How Should A Business Blog?

Whilst we all know that maintaining a business blog is important, it’s rarely urgent. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life it’s the kind of task that often falls by the wayside. Generating momentum with your business blog takes strategy, vision and the ability to prioritise this important component of your website.

There are also many businesses that find it difficult to produce this kind of content. It might be that you don’t have skilled writers and communicators in your team. You might have tried business blogging in the past but failed to achieve the desired results. Maybe you don’t think that anybody is sufficiently interested in your products/services to want to read a regular column about you.

In our experience, there are several key mistakes that companies tend to make with their business blog. Here are 3 common business blog mistakes and some helpful solutions to point you in the right direction:

1. The first danger is seeing every article as a marketing opportunity. Whilst there are times where it’s important to let readers know what you’re selling, too many businesses miss a trick with their content. A blog is an opportunity to educate, entertain and enrich your readers. Whilst it’s tempting to turn every article into a sales pitch, a more effective strategy is to think about what your readers are asking/thinking/enjoying and finding ways to connect with them on this level. Not every blog post should have a default, generic call-to-action. Instead, think about how to engage with your readers over a sustained period of time.

2. Other businesses fatally misunderstand what their readers already know. It’s very easy to either confuse or patronise your readers. If you’re selling technical products, for example, it’s important that you find a way to communicate with both experts in your industry and new customers who will have a much lower level of understanding. If this is unrealistic, identifying which kind of reader you’re targeting will help you focus your business blogs.

3. Many businesses are nervous about giving away too much information and end up producing a boring and generic business blog. It’s understandable that you want to demonstrate how professional you are. Unfortunately, this can often suck the life out of articles. The reality is that most readers want to know more about your business, not less. Let us share a personal example. We’re a web design company in Exeter. We build responsive website for businesses, typically using Shopify and WordPress as our content management systems. We’ve been operating in our current guise for 4 years, which means that we’re straddling the border between start-up and SME. In our business blog we’re trying to connect with our clients, let prospective clients know what we’re about and share some of our experiences with others in the web design industry.

We’re constantly looking to improve every area of our business, including our business blog. We hope that you feel inspired to improve this area of your business…