Is it worth including a blog on my business’ website?

Blogging is like anything else you do in terms of marketing your business – if it’s not quality and it’s not sending the right message, then you’re simply wasting your time.

Blogging has a few key components.

Number one is content. Quality content is a main driver for any blog. This has 2 aspects to it that are vital for you to be highly conscious of.

1. Blogs are a great way to position yourself as a leader on a subject or within an industry. If you are seen as the educator, then you have a higher likelihood of people seeking you out for information rather than the continual push for you to feed them information.

B) Blogs are about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). If you’re clever with your use of keywords, then your blogs can add serious value to your rankings and continue to add valuable content to your site.

Number two is distribution. Now many people will ask “What are you talking about? You don’t send out blogs! You post them on your site!” and this is an area where so many people go wrong.

With billions upon billions of web pages out there, how do you expect people to find your blog?

Websites, and especially blogs, are some of the best kept secrets in a company’s marketing.

This is why an effective and quality database is just so vital to the on-going success of your business.

Look at sites like LinkedIn, Mashable, Springwise, StartupSmart and even my own agency – we send out regular emails to our database that show them what we’ve been blogging about. If you don’t lead people to your blog, how can you expect them to constantly remember it’s there?

Finally, Number three is timing. They say timing is everything and while I wouldn’t totally agree with that in terms of blogging, it’s certainly right up there.

Being topical is really just a smart thing to do. For example, if I was writing a blog in early March 2012, then I would be writing about ‘the new iPad’.

I’d be discussing how we can build apps for it or how it was going to affect my industry or my clients or the market in general.

I might even discuss how Apple release their products or perhaps some speculation on why they look to call it ‘the new iPad’ rather than ‘iPad 3’?

Clever use of keywords and timing the subject when people are searching for that type of information will be a great help to you attracting more readers and thus gaining further exposure.

It’s all about relevant, quality content that is delivered in a manner that matches your organisation. Watch your tone of voice and know your audience too.

Blogging takes time to master but stick with it and follow these steps and you’ll find it highly rewarding.

P.S. You’ll notice that this blog actually puts into play all of the above suggestions…