6 Mistakes Businesses Make with Blogging
Business blogging mistakes… I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Maybe you’ve been blogging for your business for a few years now, or maybe you’ve just decided to take the plunge and kick start your blogging career. Either way, there are some easy mistakes that can be made when business blogging. Here are some of our top tips for avoiding them!
- Poor writing
It’s hard to be good at everything. You’re most likely so busy doing every other aspect of your business or your job, and being a professional copywriter is not necessarily at the top of your skills list.
However, if you invest your time in creating quality content over quantity, and do some basic grammar and spelling checks, you’re already well on your way. Keep in mind your ideal reader and try to appeal to that tone of voice. Stay professional and stay on-brand. Re-read everything you write and if possible, get someone else to give it a sense check.
- Opinion
This might be a controversial one, because in some cases, opinion blogging rocks. It’s the equivalent of the opinion pieces in the newspaper; perhaps you’re positioning yourself as a leader in your industry and voicing your opinions is interesting and what your reader wants to engage with.
But unless that is the purpose of your blog, it’s important to remember you’re representing your business and your brand. Stay classy. When you are sharing an opinion piece, it might be best to add a snippet about the author so your readers can easily see who has written the piece.
- The hard sell
Although at the end of the day, your blog is a place you want to see ROI from, a “sell, sell, sell” technique will turn people off immediately, and is quite frankly, very transparent. A business blog is there to add value to your brand, whether it be by creating authority, providing information, or benefiting from search engine optimisation. Be authentic and be real in your blog posts. You want your readers to gain something in exchange for their time and loyalty.
- Inconsistency
Plan, plan, plan! When it comes to a business blog, it’s all about having a direction and calendar in place and following it. If you can only manage one blog post a fortnight, that’s totally fine, but make sure you’re being consistent.
- Share it!
You’ve gone to all the trouble of writing it, so the next step is getting it out there! Don’t rely on people just stumbling on your blog – it’s vital that you’re pro-active with seeding it out there. Use every channel you have at your disposal – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, eDMs, website homepage… and so on. Hot tip: Use the tracking link service bit.ly so that you can see where all your clicks are coming from.
- Strategy
Just like winning a game of football, you need to have a good strategy in place.
Think about the blog’s objectives, how much you want to invest in it, where the content will be coming from (think outside the box too; will you be doing videos, photos, infographics?) and consider your business’s plans for the next 12 months. Are there any key events or milestones you want to have mapped into the plan? What about key moments in your industry? Or even just seasonal occasions you need to consider, like Christmas or Mother’s Day if these are relevant to what you do. It’s important to think of everything your business does and incorporate that into your business blog.
Are you guilty of any of these common business blogging mistakes? Don’t hesitate to talk to us about your business blog so we can help you on your way to digital awesomeness!
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