Blogging – just for teenagers, or good for your small business?

I was sitting at my laptop last  weekend brainstorming ideas for our small business marketing blog when I got a call from a friend of mine to see what I was up to.

When I told her that I was brainstorming ideas for my blog on a sunny Hampshire Saturday afternoon she thought I had gone mad!! She pretty much told that they are a waste of time, that they are for teenagers or for people that love to complain about the world. So it quickly came apparent to me that the subject of SMEketing’s first blog post should be about  why every small business should be maintaining a blog.

So here it is…. 5 Reasons To Blog!

1 – Blogs are AMAZING for search engine optimisation purposes. You can use them to build links into your main site, search engine spyders crawl your blog and follow your links into your site so you get crawled more often. They are great for you site’s stats as you can use them to generate traffic via social bookmarking (and build more backlinks), if your content is interesting people will spend longer on your site so the search engines think you have valuable information and this will help improve search rankings.

2 – You can control your brand reputation through your blog so don’t be afraid to approve negative comments. It is better to have the negative comments about your business in your blog over anywhere on the net that you might not find out about until it has damaged your business. Often you can use the negative comments and turn it into a positive situation with a well planned and structured response.

3 – Share the love! Add social share icons into your blogs so your clients, employees and potential customers can share your information, services and products with the world!

4 – Blogging for small businesses is a brilliant opportunity for your employees to take an active role in promoting the company. Blogging should be done with a passion so sharing the responsibility keeps it fresh and ensures you don’t get burnt out. Share the task with a range of your employees and colleagues so they can deliver a new perspective and have time to be creative and capture their point!

5 – Remember that people buy your products and services, so give them a window into your operations so they get a feel for your style. This can help increase your chances of getting that next deal or closing the one already on the table.

I wish I could go more than 5 reasons, the rest will have to wait for another time. If you have any other reasons why you think blogging is great for small businesses, leave a comment below.

4 Comments March 29, 2009