Creating a Unique Blog for your Business
There is no doubt about the fact that blogs help to further the cause of businesses. Blogging also needs some planning, organization and clarity about the aim and purpose of the blog. The most important thing is that the blog must be just right and fit into the business perspective and appear to be an extension of it.
Points to remember while planning the blog
- How visitors will navigate the site for content- The internet visitor has a short attention span and little patience for fluff-he wants to get straight to the point, and get to the content he needs. Visitors either scroll down for the relevant title, or search from the newest. Therefore blog posts can be placed in excerpts on the home page, or titles listed, or assigned to categories which can then be searched.
- Include the search option-this simplifies things for visitors who can use keywords in their search and get straight to the relevant post.
- First timers who browse- A first time visitor would like to browse through every part of the blog. It would make things easier if internal links and references could be placed as options.
- Active posts that invite comments- Visitors seem to like their opinion being solicited and like to post their comments. The blog can decide to be an active one and also post these comments for others to see.
- Main website menu in blog- this will help visitors reach the main website straight from the blog, and will help to improve website traffic.
- Easily spotted menu- visitors should not have to search for the main menu and therefore it is better to place it on top so that it is clearly visible.
With these clarifications, the blog will take a shape and design that will help to push the blog in the preferred direction and visitors will find it easily accessible.
Blog content-when and what
The next crucial decision is about the blog content.
Frequency- Should blog posts be added every day, or alternate days, weekly or monthly? This is a tricky question, again linked to the perspective of the business owner. Experts believe that if regular posts are not seen, blogs die out and are ignored by search engines. If the blog has regular visitors then thrice a week makes sense, since they would like to read new material each time. If however, the blog just expresses expert opinions and is informative about topics then it need not be so frequent, and posts may be added as and when a new topic is introduced. Infrequent posts must not mention dates since dates may reveal that the post is old, and the reader will lose interest.
Personal or business content- Small business owners prefer personalized content to get the visitors involved about every aspect of the business. Including personal details, pictures and photos gets the visitors interested and more involved. A bigger business will have a blogging team and these blogs will be more business oriented, and used for promoting public relations, sharing news, advertising an event and so on.
Active posts with visitor participation- Comments from visitors seems like an interesting prospect but this can also have an adverse impact for a business if negative comments are posted or some unpleasant remarks are made. Comments need to be constantly monitored, and if found harmful, they must be removed before they cause damage.
Blogs offer tremendous opportunity, but it is “to each, their own”. Businesses need to figure out what suits their business the best, in terms of blog content, design and all other intricate details.
This is a Guest post by Neil Jones, who Specializes in launching ecommerce sites, he is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe they are on course to be one of Europe’s largest online retailers of Industrial handheld computers and label printers like the Motorola MC75 terminal or Symbol MC9090. Neil has been an online marketer for the past 6 years and in that time he has owned and run a range of sites all built around the ecommerce platform.
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