From a business point of view there are lots of good reasons to write a blog. The best business blogs give their readers a more personal perspective on sometimes impersonal corporations and allow them to engage in real dialogue with those in charge. A good blog can foster a loyal following of fans that will help you market your business in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

Here are 7 reasons to blog for your business:-

1. Become established as a thought leader in your industry.
This will appeal to customers who will visit your site or even subscribe to you as source of reliable knowledge and to potential customers who will see that you have your finger on the pulse and you understand what you’re talking about.

2. Foster a community.
You never know, you might end up engaging some of your competitors in conversation and find that you could work together. This happens a lot in creative industries; why should yours be any different?

3. Share knowledge.
Well why not? Educate and inform people and you’ll quickly find that they have a greater understanding of what you do. Take this article for example; after you’ve read this you’ll have a better understanding of blogging for business. If you ask us to build a website you’ll at least understand why you should consider adding a blog to it. If you do decide to write a blog you’ll have thought about what it needs to do for your business and maybe even have a content plan in place.

4. Court the search engines.
The search engines love websites that have lots of regularly updated, relevant content. If you blog little and often it will massively help your websites ranking on the likes of Google. If you link to other relevant sites and they link back to yours you’ll get even more of a boost.

5. It’s a ready-made PR channel.
Every so often you can insert a bit of exciting news about your company. The people that follow your blog and find it interesting will be pleased to hear the odd snippet of good news about you. We’ve just launched a special offer and moved offices and I’ve blogged about both. Now though we’re back to business – something useful for you. Don’t overdo the ‘news about us’ angle. It can backfire. Blogging is a type of social media so you give something to your readers and with a bit of luck they’ll give you something back maybe some free feedback or a community of eager testers.

6. Building relationships.
Let’s be honest, your website exists to help you sell.  Your blog however is a forum where your main objective is not to sell. It can help you establish a more personal relationship with your customers some of whom will engage with you much more deeply and on a less formal footing. They’ll see your blog as a way to talk to you on a level playing field and you should embrace this. These people will be your most loyal supporters.

7. You might learn something.
Seek out information and write stories that interest you. Expand on them – maybe turn these stories into a series. You might learn something useful in the process and be able to add even more value to your company’s offering. Think about your readers and what you can give them.

I think these are all pretty good reasons to write a blog. If you can think of any more or even if you disagree with me (cough splutter), let me know.

Writing for the web is a skill that is often neglected. For a number of reasons it’s not the same as writing for print media so sadly you can’t just recycle the copy from your brochure.

A few key things to remember when you’re writing for web are:

1. Capture your audience’s attention: You have to capture you reader’s attention almost immediately – believe me if you haven’t got them interested with the first few words they’ll probably move on. Use the inverted pyramid technique and start with the conclusion and follow with the details.

2. Less is more: Be clear, be concise. If you can pare an article down to a headline and a series of bullet points then maybe you should.

3. Make it meaningful: Don’t waste your reader’s time.  If you’re going to tell them something, make it accurate and useful.

4. Have a call to action: Users time is precious so you might as well make the most of it. Ask them to buy, donate, download or simply comment. If they go on and follow your call to action you’ll get another useful insight as to whether or not your content is working.
   
   
5. Don’t forget the science: Writing content for the web has another more scientific dimension. Copy must be written in such a way as to make it more attractive to search engines like Google. Of course this can be overdone and it mustn’t compromise the integrity of your message. This science bit is a facet of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and I’ll cover this in a later post.

If, forgetting for the time being item 5, this all seems very easy then why don’t you try a little exercise? Take a 1500 or 2000 word article, maybe something from a corporate brochure and edit it down to 500 words. You still have to include all the salient points and it still has to make sense.

Harder than it sounds? Let me know how you got on by leaving a comment at the bottom of the page.

If you want to keep up you can subscribe to our feed for free and if you’d like some help with a project remember that we provide blogging, copywriting and training services. Drop us a line if you think we can help with your project.