Making Sure Your Business Blog Has a Purpose

A business blog without a purpose is like the proverbial ship without a rudder. It heads off to find new lands and experiences, but it doesn’t stand much chance of actually getting there. If it does find something worthwhile it will be due to chance more than anything else.

So how can you make sure your business blog has a focus, a purpose, a place to be?

The key is to think about what you want to achieve from your blog. Remember this is very different from a personal blog where it doesn’t really matter what you blog about. When you blog for your business you need to be professional and focused otherwise you could do more harm than good.

For example one of the key reasons many business people start a blog is to find new clients. This is a good goal to have, and it also helps you understand what you should be blogging about. This is why you need a goal in the first place. If you know this is your aim, you know you have to write blogs that appeal to your client’s needs. Let’s say your business provides shop fittings for stores of all shapes and sizes. You could write a blog explaining how important it is to have new shop fittings instead of making do with old ones. Thus you are imparting a convincing message that tells shop owners to ensure their shops are looking good, as well as hopefully drumming up some business for you.

As you can see, having a purpose for your blog will also make it easier to write new posts for it. It’s always harder to write blogs when you have no real purpose or idea about what your blog is there for in the first place.

If you have already started a business blog and it doesn’t have much direction, don’t worry. This is the best time to stop, sit back and take a fresh look at it. You can always start from the beginning again, and you might be surprised at the results you get from doing so.

What Does Your Personal Blog Say About You?

A blog is, by definition, all about you. At least it is if it’s a personal blog. But that doesn’t mean you should put any less work or effort into it than you should with a blog designed to promote your company or business.

A lot of people want to earn money from their blog, and why not? If you could earn an income stream from writing about something you love, wouldn’t you want to do it?

The problem is that your personal blog represents you. This means that if you opt for a free design or template to build your blog around, you might not give the right impression to people who find you online. Designing your own blog is far from easy, and if you want to make money with it you need a design that will tell people you’re serious and you believe in quality.

Using a free blogging service tells people you’re not interested in investing in your blog for the benefit of yourself and others. Let’s face it, which blog are you going to like the most – the free one or the one that has clearly been designed to appeal to its visitors?

It’s always going to be the latter. So even if you want to make money from your blog in the future and not necessarily straightaway, it’s still worth thinking about getting a proper and unique design done on your behalf. Your blog should be as individual as you are, so it makes sense to get an individual and unique design doesn’t it?

Blogs are definitely taken more seriously now than they used to be in the past. They provide a window onto your life that other people are allowed to look through. If you’re going to allow people into your life in this way, make sure they get the best possible view. You never know what it might lead to in the future, so it makes sense to make a great start. Your blog is all about you, so make the right impression from the off.

Does anybody actually make money from blogging?

Now this is a complex question that has many answers. For starters you can make money in two ways from any blog – either directly or indirectly. Directly would mean putting links and adverts on your blog. When someone clicks on them you earn some cash. Indirectly means setting up a blog that is connected to your business. You might blog about trends in your business sector, or new products you are getting ready to launch.

Certainly it’s worth remembering that lots of businesses regularly make money as a result of having a blog. Some would go so far as to say you’d be leaving money on the table if you didn’t bother to create a blog for this reason.

The trouble is that when people talk about making money from blogging, they’re usually only thinking in the direct form. If they’ve got a blog and their ads aren’t making them enough money, they’re not doing well. But sometimes it’s the indirect cash you earn from your blog that means the most. How many people might come across your business blog and find it worth reading on a regular basis? How many might find out about a product of yours that you’ve blogged about by doing so? How many might then go on to become a customer, even though you wouldn’t directly know that such an occurrence had happened?

When we talk about people who make money from their blogs, we only ever focus on those who blog for a living. If you own a business, a blog is a sideline – it’s an essential marketing tool that can enhance the results you are getting. It’s not easy to see how much such a blog might make for the parent company, but suffice to say it could be a significant amount over the long term.

If you don’t yet have a business blog and you’re wondering whether it’s worth creating one, read through the above information again. Can you see just how powerful it can be when you start thinking of your blog as an indirect money making machine instead of a direct one?

The popularity of the blog

Research undertaken by Universal McCann in 2008 revealed that there were around 184 million active blogs available on the Internet. Since then, the popularity of blogging has accelerated rapidly – to the point where accurate figures have not as yet been obtained for 2009-2011, this would suggest that blogs are not a passing phase.

So why exactly do people love blogging so much? And how can a blog help a company to sell its products and/or services? Certainly, information is power – and the Internet allows us to exchange information on a higher level than ever before. We can now speak to our existing customers and target new prospects on a global level using online communications.

And that’s where the humble blog can be useful – sure, blogging can be a fun way to share our daily activities with the masses, but did you know that it’s also a very powerful marketing tool? Let’s say that you have a new product in stock. You add the product to your website, along with a description and any relevant pricing information. It’s a great start, but then you need to get the consumer interested enough to actually invest in the product.

