Blogging Advice From The U.S. Small Business Administration

The United States Small Business Administration provides great resources for what the Administration considers to be "small" businesses (sometimes you can have 500 employees and still be considered a "small" business.

One of those resources consists of a series of blogs covering all sorts of subjects from insurance needs to, well, blogging.  A number of bloggers cover the subjects for the SBA. 

In the case of the below, my eye was caught by a headline offering eight tips for keeping a blog fresh.  http://www.sba.gov/community/blogs/community-blogs/small-business-matters/8-tips-keeping-your-business-blog-current-relThe blog was written by a young lady named Caron Beesley, described by the SBA thus:

Caron Beesley is a small business owner, a writer, and marketing communications consultant. Caron works with the SBA.gov team to promote essential government resources that help entrepreneurs and small business owners start-up, grow and succeed. Follow Caron on Twitter: @caronbeesley

Liking the blog and not worried about copyrights as these are my tax dollars at work I decided to copy portions of the piece and offer them here as a supplement to an earlier blog provided on this site so, without furthur ado:

"Search engines love to provide their customers with relevant, helpful, and up-to-date content and blogs provide this. Blogs are also less formal than static web content and this conversational tone is akin to the way people query search engines and connect with the content they find. 

• An up-to-date and informative blog is also an essential tool in your social media arsenal. If you keep your blog current you’ll never run out of useful tips, insights and relevant information to share with our Facebook and Twitter fans. It’s also a great way to get your audience to engage with your business and each other (via comments), and of course, a great way to drive traffic that you wouldn’t normally get to your website.

How to Keep Your Blog Fresh and Relevant
As a business blogger you don’t need to post five blogs a week; you just need consistency, relevance and a little inspiration.
Here are eight tips for keeping your small business blog current and fresh!

1. Write Within Your Means – You don’t need to write a long blog post (over 500 words) every time.  Keep your posts brief if you need to.  A great way of doing this is to use “fillers” (posting links to other blogs, event pages, YouTube videos, and so on) and frame them with an intro. Don’t do it all the time but it’s certainly a way to keep content fresh without spending too much time researching and writing.

2. Listen to and Get Blog Ideas from your Customers –Your customers, and potential customers, are your target audience and a great source for blog topic ideas. Listen to them. What are their challenges? How can your skills and expertise help them with their pain points? You don’t need to delve into how your product helps them; do that and you run the risk of sounding like a sales pitch. Instead, focus on your area of expertise and write about what is relevant to your customers.

For example, if you run a law business and get hundreds of questions about “How do I write a will?” or a fashion boutique owner who regularly finds yourself offering your customer’s style tips.  Use your blog articles to share your expertise and answer the questions you get every day. In this case the law business could write about “5 Things You Need to Know about Writing your First Will” and the boutique owner might wish to share “6 Tips for Pairing Old and New in your Closet”.

So lend an ear to your customers wherever they are -- on Facebook, on Twitter, in your store, in their homes, wherever you come into contact with them.

3. Look to What Others are Writing About – Inspiration can come from a variety of sources, and don’t feel that you have to reinvent the wheel with your blogs. Take the time to follow and read other blogs that relate to your field. What’s going on in the news? Is there a new industry development that’s worth writing about? Oftentimes you can spin a different angle on a topic that’s already been written about, or even reference that blog and weigh in with your comments (but never copy the article).

4. Showcase People – Why not feature willing customers? What they do, why they use you, real simple stuff. What about your team? Do you have any quirky characters or rock star employees that your customers love – showcase them so that your readers can get to know the people behind the business!

5. Invite Guest Bloggers – Take the burden off yourself every now and again while also opening the door to a new voice. Guest bloggers often cover ground that you can’t or provide a useful insight into another aspect of your industry. Guest bloggers might include a business partner, a vendor, or an industry expert. Be sure to give them plenty of advance notice to write the blog, and be prepared to discuss the angle you want their topic to take. You also want to subtly ensure that your quality is not impacted. Don’t be afraid to edit the guest post, just be sure to share the edits with the blogger as a courtesy – most guest bloggers welcome a second pair of eyes to review and polish up their work.

6. Turn on Comments –Simply put, comments are another way for readers to interact with you and each other. Don’t disable them, and be sure to monitor them for SPAM, etc.

7. Develop an Editorial Calendar – This is an absolute must and can really make the process of writing much easier because you do all the planning in advance. Use a simple spreadsheet to schedule your blogs – quarterly plans are good, but a monthly plan can also work. Remember, you don’t need to post any more than one or two blogs per week but having an editorial calendar can help you formulate your ideas in advance. Your calendar should identify your topic, describe the angle you are going to take, and assign an author and a due date. Be sure to check for any industry or market updates that might impact the angle your blog takes. Then, when you’re ready to write the blog you can hit the ground running.

