The following article is written by Lior Levin.
What is involved in having a successful business blog?
This is a question that many companies both new and old often struggle with when deciding to start a blog. Blogging is not as easy as many think and, with all of the competition out there, it’s even harder to achieve true success.
You can spend 12 hours a day working on your blog but, if you’re not doing the right things, you’ll waste your time and lose potential customers.
What are the best elements to include?
1. URL
Choose a domain to represent your brand. Pick something that’s short and memorable. Anything too long or ambiguous will be hard to remember and easily forgotten. Your URL should also contain a keyword or two, which is great for SEO and will help you with your rankings.
Image by G.I Joh
You should own a domain and not use a free sub-domain, such as yourdomain.blogspot.com or yourdomain.wordpress.com. This also means that you’ll need to host your own blog. If you already have a company website, then you may want to set up http://yourdomain.com/blog or http://blog.yourdomain.com.
2. Name
The name of your blog is important, especially if you’re using your own domain and not a sub-domain. It should be unique and memorable so that visitors will remember it and hopefully return. A good name with the right keyword or two also helps with search engine optimization, since it will be part of the title that shows in search results for your homepage.
A relevant tagline is also great to have below your title because it gives a short, yet informative description of what your blog is about. You want visitors to be able to look at both your name and tagline and already have a general idea of the information that they will find on your blog.
The more visitors receive from these two elements, the more they’ll want to click and read.
3. Design
The design is the first thing that a visitor will notice about your blog, so be sure to give a good first impression.
If you have a company website, your blog should match it and include the same look and feel. If you only have a blog, make sure to have a clean, yet unique theme and style for it. Whether you’re looking for free or premium themes, there are hundreds of creative blog themes available on the Web.
Image by Elegant Themes
You want a design that stands out from other blogs in order for your blog to be memorable.
Do you grasp the takeaway yet? You have to be memorable. Visitors remember themes they see on multiple blogs but likely won’t remember the actual names of those blogs. On the other hand, a unique header, style, and theme will make your blog unique and easy to remember.
This may cost you money, though. You may need to hire a designer and work with a psd to xhtml company that will turn your design into a blog theme.
4. Navigation
Ensure everything on your site is freely accessible and easy to find. No one will spend unproductive time finding your search box, categories, tags, recent posts, etc. You have to make sure every element is in clear sight.
Important items such as categories, pages, and a search box should be above the fold so scrolling is minimal.
5. Content
I’m sure you’ve heard the overused expression, “Content is king.”
Content helps increase your traffic and improve your rankings. Internet users are very smart these days and they can tell the difference between good and bad content.
Trust me, they’re not going to stick around to finish reading any bad, plagiarized, or auto-generated content. You really have to put a lot of time and effort into your content so that your readers find it useful and worthy of sharing.
Go a step further and add creativity to your publishing schedule. For instance, each day that you publish could have a different theme. Maybe on Mondays you’ll post reviews, Wednesdays marketing tips, Fridays contributed articles, and Sundays all other topics. This helps engage your readers and gets them excited for each day that you deliver new content.
6. Social
Social interactivity is a must for your blog. This can be accomplished with plugins or widgets. Make it easy for readers to share your content across the web, increasing your inbound traffic and expanding your company’s reach.
Include a Facebook like button, Twitter button for retweeting, and the new Google +1 button. Other buttons are optional, but these 3 buttons should be on every blog. If you create great content, people will come and share you with the world!
Image by Let us Buzz
Insist your readers can connect with your company. You should already have a Facebook page and Twitter feed, so include a way for your readers to follow and like you. There are various widgets and plugins for this as well.
7. Plugins
Along with social plugins, there are thousands of other plugins available for your blog; take advantage of them. Whether you’re using a Blogger or WordPress blog (the two most popular blog platforms), there are plenty for you to choose from. Plugins can help you with SEO and speed of your blog and are great for enhancing features and adding other functions.
There are numerous online sources to help you find the best plugins for your blog. Peruse through the WordPress plugin directory or this Blogger widgets repository. These are the main tools that will help take your blog to the next level and help make it a site that others will want to return to over and over again.
8. Subscriptions
Speaking of returning over and over again, subscription options for your blog are a great “reminder service” for your readers.
Letting your readers sign up to receive future articles via email or RSS feed will help them stay up to date with your new content. Whenever your blog is updated, they’ll be notified and can either read it from their email, feed reader, or by revisiting your blog. So make use of the built in RSS capabilities, or create your own email newsletter to help keep your readers and encourage repeat visits.
Once you implement these corporate blogging tips, what’s next?
Success doesn’t occur overnight. In time and with continued dedicated and hard work, your efforts will pay off and you’ll soon be reaping the fruits of your labor. Care to share any tips below?
About Lior Levin
Yes you are right content is king. Because content helps increase in traffic and rankings. This is really very good and informative article. The content was well chosen and well explained too. Well thanks for the information.
If you want your website to be more holistic than just a blog, you gotta go with wordpress over blogger. Can do soooo much in it, the sky’s the limit. And I swear this a plug-in for ever single problem or idea I’ve ever had. love it!
And I’m glad you recommended elegant themes. I use them on a couple of my websites, terrific themes.
A must read! Great points and very detailed explanations. It is also important that one should choose the right platform especially if he/she doesn’t know much about codes and SEO.
Great advice here and I agree that a short catchy URL is an important branding strategy. Nice post and thanks for sharing.
I have done with the first steps and i think now i should do works for the rest seven.
Great and crucial tips for an effective and easy business blogging. I’m applying all of this on every blog project ahead. You can always enjoy a reminder of the essentials!
Ari,These are great tips. I agree with them all, but especially #5. Content will get you more readers, followers, and search results.
Thanks for the advice so. I chose the domain, design, navigation structure thought. Here’s the problem with socialization, could you give some advice. I’m just passing through I know English, but even so I understand the point.
first and fifth steps are the hard step..in first step its hard to find now the good domain name with you keyword with so many competition and the fifth are the hard thing …must be creative on that step..but any way thanks for sharing the tips..
The biggest problem I see with business blogs are the ones which start in a blaze of enthusiasm and then peter out with no posts for months. Set a realistic schedule, plan your content and set aside time to write your posts. I like to write 2 or 3 at a time but publish them a steady intervals.
Blogs are a starnge animal in my opinion. They are always in need of content and doing content can be quite draining. However i liked the structured approach you outline in this post. fully agree that it is better to produce posts gradually then in a short span.
Hi Lior Levin,
I am agree with your great points.I specially agree with your 4th and 5th point.Great navigation and content are the key steps on successful business blog.Thanks for great article.