news they can’t get somewhere else
  • Recaps of Industry Events – People appreciate getting a recap of an event or webinar they were not able to attend. I recently did this for a Hubspot marketing webinar and had hundreds of people visit the blog post to see what they missed. For example, if you blog about gardening and you attended a trade show you can talk about new products that were featured, what reactions were to those products at the show and your thoughts on those products.

Include Calls to Action

As Jay Feitlinger from iClick Solutions mentioned in a comment on a blog post I wrote about Faux-Commenting on Your Own Blog, giving your reader a call to action at the end of your post to request feedback is key to blogging success. This will encourage your readers to not only engage in a conversation with your company but also with your readers that look at the comments section. Calls to action will give readers that extra push to become an active participant in your community. Problogger’s Calls to Action – 12 Tips To SNAP Readers Out of Passivity will help you find appropriate calls to action to include in your posts.

Use Social Network to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Everything you do online should ultimately feed traffic back to your blog. Your blog should be the center of your social media presence with other networks such as your Facebook or Youtube profiles feeding people back to your blog. Your blog is the core of your social engagement where you have can control the distribution center and give people updates and share newsworthy information. I personally use Hootsuite to automatically syndicate my blog feeds to sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Is there something I left out in this post that you think is worth mentioning? Useful resources that may be useful to companies with business blogs? This was a long post and I consciously left certain topics out to make it more concise but I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.