The blogging community is growing at a rapid speed, and many small businesses want to start blogging but don’t think they have the time. While maintaining a blog does take work, it doesn’t have to be as time consuming as many people think. With a little time management and careful planning, you can easily add a company blog to your website.
Why Should You Start a Company Blog?
The biggest advantage of starting your own blog is that you’ll always have fresh, relevant content about your business for searchers to find. If your website has content that’s outdated and no longer relevant, users are going to stop visiting your site. But when you maintain a blog, you’re automatically going to be updating it with fresh content and new ideas on a regular basis—or at least you should be. Use your blog as a way to give users a reason to keep coming back to your site.
So how do you do this?
Establish Expertise
I may not be a professional blogger, but I do know that people turn to blogs to get their information from experts. As a small business owner, you’re the expert in your field, and by writing a blog you’re establishing yourself as a trusted source of information for your potential customers. You can build this trust even if you’re not a skilled writer—your expertise on the subject is what people are looking for. According to an article on Forbes, customers actually prefer the thoughts of an experienced person (you and your employees) over a professional writer.
Use WordPress to Get Started
Don’t think you have the time? Starting a blog will take a little bit of set-up time up front, but once you have everything all ready to go, it will be a lot easier to manage and update in the future. The best place to go to get started is WordPress. It’s easy to create your blog, the features for adding posts are user friendly, and you can create a template or design that will match the rest of your website.
Write Several Entries at Once
The great thing about blogging is that it can be done from anywhere at anytime. You can even leave the office and do all of your blogging at home or on the weekend. Most people prefer writing multiple blogs at once—maybe two or three—and then spreading them out through the following week. Once you’re done writing you can upload each post to your blog, add a relevant image or video, and set the publishing date to a specific day and time in the future.
By blogging about what you know, you’ll make your content more authentic and gradually gain credibility, which in turn better connects you to your current and potential customers. Your blog is going to show your audience that you know the industry and can offer tips or solutions to issues people are having. The more useful and engaging the information you provide is, the more people are going to return to your website or blog as a resource. This is going to help you build an audience, allowing your business to grow.
