Blogging for Business

My experience of blogging and social media

A year ago I attended the ‘Blogging for Business’ workshop with the eBusiness club.  I wrote a blog afterwards sharing my highlights.

One of the key ideas was that blogs are best done regularly, ideally weekly.  Generally I’ve managed this, except when life has got too busy.  What I’ve noticed is the positive impact it has on my website visits.  Blogging has doubled the visits to my site, not just through visits to my blog but overall.  Blogging means that search engines know you are still there, they look at your blog as new content and it helps with you appearing in searches.

I also like blogging as I feel I can be a bit more relaxed about the content and can answer common questions that I get asked when training.  The other take home message from the workshop was to ‘be helpful’ and this is something else I get to do via my blog; I can share my knowledge and give a more comprehensive answer to some questions or signpost my learners to it for clarification.

I know lots of you who read my blogs are also small businesses which is why I decided to write about this again.  If you don’t have a blog on your website then I’d recommend it.  It’s a great way of putting your personality onto your website and reaching and helping your customers in a different way.  I love it and can’t recommend it enough.  I was concerned about the length of time that it would take, but I’ve developed a few strategies that have helped.  Firstly I keep a list of potential ideas, so that when I sit down to write I have an idea of what to write about and secondly when I have time to write I prepare as many as I can.  Once you’re in the flow of writing it really doesn’t take long and the benefits are worth that investment.

Also once you blog then it also gives you something to share on your social media and if you follow other professional blogs you can also share their useful content to your followers.

Let me know what your experiences of blogging are and if you find it helpful, or if you have any hits and tips.