SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• Blogs are an efficient way of providing useful information
• The subject matter is usually related but not directed at your business’s function
• The main reasons are to direct traffic to your site, and to elevate your status to expert
• Readers can often be invisible, so check out your site stats for exact traffic
• In time you will be seen as an authority on the subject
• This will position you well ahead of your competitors
• There are several other reasons you may run a blog
• The most important aspect of all is the quality of your blog’s content
• The choice of writer is therefore paramount to success
• The better your writer the more engaged the audience and the longer the text which may be featured

FULL ARTICLE

Over recent years there has been a marked trend with many businesses to include a blogging feature in many of their online platforms.

This normally comes from an angle of providing resourceful and useful information to customers and non-customers alike.

In most cases a blog usually speaks about subjects related to your area of business, but certainly not necessarily about your business or its services themselves. The trick in fact, is often to purposely steer away form the obvious and rather than staging it as a simple continuation of the rest of your promotional material, to deal with topics and subjects which are firmly removed from your business itself.

Some examples would be say featuring a blog on lifestyle and design, when running a furniture and home interiors shop, or a blog on health and fitness when operating a gym. Similarly you might manage an antique shop and blog about history in general.

Provided that the subject matter of your blog will attract most of your clients, then do not be afraid to venture as far off as you wish. The trick is finding areas of common interest.

The two main reasons behind a blog are increasing traffic to your site or online platform, and establishing yourself as a recognised authority on the subject.

In the first case it is obvious that having a static site with the habitual home, about us, services, contacts, etc. will usually draw people in once, and never again. If you are regularly updating offers and news, or even if you wish to remind your customers simply that you exist, then you need to find ways of drawing them in more regularly. There might be other reasons you require traffic, such as in the case of advertising or collaborating with third parties.

In many blogs there is little or no interaction with readers. This however does not mean that it is not being read by many. It is therefore important to check out traffic properly through Google Analytics or other similar means. This will clearly indicate how many people are viewing the blog pages and also the time spent there. This will identify those who are truly reading through the text and those who are just quickly browsing through them. Furthermore, it would also be a good idea to occasionally ask your audience personally what they think of your blog, to receive more detailed feedback.

A blog can be a very effective means of driving constant traffic to your site.

If many come to your blog to learn new and interesting things, then in time they will come to consider you as an important resource of information in their lives. This will elevate your status from businessperson to teacher and instructor. It will transform your image from shopkeeper to expert in a particular field.

People will automatically associate you and your business to that line of work and whenever they require your types of products or services, you will instantly come to mind. Moreover, you will be much more trusted by them, which will evidently lead to greater sales.

Furthermore, the fact that you take the trouble to disseminate free information to all, is good for your image and will also increase your popularity with many.

A blog can be one astute way of positioning yourself well above your competitors and being seen as an authority on the subject.

There could be other reasons behind a blog. This could also be utilised as an advertorial to market both yourself and third party collaborators. It could also be cleverly used to influence people on specific topics and to shift ideas and create trends. Another interesting idea is to use it to reply to customer queries in a helpline sort of way, where replies to problems are expanded and developed into short articles.

However the blog’s main focus will remain firmly positioned on increasing traffic and improving perception.

Naturally the crux of the matter is very simply the content!

If you have poor and mediocre content, then your blog will be useless and also possibly counter-productive. If, on the other hand, you have engaging and captivating material, it will then sell itself and attract many.

So you must start off by sourcing a good writer. Although very clear guidelines are always advisable, do not suppress or limit your writers to the extent that they cannot express themselves fully and develop their styles and ideas.

Similarly, we all seem obsessed that nobody reads anymore, and that anything more than a couple of short paragraphs is too much. Yet full-length books still sell, as does Kindle, and both offline and online magazines, most of which still feature full-length articles…

I believe that the main difference today, is that there is infinitely more to choose from, so readers are much more selective.

An average writer will engage a reader for the first few sentences, a good writer might do this for a couple of hundred words. An excellent writer however, will have the audience wishing the article will never end, no matter how long it is.

So try and get yourself a very good writer and do not be afraid to go beyond the very basic and often useless short articles, which provide nothing of substance to their readers.