An Online business blog is different from a traditional blog created by an individual. A Business blog needs to have a goal in terms of conversion, targeted traffic, where as for a normal blog traffic is what matters the most.
Anyhow, we have been talking a lot about business aspect of Blogging and extending the series, today I’m going to share some tips for businesses that are coming up with their blog to promote their product or service.
Blogging is not an easy job and like every other business your blog needs to have a business plan. Before anyone start a blog, he should be clear about many things like what niche he is getting into, blog design, branding, content development, monetization plans, promotion plans and investment he is going to make.
From my experience, whenever I have to start a new blog/service or project, I usually put down everything in a notepad, this also work as a checklist for my new project and I make sure to not to miss anything from the things that I have decided. In this post, I’m not getting into detail about keyword research and SEO, which is also a crucial part of any blog, but I will be covering other important aspects. You may bookmark this post for future reference.
Starting Online Business Blog? We are here to help
An online blog marketing and branding needed to be done with the same caution as your offline business. Reputation management is one of the critical element of your online Website and to make sure, your blog is getting a positive reaction, you should have a perfect blog from day one. So let’s get started with the list. I have also added relevant links, which will help you to understand the sub-topics in detail.
Domain name
Domain name is very crucial, and it is one of the greatest factors that determines success and failure of your blog. Too long domain name is bad, as people will find it hard to remember. .com domains are easy to remember, so even if you planning to start with a .org/.info domain, grab .com domain and redirect it to .org.
For Businesses, I would suggest incorporating blog in the sub directory of your Website, which will help you to get more traffic to the main site via Blog.
So if your business brand name is Pipers and you have a Website with the name Pipers.com, you can install a blog at Pipers.com/blog. And if this is going to be your first step in an online word, you can consider installing WordPress at the main domain only.
There are two important factors you should think before getting a domain name, domain for SEO or branding. As name Bloggeria has no advantage over SEO but its good for branding.
Niche
This is the most common problem face by a newbie blogger, when they start a new blog they write on all the topics, either be it health, networking, love, travel but they forget about the importance of niche blog. Niche blog helps you to get the authority soon, and you will rank well in the search engine. Think of a niche on which you can write at least 100 topics without thinking much. A simple way to find the niche is use mind-mapping.
Webhosting
Google and readers both love a website with maximum uptime. Website down time is a major factor for losing search engine ranking. So make sure whatever hosting you choose, it should keep up the promise.
Blogging platform
This is another crucial factor, some people are fond of the blogger, some are fond of WordPress, Drupal and so on. I have already covered few topics on the discussion between BlogSpot and WordPress, you should consider reading it, this will help you to decide which blogging platform you should select.
My personal choice would be WordPress because I’m using it and have seen the SEO and usability advantage of WordPress. WordPress is easy to get started with.
Theme and design
A Unique theme is must for any blog. But there are other factors that you need to look for while selecting a theme for your blog. If it’s WordPress, you should particularly look for ease of customization, support, SEO and design. Many people prefer spending on designing once they start making some money with their blog & this is one bug mistake. Your blog is going to be your brand and by giving one unique theme and look, you helping your readers to recognize you by your design. So when you start a new blog make sure you work on Theme design or hire someone who can give a custom look to your blog.
Logo and Banners should be the first choice from first day of your blog. I have seen many blogs that keep changing their blog logo with time. This hampers your blog branding; people start recognizing you with your logo. Remember your starting days of school, how easy it is to remember apple by its picture rather than its name. The Same thing is with blog logo. Make sure you use the same logo in your blog email, twitter, facebook fan page and community icons, this way people will start recognizing your blog by its logo.
Content is King
Content is king and it’s true. A blog is determined by its quality, before starting a blog, nail down few pillar articles. A pillar article is unique, and it’s your creation. Such articles, are what which gives you recognition. Along with writing pillar articles, you need the best way to make it reachable to people. The easiest way is the comment on other blogs, add sensible comments, and expect them to comment back. Excessive commenting on the same niche is what you need to do in beginning.
SEO is queen
We all know Content is the king, and if its true than SEO is the queen. Make your article formatted for your readers and for search engine both. Many people say that by writing great content you can drive huge traffic but most of time such traffic will be referral traffic. Real traffic is long lasting traffic and that comes from search engine. By optimizing your blog for search engine, you making sure, your blog will keep getting traffic from search engine. SEO is an on-going process and for this, you need to work on your keyword optimization, keyword research and make sure your site is SEO friendly. This means, you need to take care of simple parameters like H1, H2, H3 tag, no index, nofollow. robots.txt, sitemap and so on. Apart from that you need to work on generating backlinks for your blog.
This is not all, there are many other things which needed to be considered, but for now if you have figure out this thing, you are ready to start a blog. Blogging is based on self experience, but instead of learning from your own mistakes, it’s better to learn from others mistakes. Read lots of posts on blogging and you will have an idea, where are you heading to.
