Attaching a business blog to your online presence is a powerful way to stay relevant and establish your brand image. It becomes the central voice for your marketing campaign, setting the tone for every communication that you have with your customers. This means that throwing a bunch of vague words on a poorly designed site is not going to do you any good. Rather, you need to create great content on a site that is easy on the eye to engage readers and increase sales. Here’s how:
Know the Importance of White Space
Before you think about the content of your business blog, you need to figure out the design and layout. Even if you’re the next Hemingway, all of your work means nothing if it is written in a black font on a black background. The space around the words, called white space, is as important as the words themselves.
Take a look at the Amway blog as a good example of one that uses both white space and pictures to visually break up articles. If you do not have a staff photographer, you can purchase photos from databases like iStock.
Be Consistent
There are three categories you need to be consistent on your blog: tone, message and time. Your blog affects your brand image, so the writing translates to the customer’s perception of your company. Decide whether your company is a thought leader or a party animal, and then stick to it. For example, Coca Cola has linked its beverage to happy feelings for decades, never once deciding to change its image to something more edgy or technical.
Another important factor is to post regularly and consistently, about twice per week, so your customers know when to expect new content. This also helps your search engine optimization (SEO) to better show up in Google searches.
Hire Great Writers
Blog writing can be demanding, especially if you are a small business owner that has a lot of other priorities. Pounding out thousands of words per week of insightful, engaging material easily falls to the wayside if you have a big order to go out, an accounting deadline or any one of a million other important things to do. To take this load off, hire either in-house or freelance writers. There are plenty of companies that let you hire professional writers on a pay-per-article basis.
Record Your Thoughts
Writing is not for everyone. But if you have built your business around sales, you probably are blessed with the gift of gab. Instead of writing everything down, get a high-quality HD web camera and video tape yourself. All of the same rules of consistency and content apply, but a ten minute video only takes you ten minutes to create. Make a YouTube channel and embed that into your blog page.
Edit Your Posts
For the grammarphile, nothing is worse than common mistakes in published writing. Since this blog is directly linked to your brand image, it needs to be well-written and free of errors. While you can edit your own work, it’s always a good idea to have someone else look at it as well.
