Creating a Blog for your Business How-To Guide

1. Creating a Blog for your Business Executive Summary Blogs represent a more casual approach to writing, where the author can voice how they feel about something, provide instructions, or even just reminisce about a past experience. The value in having a blog for your business is that it provides a forum to expand your corporate reach. This How-To Guide provides an introduction into the world of blogging, explains the benefits a blog can bring to your business and outlines an action plan with steps to help you get started. An Introduction to Blogging A blog, or a web log, is a portion of a website that is dedicated to daily or weekly posts or entries that are displayed in a reverse chronological order, with the most recent posts at the top of the page. Most blogs allow readers to share entries via social media and to provide commentary on specific entries. Because this type of “two-way” online conversation has gained popularity in recent years, many businesses have started to use this medium to connect with consumers in a more personal way. Benefits for your Business Blogs consist of two categories: personal and business. While a personal blog might only be interesting for your friends and family, a business blog can help expand your brand’s reach and increase recognition on a local, national, and even international scale. Here are some of the benefits to starting a blog for your business: © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

2. SEO - Increase your organization’s search engine optimization efforts by inserting targeted key words into every post. The goal is to increase traffic to your website and ultimately capture more sales. Communication –Blogs are great communication vehicles and can be used to provide more detail about upcoming events, announcements, thought leadership, etc. ROI –Blogs are notoriously inexpensive and efficient. Setting up a blog with a service provider, such as Wordpress, is free and adding a new blog post can take minutes. Action Plan Now that you understand the benefits of setting up a blog for your business, here are some simple guidelines and an action plan to follow: 1) Choose a blog provider Whether it’s WordPress or another service, choose a blog hosting provider that can be linked to your corporate domain.  Use our Blog Policy Template to ensure that company blog postings do not bring your business into legal hot water. 2) Decide on your target audience  Who are you trying to reach with your blog?  Examine the target audience that you identified in your marketing strategy plan – are you reaching out to the same people or attempting to gain new followers? 3) Choose a theme  Your theme should reflect your target audience. Don’t stray too far off course –it’s fine for your blog to be innovative and address an array of topics, but if your subjects are all over the map, you might lose followers. © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

3. 4) Create a promotional strategy  How will you let people know about your blog?  If you have a company newsletter, start advertising the blog in your weekly address to employees and customers. Highlight your blog entries on your company’s other social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc.  Always include links to your blog post to direct traffic back to your website and don’t leave customers searching for you. 5) Start connecting  Reach out to your audience.  Reply to comments and questions.  Offer thanks for criticisms, praise, and advice. Start following other bloggers in your industry to stay on top of what’s current. 6) Keep writing Once you’ve set up your blog, the most important thing is to keep at it. There is nothing worse than an empty blog.  Use our Content Marketing Editorial Calendar to schedule blog writing into your daily calendar so it becomes part of your routine.  Stay current on your industry and discuss new trends and fads. Invite guest bloggers when you feel you don’t have enough to say – this is a great way to gain new followers! Bottom Line A well-written and informative blog can increase your website traffic and brand awareness. Including a blog in your list of marketing channels will increase your outreach and help to keep your customers and prospects informed; making them feel more included in the conversation thus improving brand loyalty. © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.