So, you’re going to start a company blog in order to attract more customers.
You’ve decided this even though you know this piece of the techno-info-comm world is pretty old and the blogosphere is pretty crowded now (entering the blogosphere is like hanging your star in the firmament; the numbers of blogs, posts, new websites etc. monthly or annually are just staggering, like millions of blogs).
And, by the way, you have said yes to the following questions, as well:
- Do you know you have an audience, meaning you’ve got enough customers/clients with whom you regularly communicate via phone and email and social media (You do have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, at a minimum, in addition to a well maintained website, don’t you?) that you can get the subject and link about your blog out easily?
- Do you know your audience well enough to come up with a minimum of a half-year’s worth of subjects you know are topics of interest?
- Do you also know you or someone in your organization has the time (Really?) to take away from the job (What it is you do, which is not blogging!) so that someone (or a team?) can research, write, edit, post and promote your blog consistently enough to build traffic?
But here area few things that do seem to be true:
- People want blogs to do something for them: offer them a solution and a clear way to get there.
- The more you blog, the more likely it is that people are going to know you blog. That’s in part because SEO measurement is influenced by consistency and quantity and quality. If Google and the guys keep finding you and find that you have a regular appearance and followers, you will move up in the search results column. And blogging multiple times about related subjects will also help to establish your niche in the blogosphere.
- If you want the traffic to continue, then you have to blog continually, and on time. That means regularly, so people can expect your blog and not be disappointed.
- Planning is the key to not wasting time on timely blog writing; schedule your topic areas and subjects ahead, giving time to research.
- Creating an outline will help you get your information (links, facts, names, data) together ahead of time and produce a better structure and flow. When will you say what? How will it move? When will you include the links, images, heads and subheads, the things that make your page interesting to the reader’s eye?
- If it doesn’t interest you, it’s not that likely to interest anyone else. Interesting and exciting are not the same thing: You don’t have to be excited about something to make the blog interesting to your readers.