There’s no “right” way to use a blog to promote your business. Godaddy.com uses their CEO’s blog to create provocative (and sometimes mature) content designed to attract attention from their target consumer audience. Coca-cola employs a completely different strategy - they use their “conversations” blog to promote Coke’s strong brand and colorful history, appealing to fans of the brand and emphasizing Coke’s stance as a cultural icon. Toyota uses their Open Road blog mostly to share company news and for self promotion, often announcing new innovations on their blog before they send out a press release.
Three different strategies, yet all three follow these fundamental rules:
Assign or hire someone to be responsible for creating blog content. It’s important that you make one person responsible for blogging, and it’s also important to recognize good blogging can take anywhere from 1 to 4 hours per post. While you might be tempted to take this task on yourself, you might also consider hiring a professional blog writer - it’s not terribly expensive and it helps ensure success.
Blogs aren’t advertising. While there’s an admittedly fine line between blogging and advertising, blog posts should always be about sharing information. If that information happens to be that your business just announced a sale, then so be it. Most of the time, however, finding a good informative topic to blog about is easier than it seems. You can write about your company history, your employees, new products or services, industry news, specific and particular uses for your product or service, etc. Whatever you decide to blog about, remember that authenticity is crucial.
Blog about your customers and make them into cheerleaders for your business.
Blog about your customers. This is one of the best reasons to have a business blog. Your customers will appreciate the recognition, and if they have a business of their own, they’ll probably reciprocate. At a minimum, any customer you blog about will be sure to tell all their friends, relatives, and co-workers about your blog.
Blog on a regular basis. Your blog will inevitably attract followers, so make sure that you honor these followers by blogging on a regular basis. Nothing frustrates a loyal reader more than inconsistent blogging. Keep in mind that blogging on a regular basis doesn’t mean blogging often - blogging once a month is just fine so long as you hold that schedule consistently.
Keep your blog posts short. Most of the people reading blogs are skimming, so brevity is important. 400 words or less is a great rule of thumb. Also, make it easy for skimmers by using bullet points and bold type in your blog posts.
Encourage interaction. End your blog posts with a request for comments. Ask readers to share their own stories, weigh-in with their own opinions, or make suggestions. For example, let’s say that you’re considering changing you company’s logo. Why not give your blog readers a chance to weigh-in? Getting readers involved will encourage them to follow your blog and improve their opinion of your business.
The title is the most important part of every blog post. Good post titles are often the difference between a blog post succeeding or failing. Write titles that are interesting and provocative. Here are a couple of links that are worth a read:
10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas
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