By Liz Kudwa
A: Blogs are a great way to help promote your business, as long as you have time to devote to keeping the content current. And by current, I mean adding new content daily. The idea with a blog is that the content is very dynamic and changes/ is updated often. Some describe blogs as journals because people often create daily entries. Blogs can be used to discuss current topics in your industry and new things that are happening with your business. As noted on the site www.2createawebsite.com, some of the keys to blogging success include…
Blog with a purpose
Just like a website, a blog should have a focus and target audience. Don’t just blog to sell products. Give your audience useful information that will entice them to subscribe. Blogs with too many ads and no useful content are a turn-off.
Keep it relevant
Remember, people want to know what’s in it for them, so your blog’s info should be relevant to your audience’s needs and desires.
Blog often when you have good info to share
More is not better when you are putting out junk or recycled material. One of the top reasons people unsubscribe to blogs is lack of originality or the "heard it all before" syndrome.
Add personality
Display a photo. Crack a joke once and while. Let your audience know there’s a human behind the words. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Have fun and develop your unique blog voice.
Another article worth checking out can be found at the Duct Tape Marketing website. The author, John Jantsch, writes about how to keep your blog content fresh so you will have a greater chance of keeping your current subscribers as well as attracting new subscribers. Visit John’s blog at www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog to find his article “Do You Suffer From Occasional Contentapation?”
There are some great free options for creating your very own blog. Blogger.com and WordPress.com are the two most popular free tools. Both have their pros and cons. Blogger lets you edit template layouts, offers 1 gigabyte of storage, submit your posts by email, and offers a large number of widgets that you can use to customize your blog. WordPress doesn’t allow template editing unless you pay for a higher tier of usage. They offer 3 gigabytes of free storage, you cannot submit posts by email, and they also offer widgets for customization. Since they’re both free, your best bet may be to experiment with both of them to see which best fits your needs.
For those that need a visual aid to help in creating a blog, instructional videos have been posted to YouTube. Visit www.youtube.com and do searches using the following keywords: “create wordpress blog” or “create blogger blog” and you will find several videos from which to choose.
Elizabeth Kudwa is the Business Reference Librarian at the Capital Area District Library located at 401 S. Capitol Avenue in Lansing, MI. Contact her at 517-367-6301 or by e-mail at kudwae@cadl.org.
