Lots of companies have started business blogs over the last few years. The list is impressive and it’s growing every day. Starting a business owner blog is something businesses are doing to attract new customers.
If you are looking at starting a business owner blog, but aren’t sure where to start you’ve stumbled on the right post. By the end you should have a good idea of how to start your business owner blog and some ideas for the first few posts.
Let’s begin.
Business Owner Blog: The Expectations
Blogging is very much about setting the right expectations.
Much of the online marketing world has been done in the short-term in the last five to ten years. Whether it’s link building or list building businesses have often taken the short route to fast success. There is pressure to succeed fast in the business world and it’s led to some wayward efforts.
Short-term SEO and marketing efforts can work in the short-term, but they’re always busted in the long-term and it can set your business back years. In fact, you can find yourself without any SEO value after investing money into it while a competitor worked hard to build up something like a business blog, which became a true asset.
As you’re probably realizing now a business blog takes a while to gain traction. Most people give up way too early in the process. For some reason business owners and managers think a blog will have success in a month or two.
If you think that way then just leave this post right now because you’re not cut out for a business owner blog.
Two years.
That’s a ballpark average for a blog to gain any kind of traction for your business. If you aren’t ready for that kind of commitment than leave the post right now because that’s the reality. There are other marketing strategies you can try if you would like.
The Ghost Blog Writers blog has taken about two years to get to where it is now. That means about five new leads each month and about one to two new customers each month, which is pretty good. My expectations are for that number to only increase as the years go on because the posts here build on each other.
A business blog is an asset that keeps giving. With five posts each week we’re on pace for hundreds and thousands of posts in the next five to ten years. That’s a lot of assets and they’re all bringing in traffic, leads and sales.
Setting Up a Business Owner Blog
I’m glad you’re still reading. It means you’re still interested in starting a business blog. You realize it’s going to take some time, but like anything in life the more struggle there is the more reward you’ll reap in the end.
The biggest question people have about starting a blog is how they should set up the domain. The domain is your website or the www.website.com.
The first recommendation I have is to set it up as:
www.website.com/blog
That’s what I’ve done with Ghost Blog Writers. I don’t have the www. on the site, but that’s more of a personal preference. I like to have short URLs or domains when possible.
The /blog setup also makes sure your entire site benefits from the content on your blog.
In contrast you can setup your business blog this way:
blog.website.com
Or:
www.websiteblog.com
Both of these are completely different domains that your regular business website. Your main site won’t be benefiting from the fresh blog content. Yes, even the blog.website.com is technically a different website in the mind of the search engines.
If you have some development skills you’re looking at an easy setup with WordPress, which I also recommend. You’re looking at design efforts from your design staff or from a freelance designer to design the blog. You can use a free template. The Ghost Blog Writers site is based on a blog template with modifications along the way.
How Often To Blog
There are different schools of thought on this topic.
There are successful bloggers that blog daily. There are successful bloggers that blog a couple times each month.
I’m a believer that you should blog as much as you can while still producing valuable content for your target reader. Get to work and do as much as you can right away and get to the finish line fast.
There are risks with each strategy, but I would recommend blogging early and often.
Most of our clients like to start out with one blog post each week. That’s a good place to start if you’re just starting out. I always push for more especially for a new business blog.
Focus on Customer Questions
A big area of blogging is coming up with ideas. I like to focus on customer questions. Look in forums. Think about what people ask you in person when you’re working with them. Answer those questions with your blog or have your writing team answer them on the blog.
Don’t be afraid to get specific with the questions. It’s better to get two leads from 100 pageviews, which can be quite common with a great and specific blog post than zero leads from 10,000 pageviews, which can also be common with a generic post.
Conclusion
There are lots of people that will promise you the world with their online marketing services. Blogging is not something that you can plugin and have takeoff. It takes time and investment to work.
But blogging is working for a few business. The few that are actually willing to look at the long-term are succeeding including the blog you’re reading right now.
Now it’s you’re turn.