8. Keep it Focused on Business –The number one golden rule of business blogging: never veer into personal musings on how fast your kids are growing up or what the dog got up to at the park.  Yes, you can add your personal wit and humor to the tone of your blog, but do keep it focused on your business interests and not your personal life."

I hope you enjoyed this piece.  While aimed at a general audience the approaches to blogging applies to a manufacturing concern as much as it does to the smallest retail shop.

Build Business With Blogs

You’re a manufacturer providing a product to the industrial marketplace. 

Over time you’ve built up a great customer base and you are aware how vital it is to stay in touch with each and every customer, both because aftermarket sales are important, and to assure that when new equipment is needed, you are the first company contacted.  After all, companies are sold, project engineers change jobs and, a dozen other issues can break the chain of awareness that is so important to maintaining a long term relationship with your customer.  You also want to make sure your website is visited when a potential customer not familiar with your company decides to move ahead with a project requiring a product like yours. 

In the world of modern marketing, a company blog located on your website can help you effectively stay in touch with existing customers as well as reach out to the larger marketplace.  Properly done, existing customers will consider your blog a value added service even as the blog functions to attract new traffic to your web presence.

A blog is a section of a company website updated regularly by whomever you choose to be your blog writer with content generally more informal in nature than the more structured content on the rest of the site.  Blog viewers are generally not only allowed but, encouraged, to interact by commenting on the material posted on the blog.

For some companies, a blog can function as a substitute or virtual website, directing readers to other social media sites or performing other necessary tasks.

Blogs are very low cost; the primary cost is the time and effort needed to post regularly.  A new post should be written and “on the air” at least twice a month.  Readers visiting a page and finding everything to be old and stale are unlikely to come back.  A company is better off not having a blog if a commitment to keeping fresh material posted regularly cannot be made.  Your blog writer, whether a single person or a number of people assigned to keep the blog current, must be instructed to write and post on a schedule to assure the work gets done.

Blogs allow a company to show its human side.  A good way to look at them is to consider the blog to be the salesperson.  The associated website represents the company brochure or catalogue.  

Blogs serve a second function, one important in attracting potential customers who may not be familiar with your company to your web or social media sites. 

When your customers, or potential customers, decide to investigate the marketplace they ask Google, Bing, or some other search engine, to search the web for sites featuring the product or information they are seeking.  Imagine, in the case of this site, you enter in the term, “build business.”

The web search engine filters the billions of options on the web looking for the words build and business or similar terms that may be appropriate.

Google’s programmers have developed ever more sophisticated search engines, able to discriminate, better than ever before, between appropriate content and chaff.  If you are not posting new blog content regularly or the content is old and out of date, the search engine is likely to ignore your offering but, if you are writing lively blog content on a regular basis the search engine will move your site up on the list, enhancing the odds your target audience will browse to your site.

Because your potential customers are entering search terms specific to you it is important your blog writer have a list of appropriate terms likely to be typed in by a potential customer and then use those terms when writing the blog but, don’t go overboard.  A Google publication titled Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide points out that while optimization is important, “Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines, but your ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines.”

In today’s world a well written blog is a must, acting as your on-line salesperson and, keeping you in touch with your existing customer base.

Start blogging!

Business Newsletters Are Not Out Of Style

If Your Company Does Not Have A Newsletter You May Be Missing Out

 Here's what the professionals have to say about business newsletters:

Perdue University Cooperative Extension: 

“Newsletters can serve a number of purposes.  They can create or increase awareness, provide basic information, or create a sense of stability and commitment for a project.”

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University:

“Twelve focus groups were held with 94 producers in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia to discuss their preferred learning methods and what that means for Cooperative Extension program development and delivery….Fifty-two percent of the producers preferred newsletters as a learning method.”

Mississippi State University researchers regarding the owners of family forests:

“Top methods for informing landowners were consistent across the four state region and included:  newsletters (49%), pamphlets/brochures (44%), and letters (31%).”

In A World Of Large Corporations Newsletters Allow Smaller Firms To Be Competitive

Newsletters allow you to stay in contact with your best potential customer, the customer who’s appreciated you in the past.  They can also function as a friendly, non-threatening “brochure” when sent to customers or clients you may not have dealt with in the past but, would like to open up a relationship with.

Blogs and other forms of social media are important to the modern approach to advertisings but sometimes, "everything old is new again."