Great Business Blogging’s 5 Cardinal Rules

Business blogging helps generate website traffic is common knowledge. Blogging allows small businesses compete with large corporations for a market share in Houston. But bringing up a blog is not as simple as WordPress and write.

Your company’s blog is not just getting one of those free blogs and posting anything that enters your mind. It’s a little more involved. Business blogging must have focus and a definite strategy.

Assuming that you’ve already developed a blogging strategy and know what you want to achieve, think about what you want your blog to say. Saying something is more than just coming up with ideas for frequent posts. You must know what you want your blog to communicate about you and your company.

There are 5 basic rules that you shouldn’t forget when you are blogging. They are pretty much ingrained into the professional blogger, but many newbies to the blogosphere might not know them. All 5 are common sense tenets related to keeping your blog in synch with your website.

Rule #1. Make sure that your blog is relevant to your website. Relevance establishes credibility. What can be worse than having a doggy treats website and writing about kitty toys?

Rule #2. Don’t make it all about your company. You already have a website that takes care of promoting you. Instead, write about best industry practices, new industry trends, or answer a question in detail.

Rule #3. You’ve already spent considerable time, not to mention money, optimizing your website. You don’t need to use all the keywords contained in your website on your business blog. Here is where you can focus on non-branded keywords.

Non-branded keywords are those generic words a person will type into the search box when he or she is looking for something. The person might never have heard of your company. These keywords have nothing to do with you company name or brand. Don’t overlook relevant keywords or new emerging language.

Rule #4. Think like a publisher. Well, first you need to know what a publisher does. A publisher wears many hats and doesn’t have an easy job.

Publishers attract new clientele, do design such as covers to make a book stand out, copyediting, consulting, and production/distribution/promotion of new books.

As a blogger, you must create the content, publicize your blog, and look for new marketing opportunities. To get a following and generate leads, this means that your content must be valuable to the reader so that you can be sure that your publicity/promotional strategy are successful.

Basically, as a blogger you are the publisher. That is, unless you hire someone to do this for you.

Rule #5. Be human. Business blogs are a place to put a person behind your website. Create sharable content and don’t be afraid to use personal experience. Another way to engage your readers is to ask them directly what they want. Do they have questions, want text, video, or audio? Then provide what they want to keep them coming back for more.

That’s really all there is to business blogging, although it does help if you’re personable and can write reasonably well.

Directory One, a Houston SEO firm, has experienced bloggers on staff. Give them a call if you are ready to jump start your company’s blog.