Market Your Startup

How to Start Your Business Blog

Starting a business blog is not an easy task and needs some planning to become successful! Market Your Startup gives you some helpful advice on how to get your business blog started.

- Find somebody that is willing to take ownership of the blog project and a support team: You need a person that is interested in becoming the blog Manager, has experience with blogging and knows how to write. While this person should be responsible for the blog and become the go-to person, there should also be a support team, that writes articles and promotes the blog through different venues. After you find a suitable and trusted person that will take on the business blog project, the most important step of starting your business blog is done!

- Define the purpose of the blog (Internet Presence, Branding, Traffic, SEO): What do you want to achieve with your business blog? Do you want to increase your visibility, brand your company, drive traffic to your website, improve your customer service or achieve better Google results? Probably all of the above… but you should focus on one or two main goals as the purpose for  your business blog to stay focused and targeted.

- Integrate WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System) on your website or a separate domain: It is the most user friendly CMS on the market and in addition to that, you can find hundreds of free and cheap templates for your business blog. As your business blog wants to be very as professional as possible, stay away from sponsored blog spaces, such as Blogger, WordPress and dimilar blogging services. You  want to set up your business blog either on your website as an integrated part of it, or set up a new domain for your business blog.

- Find and install a template for your business blog:I don’t believe that you need a custom design for your blog right away. Of course it will take away some branding strength, but especially for small startups, the money is better spent somewhere else and not on your upstarting business blog. I would also not recommend to use a free template, unless you are on a very tight budget. I can personally recommend WooThemes. This whole website is actually built on one of their templates! And they only cost $70 and you get a second template for free.

- Use Google keyword tool to create a list of relevant keywords that are searched for often: Depending on how competitive your niche is, the more often you should include the keywords in your text. However, keep in mind that you are still writing for people and not Search Engines. It won’t do you any good, if people find your business blog, but are turned off right away because every other word is a forced keyword. You can also use the Keyword tool to generate new ideas for blog posts and learn what people are interested in!

- Brainstorm topics and establish a topic list: Sit down with your blog Manager and the blogging team to brainstorm about topics that could be of interest for your potential customers. Always a good starting point for your business blog are the following ideas:

- Describe your products/services, their advantages and disadvantages

- Tell your customers what they can do with your products/services (recipes for food items, travel tips for hotels, etc.)

- Inform about company news; and of course the first one will be about the new business blog of your company. Also of interest: Social Activities, employee activities, employee of the month etc.

- Group the topics into categories: After you came up with 30-50 topics, you have to group them into categories. You should focus on a few categories first, so your business blog is not too thinly spread out. Offer your readers deeper insights on these few categories first and then add more and more categories later on. A good starting point would be 4-5 categories with at least 5-10 blog posts in them. After that, you can add more and more categories to your business blog, while still adding to the old ones.

- Write the blog posts: Finally, you can actually start your business blog. Start writing articles for you business blog, include the most important keywords, edit them and proofread them, and finally publish them on your brand new business blog. Congratulations! You have accomplished the first step to promote your business through your business blog! But for a business blog to become really successful, you need to promote it too!

- Promote them on Social Media Sites and other internet venues (newsletters, pressreleases, etc): To get the first heap of traffic to your new business blog, utilize your existing contacts, mailing lists and current and previous customers and inform them that you just started a business blog. You can also use other Social Media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Technorati, Blogsphere and other sites to promote your business blog. The easiest way is to install the Sociable Plugin, which will make it easy for your readers to share your stories with their network and spread the word for you! Read this article to see how you can use Twitter effectively for your business! You can also leave comments with backlinks on related blog post or in forums related to your industry and leave a link to your business blog. However, be careful with this tool, so you don’t earn yourself the reputation of a spammer. Only leave comments on related blog posts and personalize your comments.

- Respond to comments: Even after writing your blog post, the work is not done! Your business blog manager should frequently reply to comments on your blog and engage in the conversations that take place on your business blog. Important: Don’t be afraid of negative comments! People are most likely already talking about you and your company and not always in a positive way! Wouldn’t you rather have them talk about the problems of your product or service where you can monitor and interact with them? A negative comment is only bad, if you ignore it. See it as constructive criticism and give your best to make an angry customer happy again!

Starting a business blog is not easy. It is hard work, needs talent and creativity and of course a budget as well. Don’t give up too soon and stick to it! Good luck with starting your business blog!

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