Using a blog, you can promote your new product and provide a little more information for your customers to consider. You may have a limited word count on your website, but by using a blog you can really ‘go to town’ when describing key product features and benefits. Your blog can then be linked to your website and to any other online marketing platforms that you currently use.

Blogging can also be a great way to announce company news and events. If you have a promotion, sale or a new member of staff joining the company, you can get the word out there using a blog. People are naturally drawn to compelling and creative text, so the more interesting a blog is – the more likely people are to read it.

So – are blogs here to stay?  – the indications would suggest that the answer is most definitely yes. When done correctly, blogging can be a very positive and productive experience for virtually any company.

WordPress SEO Plugins: Ratio 7′s Top 10

Ratio7 loves WordPress for clients, not just because it is user-friendly for designers, but because it is user-friendly for, well, users AND Google and other search engines love it. They also have handy little bits of code, called ‘plugins’ that are easy to install to customize your site. If you are a Ratio7 customer, we take care of these for you! For search engine optimisation, these plugins are the best:

Scribe. Scribe is not free. It is from the same developers who’ve created the very popular (premium) theme “Thesis” and is a handy keyword/SEO analysis tool for bloggers. It scores your post for SEO-friendliness, guides you in making improvements and, for heavy duty blogging, is invaluable.

All-In-One SEO Pack is a really popular free plug-in which creates “meta tags” (little snippets of code that the search engines use to crawl, i.e. read) for your content, title and keywords.

Platinum SEO Plugin helps you avoid duplicate content, offers permanent and temporary page redirects (301 and 302 respectively) and also generates meta tags.

SEO Friendly Images: Images make your blog more enjoyable but it also adds another avenue for search engines to find your page. This plugin helps you with adding title tags and keywords to your images.

SEO Tag Cloud plugin allows you to create a cloud that search engines will actually search.

Sitemap Generator is an important plugin. Search engine crawlers like to crawl a neat, organized site map and this plugin helps you with categories, pages and more.

SEO Smart Links is a plugin that takes care of an important part of blogging: interlinking (linking to other pages within your blog) which can be time consuming. This plugin does the heavy lifting for you.

HeadSpace2 is another meta data plugin that helps you create custom titles, tags, and descriptions to improve page ranking.

wpSEO does what many of the other SEO plugins do but also allows you to add an SEO monitor as a dashboard widget, renames files to make them more SE friendly upon upload and prevents indexing of RSS feeds by search engines.

W3 Total Cache improves the speed and overall performance of your WordPress site. Thus, impatient search engine crawlers are likely to spend more time finding content on your site which improves optimization and page rankings.

WordPress Your Business

WordPress is emerging as the leader of blogging sites and software. For the common user interested in using WordPress, there are some things that can be confusing. Let us clarify some details for you!

1. WordPress.org and WordPress.com are two different entities owned by the same company. The free WordPress.com site is for casual users who do not need or want a full range of customization options for their site. WordPress.org is a free downloaded software that can be fully transformed and used on a HOSTED site. To run a WordPress.org site (the most common choice among business owners), you must have it hosted like a traditional website.

2. You can create a fully functional website that includes a blog via WordPress(.org) software. It allows for pages, custom style sheets, HTML editing and everything else you need in a smaller business website.

3. WordPress (both kinds) offers “themes” which are essentially design templates that are ready to go. You can also download additional free themes, priced themes or have a theme custom made (or tailored) by a designer.

4. WordPress is easier for the average user to modify than a traditional website. Thus its huge popularity.

5. Your designer can seamlessly install WordPress blog software to be compatible with your existing website so you can utilize WP’s easy blog features without a complete website overhaul.

This blog utilizes WordPress and Ratio7 can take care of all of your needs, from the most basic to the most advanced, if you are interested in using this software. Contact us for more information.

Why a Blog Matters

Blogging should be a key component of your online marketing plan. Blogging allows you to interact with customers and clients in a more conversational, community-oriented way and offers them additional value over the basic information your Web site probably offers. Blogging doesn’t need to be done daily, but it does need to be done consistently to garner an audience.

Blogging helps with search engine results because, though your topics are in a specific area, they are generally broader than the content on your business site. Thus if someone looks up “graphic design” and “blogging” they are more likely to find Ratio7 because we’ve written this post. Additionally, the outbound links that you incorporate in posts to either your own site or others increase your site traffic which improves your search engine rankings.

Using a blog helps you tell a broader story about your business. You can engage, educate and/or entertain your readers which helps you develop a culture and builds loyalty. The use of graphics, video and audio all help enrich the experience for your readers and customers.

There are a variety of blog sites and software available to business. Most professional companies use WordPress and it’s what we recommend. Ratio7 can design or modify a WordPress theme (template) to match your overall branding efforts and, because WordPress is easy to manage,  you can post, add graphics and links and manage comments with little training. Themes are extremely professional looking with an endless variety of plug-ins (mini-applications) and upgrades.

Ratio7 also has affordable business marketing starter kits which include logo design, letterhead, business cards, a domain name and WordPress set up, plus free hosting and free email. Let us walk you through the process of either adding or updating your blog or starting a branding effort from scratch!