Business blogging tips for your business?

Blogging can be a powerful tool for your business, helping you to engage with your customers and attract more search traffic. But it’s important to bear a few things in mind before diving in and taking your business into the blogosphere:

• Give and take: a blog isn’t about pushing a message or peddling your wares… leave the sales pitches on your corporate / business website. Use your blog to inform, entertain and reveal a more personal side to your business.
• Announcements are fine, just don’t go overboard: of course, your blog is a great medium to announce new products, special offers or competitions… but intersperse the promotional posts with plenty of interesting added-value content.
• Listen and engage: any blogging platform worth its salt will allow (and encourage) comments from readers. Make sure these are enabled, and listen to what people are saying. Your blog can give you invaluable insight into what your customers are looking for from your business.
• Update regularly: if you’re going to blog successfully you need to blog regularly. Regularity isn’t the same thing as frequency – you can choose to post once a day, once a week, once a month… whatever suits (although once a month may be stretching it a bit), but do try to add posts to your blog on a regular basis.
• Read and respond: Remember that your blog isn’t an isolated entity. Make sure you read and comment on other blogs in your industry or field of expertise. If you feel you have something of value to add, respond to what you’ve read with a blog post of your own (if you link to another blog from an article on your own a link called a “pingback” will normally appear in the comment section directing readers from that blog to yours).

Blogs can be a fantastic way to expand your web presence beyond the often mundane facade of a corporate information site or the utilitarian imperative of a functional web-store. So go on… inject a bit of personality into your web presence, and start building a community around your brand.