Many business owners have probably wondered at some point: ‘Should my business have a blog?’. With the explosion of blogging in the last 10 years as a way for individuals and small businesses to publish world-wide, well, now is the time to revisit the issue. Whether you decide to run a full-fledged blog or a micro-blog such as Twitter, the benefits are clear. Social marketing is here to stay and it’s a reasonably affordable way to raise the visibility and recognition of your brand and services. It’s never been easier to connect with your target market for such a relatively low investment. Here are a few tips for you if you decide to launch a blog for your business.

What to use

For a full blog I’d say hands-down the best platform is Wordpress, hosted locally on your web server. The benefits include the price: free, software updates:often, and the fact that they have such a broad user-base – you’ll always be able to find an answer to your questions. There are plugins available for free that will allow you to customize functionality quite a bit, and Wordpress’ theme engine makes it pretty easy for a designer to create them with your site’s look and feel.

For micro-blogging, I suggest, of course Twitter. From movie stars to Fortune 500 companies, everyone seems to be using Twitter. There are some very good reasons why. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s being used by almost everyone, which means you have the possibility to broadcast to a lot of people.

What to write about

It depends on the type of business you have but some great topics include:

• Tips, tricks, and valuable insights
• News about your business, products, and services
• Contests, specials and other things that a customer can participate in

Giving away tips and helpful information is a great way to help attract repeat-readers. People always want to be able to do things faster, better, and smarter. If you can empower your readers to work and live in a better way then you’ll create a positive association with your brand that will help increase loyalty and recognition. Teaching and giving away information may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s one of the best investments you can make, since you’re investing in your customers, clients, and potential customers. Help them succeed, and you’ll be an appealing solution when they have need of your services or products.

Humans love art and beautiful things, they are after all pleasing to look at and stimulate an emotional response. In the age of the internet, however, art and beauty alone won’t help your business succeed. A common pitfall for entreprenuers and business leaders is that if your company website is nice to look at then it will sell your products or services. Unfortunately, it takes more than just beauty to sell. Below are 5 tips that we think help separate the eye candy from the beautiful and successful. Enjoy.

1. Define the purpose

Art and design are two different things. Design is meant to communicate and convey – to guide a viewer along a pre-determined path. Is the goal of your website to sell a product? A service? Or maybe to get the word out on your organization? The purpose of a website should be defined at the very beginning, before a word of copy gets written or a single pixel is designed and should be a factor in every single decision made during the project.

2. Who’s the target

Defining the target audience – a traditional first step but one that gets pushed to the side all too often. This should go hand in hand with your target market. Targeting the audience helps you focus not only the design and content decisions but also the overall strategy of the site. Define who you are wanting to visit and use the site early on and you’ll be one step closer to having a successful website.

3. Copy-writing

An oft-seen pitfall is in the area of copy-writing. Many business owners or ‘marketing’ department heads assume that writing the content for the website is the same as other media and materials. It’s not. Content written for the web differs in many ways. One of the worst things you can do is have the president of the company or the startup owner write the copy for the website without have an editor or copywriter involved. The web is about communication, and the skills involved in successfully communicating in this medium are not often inherent in business owners. Seek a copywriter to write or edit the copy of your website. Often web design companies employ such a writer or have a relationship with one that can help.

4. Strategy

If the purpose of your web site is important, then just as important is the plan for achieving said purpose. If you want to generate new clients for your service business then you need to have a framework in place that leads every visitor to the point of contact, or sale. Your website needs to have a carefully thought out strategy behind it to avoid losing potential customers. A good consultant or web design agency can help identify bottle-necks or lapses in consistent strategy in a website.

5. Content freshness

Whether it’s a blog or portfolio site, your visitors want to see fresh and current content. A site with fresh content is alive, indicating the business behind it is alive. The opposite can also communicated. Your website is your internet spokesperson. Does your site offer fresh perspectives and information or it is a sealed document that only changes every couple years? A good first step toward content-freshness is to have your site set up with a content management system (or CMS) that will allow you update the content quickly and easily without needing to know an ounce of code or programming. Next you need to delegate the responsibility of managing and updating your website’s content to a member of your staff. Remember, a copywriter would be best suited for this, but if that can’t be done then at the very least invest in some basic training for the individual to learn the ins-and-outs of writing for the web. This will help keep your site fresh, current and coherent, and help garner interest.

Final thoughts

It’s very important to acknowledge the monumental shift that has been underway the last ten years. Not having a website isn’t an option any more for a business, and having a successful website takes a real investment, not just of money but of time and energy. With so much of the world shopping, researching, communicating and otherwise playing via the web, your business website can achieve an incredible amount of exposure. Spend time on the details, choose a web design firm that understands marketing, and you’ll be well on your way to having a successful website.