Business and Investments

3 Essential Elements of an Effective Business Blog

After being immersed in the Internet marketing industry for years and experimenting with dozens of different online marketing methods, I have found blogging to be one of the most effective business marketing tools. Not only does a business blog provide a space for fresh, regularly updated content (which search engines love), when done correctly a business blog can establish a loyal group of customers and promoters.

However, I have seen some companies make major flaws with their business blogs. These mistakes cause businesses to waste a great deal of resources on their business blogs with little or no return on investment. There are many factors that make a business blog successful or a flop. In this article, I’ll touch on the three of the most critical strategies for building an effective business blog.

Establishing an Overall Mission and Purpose for Your Business Blog

Though this may seem elementary, it’s amazing how many business blogs do not seem to have an established purpose! What need is your business blog going to fill for its readers? What topics are you going to cover on your blog? Having a clearly defined written ‘purpose’ for your business blog will help ensure that your blog content will stay on target and on topic so that you deliver what your readers expect every time.

Many business blogs make the mistake of writing content that is of interest to their peers rather than their target audience. If one of your primary objectives is to sell products, it’s important to create a resource that will be of benefit to your target audience.

Consider your business blog like a magazine. When you pick up your favorite magazine from the rack, you have a pretty good idea about what will be in the magazine. People subscribe to magazines only when they have a sense that the content in the magazine will be consistently relative to their interests.

The same goes for a business blog. One of the primary goals of a blog is to establish a large subscription base. This is done by consistently delivering content that is of interest to your readership base. Clearly defining the mission and purpose of your blog provides you with a guideline for creating content that is consistently useful to your readers.

Blog Marketing: Telling Not Selling

Blogs are not the place for a heavy hitting sales pitch. In fact, being too salesy is the fastest way to turn off blog readers. Bloggers don’t mind that you are trying to promote something – most are. But heavy-handed sales tactics just don’t fly in the blogosphere.

I’ve worked with some companies that were so worried about not sounding too promotional that they took their business blog to the opposite extreme. Reading their blog, you would have no idea what the company was or what they sold. One didn’t even have link back to their website! The key to creating effective business blogs is to find the right balance.

One way that you can introduce your products without being pushy is by choosing a layout that allows you to feature some of your products on every page. A two or three column blog layout works well for this purpose, as does a blog layout with several ‘feature’ boxes at the top.

Not ‘hiding’ the fact that you have something to offer helps you to establish your business as an expert in your niche. It’s perfectly fine to reference your products in your post in the context of a useful article that tells readers how to accomplish certain goals as opposed to a post that solely push your product. Readers begin to trust your content and learn to like you – and therefore are more likely to buy the products and services you offer.

Finding Your Voice

One of the greatest mistakes a people tend to make when creating a business blog is to write in ‘corporatese’ as opposed to a more conversational tone. Just like there is a certain accepted writing style for a press release or an editorial article, there is also a particular accepted writing style for blogs.

The most effective and popular business blogs have a personal voice. This scares some businesses and corporations – but it doesn’t have to! Select a few key company representatives as the personalities of the business blog. If you’re worried about giving people the right to instantly publish content, you can set up a system so that no post goes live without the approval of a single individual whose role is to ensure that the blog remains consistent and professional.

Have each person include their photo in the about page or even in the post with multi-author blogs. Post authors should respond to comments and engage in dialogue with readers in order to build and enhance relationship. Blog marketing is very much ‘relationship marketing.’ Responding to reader comments and questions is an important duty of a business blog writer or another assigned person within the organization.

Though a blog can be set up in a matter of minutes, there is a lot of planning and strategy that goes into creating a truly effective business blog. Starting you planning session by tackling these three core points is a great way to get your business blog off to an effective start!

About the Author

Christine O’Kelly is the founder and lead SEO copywriter for SEO Content Solutions. SEO Content Solutions offers a wide range of SEO copywriting services including SEO press releases, optimized web content, and freelance business blog writing.

