Blogging Bad Habits, they are easy to fall into, believe me!
It seems that these days pretty much every business these days has a blog, but that doesn’t mean everyone is doing it the right way, If you’ve just decided to start a new blog for your business or you have been blogging for a long time, I have some tips that you may find interesting.
Something u may find interesting as well: 7 Blunders to avoid when starting your own blog in 2012
HubSpot “has found that companies that blog generate 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links, and have 434% more indexed pages than companies that don’t. Even if you’re posting once a week, you may not have leveraged the full power of content creation for your small business brand”.
1. Not Posting Consistently
Having a great idea for a blog is one thing, spending 1-2 days a week putting together lengthy articles is another, it is time consuming, but keep in mind it can be very rewarding. Before you launch your blog, decide how often you'll be able to blog, keep it fresh, you will want people to have a reason to come back to read what you have posted. A good idea is to write a few articles ahead of time so you have backup postings for the times when the kids got ya busy, or the husband/wife wants your attention. I get into more detail about this in my article: Small Business Blog, Where to Begin Pt.2
2. Thinking Your Blog Is A Good Promotional Tool
Your blog shouldn’t be a Billboard! think about you, when you read blogs, if your looking for some useful information on a topic, you don’t want to be flooded with advertisements, post articles that reflect what you like, that’s related to your specific business, Have fun with it, sure you can advertise your business but do it in a tactful way, for example, I Run a computer consulting company, I like to blog about helpful items related to the internet or computers, I can offer this resource to my customers, present and potential as a useful source of information, this gives me a link to my potential clients, but doesn’t make them feel like I am pushing my services at them.
3. Not Interacting With Your Readersyour blog isn't a static web page, its not a simple press release, its actually a great way for you to interact with your customers and potential clients, you will get comments and questions to your blog postings, be sure to respond to these in a complete and polite way, be informative and offer help, these tips will help you gain a interactive platform that people will enjoy returning to and contributing to. If you want to encourage this, be sure to make it easy for your readers to comment on your posting, For example I have a easy form at the bottom of all my posts, that you can respond to. (Shameless Request: feel free!!)
4.Not Listening To your Readers
Not sure what kind of content appeals to your audience the most? It’s not a mystery: Your blog analytics can provide valuable insight into what types of posts are resonating with readers.
By failing to pay attention to analytics, you’re ignoring valuable information that can take your blog to the next level. Continually track the responses to each blog post. Tinker with different topics, titles and types of posts. Which posts generate the most activity (comments, shares, likes)? Increase the frequency of the most popular.
