Setting up a blog for your business

Blogs are a wonderful way to attract new customers and build stronger relationships with your existing ones. A blog can be attached to your existing website or you can create a secondary site for it. Business blogs provide you with a chance to set yourself apart in your industry and build your reputation. Customers are anxious to learn more about your particular industry and almost everyone will follow a blog if they feel it provides them with a certain level of value. A blog is free to create and it's a place where you can respond to customer questions and needs.

Before you create a blog, there are some things you will need to focus on in order to make it a successful blog.

First, you need to have a plan for the blog. What do you want your blog to be? Is it going to be an outlet where you will post articles and other things that teach and inform your target audience?

Second, research other blogs and learn from them. What are your competitors doing with their blogs? How can you make your blog better and stand out?

Third, where will your blog be hosted? Hosting a blog in your own environment provides you with the opportunity to select the design and organization of the blog. Posting on another platform means you will need to select the templates and design styles of that company.

Choose a name
Now that you have the basic blueprint covered for the blog, you need to focus on creating it. What would you like the name of the blog to be? If you already have a company website, most companies opt for /blog at the end of the website to set it apart or they try www.blog.YOURWEBSITE.com. Picking a name for your blog can be challenging so make sure you give it some thought and that you are making it easy to find and that it is actually a blog, not another page off your main website. Take some time when you are thinking about the name and make sure you are picking the right name.

Build a personality
Building a personality for a blog can often become a difficult process. How are you presenting the blog to your customers? Is the blog a place where you will vent about your industry and joke with your customers? Is the blog going to be focused mostly on business information and will it be factual or based on opinions? How many people will be blog authors? When you have more than one blog author, you will have a harder time establishing a personality as each author has their own design writing style which will come through on the blog. If you want multiple authors, have each one focus on their specific areas such as marketing, sales, design, management, etc. This way you will still convey a central message without losing focus on the overall goal for the blog.

The message
A blog must have quality information or you will lose your followers. Just like your social media pages, people don't want to be bombarded with product offers all the time. You need to include some other information in there every once and awhile. Try posting a product offer one day and the other 5-10 posts should be about "how to" type blogs or other things. This is one of the easiest and best ways to build a stronger blog following and to generate the interest and reputation you deserve in your industry. Once you start your blog, you need to promote it. Use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to announce that you have a blog and be sure to promote it on your email newsletters also.