Business Blog vs. Normal Website

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ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed $54.99 In this book, world-renowned ASP.NET expert and member of the Microsoft ASP.NET team Stephen Walther shows experienced developers how to use Microsoft’s new ASP.NET MVC Framework to build web applications that are more powerful, flexible, testable, manageable, scalable, and extensible.   Writing for professional programmers, Walther explains the crucial concepts that make the Model-View-Controller (MVC) development paradigm work so well and shows exactly how to apply them with the ASP.NET MVC Framework. From controllers and actions to views and models, Walther demonstrates how to apply each ASP.NET MVC Framework feature in real-world projects.   In Part II, you’ll walk step-by-step through building a full-fledged ASP.NET MVC blog application that implements capabilities ranging from data access to validation. Through this case study, you’ll learn how to build ASP.NET MVC applications using test-driven development processes that enable rapid feedback, greater productivity, and better quality.   Throughout, Walther presents extensive code examples, reflecting his unsurpassed experience as an ASP.NET instructor, a leading commercial developer, and now as a member of Microsoft’s ASP.NET development team.   Understand how to: Build enterprise-scale web applications far more rapidly and effectively Develop web applications that are easier to maintain and extend over time Gain unprecedented control over the appearance of your website or application Expose intuitive URLs that are friendlier to search engines and users alike Create ASP.NET MVC models thatcontain all your application’s business, validation, and data access logic Make the most of HTML helpers, model binders, action filters, routing, and authentication Efficiently deploy your ASP.NET MVC applications Use the lightweight JQuery JavaScript library to easily

Accidental Genius $17.99 When it comes to creating ideas, we hold ourselves back. That’s because inside each of us is an internal editor whose job is to forever polish our thoughts, so we sound smart and in control, and so that we fit into society. But what happens when we encounter problems where such conventional thinking fails us? How to get unstuck?  For Mark Levy, the answer is freewriting, a technique he’s used for years to solve all types of business problems, and generate ideas for books, articles and blog posts. Freewriting is deceptively simple: Start writing as fast as you can, for as long as you can, about a subject you care deeply about, while ignoring the standard rules of grammar and spelling. Your internal editor won’t be able to keep up with your output, and will be temporarily shunted into the background. You’ll now be able to think more honestly and resourcefully than before, and will generate breakthrough ideas and solutions that you couldn’t have created any other way. Levy shares six freewriting secrets designed to knock out your editor and let your genius run free. He also includes fifteen problem-solving and creativity-stimulating principles you can use if you need more firepower—seven of which are new to this edition—and stories of problems he and others have solved through freewriting.Also new to this edition: an extensive section on how to refine your freewriting into something you can share with the world. Although Levy originally taught freewriting as a private brainstorming technique, over the years he and his clients have found that, with some tweaking, it’s a great way to generate content for books, articles, and other thought leadership pieces.

Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content $17.96 New – When it comes to creating ideas, we hold ourselves back. That’s because inside each of us is an internal editor whose job is to forever polish our thoughts, so we sound smart and in control, and so that we fit into society. But what happens when we encounter problems where such conventional thinking fails us? How to get unstuck? For Mark Levy, the answer is freewriting, a technique he’s used for years to solve all types of business problems, and generate ideas for books, articles and blog

Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content $15.89 New – When it comes to creating ideas, we hold ourselves back. That’s because inside each of us is an internal editor whose job is to forever polish our thoughts, so we sound smart and in control, and so that we fit into society. But what happens when we encounter problems where such conventional thinking fails us? How to get unstuck? For Mark Levy, the answer is freewriting, a technique he’s used for years to solve all types of business problems, and generate ideas for books, articles and blog

Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content $16.95 When it comes to creating ideas, we hold ourselves back. That’s because inside each of us is an internal editor whose job is to forever polish our thoughts, so we sound smart and in control, and so that we fit into society. But what happens when we encounter problems where such conventional thinking fails us? How to get unstuck?  For Mark Levy, the answer is freewriting, a technique he’s used for years to solve all types of business problems, and generate ideas for books, articles and blog posts. Freewriting is deceptively simple: Start writing as fast as you can, for as long as you can, about a subject you care deeply about, while ignoring the standard rules of grammar and spelling. Your internal editor won’t be able to keep up with your output, and will be temporarily shunted into the background. You’ll now be able to think more honestly and resourcefully than before, and will generate breakthrough ideas and solutions that you couldn’t have created any other way. Levy shares six freewriting secrets designed to knock out your editor and let your genius run free. He also includes fifteen problem-solving and creativity-stimulating principles you can use if you need more firepower—seven of which are new to this edition—and stories of problems he and others have solved through freewriting.Also new to this edition: an extensive section on how to refine your freewriting into something you can share with the world. Although Levy originally taught freewriting as a private brainstorming technique, over the years he and his clients have found that, with some tweaking, it’s a great way to generate content for books, articles, and other thought leadership pieces.