Here at Velocity Virtual towers, we’ve decided effective blogging would make for a useful blog topic. As regular bloggers, we have our own experience to share. On top of this, our small business owner customers have spoken to us about ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘when’ they blog and what works for them.
One initial point to note is that there aren’t hard and fast rules when it comes to blogging – different companies operating in different sectors will tailor their content accordingly. However, there are general truths that companies setting up a blog should be mindful of.
In the absence of strict rules about the type of content suitable for a blog, companies should be guarded against believing that almost any topic and tone of voice is appropriate. Instead, effective blogging requires awareness within each individual firm about the motivation for setting up a blog and careful consideration about whether the content being posted is therefore suitable.
For a finance or science-based company, for instance, exploring key issues occurring within the industry and offering the firm’s view on the latest developments might be an important way to highlight the technical expertise that will be imperative in gaining business and reassuring current clients.
For a PR agency or media company on the other hand, human-interest stories, such as an employee raising money for charity, could be more suitable. Within certain sectors, there’s a stronger emphasis on the client-supplier relationship – a blog revealing something of a company’s personality and culture could help strengthen this, while giving prospects a greater sense of the working relationship they would be buying into.
This by no means that a finance firm should never post a human-interest blog or a creative industries company shouldn’t promote its expert knowledge, merely the emphasis and tone of voice might be slightly different.
Similarly, while the frequency of blogs might vary depending on sector, as a general rule posts should be uploaded often enough to create the expectation of new content, but not so frequently that posts are uploaded regardless of whether there is anything worthwhile to say.
One way to ensure there is a steady stream of quality material is to take a smart approach to content. If a firm is creating a brochure, or an internal magazine, a lot of this content could be easily adapted so that it is suitable for a blog post. Likewise, this could work the other way – blog content could also be suitable for newsletters and internal magazines.
These considerations will help to optimise a blog in terms of the right amount of the right content, but as with the rest of business website, it’s important that content is optimised for SEO purposes – perhaps that’s a discussion for another blog.
Posted by the Secret Businessman