It is now widely accepted that the way forward in doing business, or more correctly making a business site successful is to setup and use a blog. The reason being, blogs are more dynamic, constantly updated which in turn draws in the search engines to crawl and index the new content. This then drives masses of traffic to your blog and if set up and done correctly this traffic can be channeled to your main site, giving your business a boost as most of the new visitors will turn in to customers.

But in order for the blog to do the job it is supposed to do there has to be a plan of action, a strategy that when implemented will return the best results and benefits to both the consumer and the business owner. Blogging is about building a community of followers, and if you treat them as your friends then the potential for success is greatly increased.

The trick here is in interacting with your visitors in a manner that makes them feel comfortable, welcomed, cared for and above all as friends. In return they will reciprocate by engaging themselves with your new community by contributing feedback in terms of comments. This data when analysed and result acted upon buy responding in a positive manner will encourage your readers to participate more thus building trust and the end result will be you get the chance to close a deal of what you are promoting/selling.

But unfortunately the vast majority of business owners have not yet grasped or yet attempted to capitalise on the concept of blogging for business. And those who have are making so many mistakes that they see the oposite in results from what the had set out to achieve in the first place.

Some of the most common mistakes are:

  1. Setting up the blog on a free hosting – this is a huge NO! NO! NO! for business blogging.
    You already have a site so it is much easier to add a blog in a sub directory or sub-domain to compliment the site. With a bit of ingenuity you can design the blog to closely match your site, this is much easier than everyone think and is contrary to what a lot of expert designer will tell you. You don’t need expensive custom designed themes, there a plenty of free themes that can be manipulated to fit the bill.
  2. If you must register a new domain name then register one that closely resembles your current domain. Do not choose unrelated, hard to remember off topic domain name for your blog.
  3. Going off topic from your business niche is yet another common mistake – lack of focus in this aspect could mean the death of your blog and could cost your business big time. Don’t let you blog be all over the place by writing about unrelated topics to your business. Your aim should be to “focus” on your business niche and retain as many of the readers as possible as half of the battle, the other half is to get them to keep on returning for more as you work towards converting them.

    Side note: Do not attempt to sell to them on the first visit or on a constant basis. Just give them the juicy info in bite size, let them digest and trust them to make their own mind up. This will always pay off in the long run – unless you are in the business of selling a short term product/commodity then the approach should to sell quick and as much as possible!

  4. Inconsistency was designed to drive readers away not to attract them in. Avoid it at all cost! I’ve touched upon this in one of my previous post – being consistent does not mean your post to your blog constantly everyday, although this is not a bad thing at all. The consistency here is all about keeping to schedule on how often you write, the style in which you write in and the subject matter.
  5. Clutter and too many exit doors – having too much content on a page, especially the over use of the sidebar is huge distraction. And if these distractions all lead to an exit door to another site in the form of a banner ad or text link will see your readers off and most will never return. If you are going to put up links in the sidebar then keep them to a minimum and be sure that the vast majority of them lead to your internal pages and not external sites. Pre-sell on your own services/products first before referring your readers elsewhere do conduct their business.
  6. Hiding your identity! Ouch! – How many times have you walked in to your local shop and not be aware who the real owner of the business is? Even if you don’t know the owner, you at least know the main person in charge right? So why hide your identity when you are blogging for the success of your online business? OK enough questions! Be transparent and let your readers know who you are, the real person not just the business as an entity. Your aim here is to build relationship and trust within your blogging community in order to put your business proposition before them and expect to be received positively in acceptance.

This is not thee definitive or conclusive list of the many areas that will need your attention in order to make your blogging for business a success. There is a lot more, much much more that has to be done. If you are in business and blogging for your business then treat your blog as one of your best business assets, give it the due care and attention it deserves and present it to your readers the best way you can. After all, you wouldn’t wrap up one of your best product in a rag to go to the market and sell it, would you?

Here’s to your blogging for business success,
Zulfikar.

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