Effective Blogging Tips for Small Businesses

Maintaining a regularly updated blog can be an effective way for small businesses to attract website traffic and draw the attention of prospective clients. However, this isn’t to say that every small business blog is equally successful. If you want people to visit your website and/or take an interest in your enterprise, you’ll need to give them something with substance. Fortunately, crafting a blog that’s both entertaining and informative doesn’t have to be an uphill battle. Small businesses interested in trying their hand at blog creation can benefit from the following pointers.

Be Consistent

If you want your business’s blog to catch on, it’s imperative that you practice consistency. This means setting a blogging schedule and sticking to it. If you promise a new blog at a specific date and time each week, you’d better deliver. Small business blogs that are sporadically updated and refuse to stick to schedules tend to generate the least buzz. After all, if interested parties see that you can’t be relied upon to keep your word, they’re less likely to keep checking back or give you their business.

Additionally, illustrating a lack of dependability is not going to help you with sales prospecting. Nor will inconsistent updates do you any favors with Google and other prominent search engines. When compiling relevant results, search engines tend to favor sites that boast frequent content updates. Since search engines are essentially the modern-day Yellow Pages, falling out of favor with Google can cost you big.      

Integrate Keywords

Keyword integration plays a crucial role in many small business blogs. As the name suggests, this practice entails inserting relevant keywords into your posts in an effort to boost your site’s search ranking. While keyword integration can be an effective way to elicit attention from Google, there are a couple of key rules you’ll need to follow.

For starters, the keywords you choose will need to be organically integrated into your content. Unnaturally forcing keywords into sentences in which they clearly don’t belong will instantly draw negative attention from your audience, who will see your efforts for exactly what they are. Secondly, avoid using the same keywords excessively within a certain piece. This, too, will make your intentions glaringly obvious, resulting in a loss of trust and interest from your readers. Additionally, if Google becomes aware of flagrant keyword-stuffing, you can expect to see your search ranking plummet.   

Create Content That’s Worth Reading

While creating worthwhile content may seem like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised by the number of small business blogs that offer nothing in the way of substance or entertainment value. Not only should the topics you write about be relevant to your business and the industry it serves, but they should also be engaging enough to capture the interest of non-experts. Additionally, make sure to pepper each blog post with handy visual aids, like photos and videos. The more effort you put into crafting each entry, the more likely your intended audience is to take notice.

Entrust Blogging Duties to a Skilled Writer

Having good business acumen doesn’t necessarily make one a gifted scribe, and discerning readers won’t hesitate to criticize blogs they deem to be poorly written. That being the case, entrepreneurs whose writing skills leave much to be desired would be wise to entrust their blogging duties to an experienced writer. This person can be an employee with a knack for writing or an outside contractor with a solid understanding of your industry. Of course, the exact level of responsibility you hand off to this person is up to you. For example, you could provide the topics while he or she does the grunt work and figures out the best ways to flesh them out.    

Effective promotion is crucial for small businesses that are just getting their start. No matter how unique your products and/or services are, you’ll need to get noticed to stay afloat. Although drumming up attention for your business may seem like an arduous undertaking, it isn’t as difficult as many entrepreneurs think. In the quest to draw prospective clients and other interested parties to your website, a regularly updated blog is sure to serve you well. By utilizing the tips discussed above, you can craft a blog that’s consistently informative, engaging and conducive to repeat visits.