Many people are just small business owners that happen to blog a few times a week. But since most business-owners have only one source of income (their business), blogging takes a back seat to business needs. Most small businesses can’t afford to hire a full-time blogger or ghost writer so they have to make time for blogging in addition to their many business-owner duties. And because those duties are so heavy on the business owner, blogging generally falls by the wayside as more pressing matters are attended to.

Many small business owners are out there thinking, “Blogging? That’s just one more thing to add to my already slammed work schedule. No thanks.” The feeling is understandable.

There is no doubt that sitting down to write a good blog post takes time. Add in artificial deadlines and blog posting schedules, that’s why most small businesses simply don’t do it.

But blogging is an important aspect of growing your business. The key to good blogging is understanding how to work it in, prioritize it properly, and not to feel obligated to anybody but your family and customers. Like all other SEO strategies, timing is everything.

Establish your blogging priority

Many small business that blog find themselves torn between business obligations and feeling like blogging is one of the most important things we can do to grow their business. It is important, but it needs to be prioritized properly.

Looking at the big picture, blogging isn’t just about communicating with our audience. Blogging, when done effectively, helps us improve our reputation, build a brand, get customers, increase SEO Marketing and rankings and, ultimately, grow the business. Yet, missing a day of blogging here or a week of blogging there certainly isn’t going to cause collapse your business or stop customers from calling.

As with everything else, you have to keep your blogging time in perspective and prioritize it properly. You don’t have to blog every day. You can set time aside on a weekend, or on your typically slow days and write several posts at once and publish them later. If your designated “blogging time” gets interrupted by more important issues, take care of what’s important. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get your post(s) completed on schedule.

Know when to stop writing

All of our time is limited so when writing a blog post, sometimes we find it taking a lot more of our time than we anticipated. And BLAST!!! you still have two more posts to write today! Ok, stop for a second. Think about this. Can your wordy blog post be broken down into several short posts? Snip here, cut there and you just met your blog quota for the week!

You can also break your blog writing time into several shorter periods. Write one post a week, spending 15-20 minutes a day until it’s done.

Change your blogging patterns

It is often not so much a matter of how much you blog but a matter of the content you provide. Not every blog post has to be 1200 words. Some can be a few hundred, so long as the information you provide is valuable.

If you didn’t get time to sit down and write your typical blog posts, just think of something that you can share in a couple of quick paragraphs. Write it, post it, move on. You can always go back later and revisit on and expand the topic it later.

Short posts can often be just as good, if not better than, long posts. Quick bits of information can be fantastic to readers who don’t always have time to invest in reading long pieces.

Create a blogging schedule

How and when you blog is up to you, but I recommend that you work blogging into your schedule. Have certain times of the day or days of the week or month that is designated as blogging time.

It’s also a good idea to stay a few weeks ahead of yourself. I like to keep 4-6 weeks worth of blogs posts ready to go. This gives me a chance to 1) write a post and go back to it later for proofing, and 2) have blog posts ready to go should something interfere with my normal blogging schedule. Then you never have to worry about not having a blog post ready.

Blogging can be very important to the success of your business. There is a lot of value and potential growth you can get from it, you just need to make sure you set time aside to make it happen.

Blogging is a skill. While most website owners and search engine marketers will have dipped their toe in the blogosphere, there is a marked difference between posting a blog and actually blogging. Posting a blog is something that anyone can do – you write a post and publish it to your site or WordPress page. Blogging goes beyond simply performing the mechanical motions and indicates a real understanding of the power of the blog, its audience, and its appropriate use as a search engine marketing tool.

Quite often blogs will simply be vehicles for building a few links back to the target website or as a dumping ground for sales material – the publishers of these pages are not bloggers, they are simply piggybacking off the format for search engine optimization gain. So, how do you go from posting a blog to becoming a blogger? And how do you make each post effective?

Content

Content is always king online, and it’s very easy to distinguish between blog posts that were written purely to host a series of outbound links and postings where real thought  has gone into finding an interesting, relevant topic to be discussed in detail. As a forum for publishing opinions, reviews and personal beliefs, a blog is second to none and those blogs that are used as an outlet for considered discussion will always thrive. Many who post blog posts regularly run out of quality content very quickly or slide into sales pitches. A blogger will get creative at this point and strive to add an original twist – even if the sole purpose of a blog post is to announce a sale or new product, spending extra time developing the story with sufficient background material, quotes or selected third party links will increase the quality of the content tenfold.

If the blog is a corporate one, set up to promote a particular product or website, there is a temptation to include only links to the one site in order to help with search engine rankings. Carefully selected third party links will add interest and relevance to the postings – these links do not have to be to competitors but could instead go to research papers, interesting newspaper articles or reports on relevant legislation.

Ease of Digestion

The very design of a blog makes it prone to spur-of-the-moment updates, ramblings, and musings. This is all well and good and blogging ad-hoc as the urge strikes will add character and depth to the page. However, this should never be at the expense of good internet writing practices – keep sentences short and succinct.

Check and then double-check spelling – even if you update your blog on the go from a hand-held device, most will offer a spellcheck facility. Sloppy spelling errors dilute the quality of the whole blog and particularly if the blog is a corporate one, reduce the value and credibility of the resource as a whole. If your spelling isn’t perfect, note down blog post ideas on paper or voice record them direct on to a cell or Dictaphone to be transcribed later, when you have access to a computer with a proper word processing package.

Grammar and punctuation should also be triple-checked and follow the format of standard English. Shortened, informal prose suited to messages or emails to friends has no place on a blog and can make the text a lot more difficult to read. This extra effort can be enough to put some visitors off even if the subject itself is of interest.

A Proactive Approach

The best bloggers have very loyal audiences – testament to the fact that a personal relationship has developed between the blogger and the reader. Loyal readership and repeat visits also suggest a level of proactiveness which creates a bond between the blog and the reader, allowing them to participate and feel a part of its development. Often with blogs set up purely for search engine optimization strategies, or as part of a much wider social media marketing campaign, the post is uploaded dutifully but little effort is put into engaging or conversing with the reader. A typical corporate blog will offer reviews and sales info, perhaps including special offers, but will do little to dialogue with the reader.

Always enable comments on a blog to make each post more effective – feedback and questions from readers or simple comments on the post give an insight into the mood and interests of the audience. Questions and answers also more closely resemble a conversation, making it more likely the reader will return to the blog to continue correspondence.

Particularly active posters could even be approached to guest blog on the site, adding a new dimension to the blog and helping to avoid falling into the ‘content for content’s sake’ trap.

Keep the above tips in mind when contemplating beginning a blog on your website and get off to the right start!

Imagine this scenario:  You’re on a site, and you find the perfect TV.  You’ve seen it before in stores, talked to sales people, done your research on consumer reports, AND now you’ve found it 45% off and with free shipping! You’re already imagining who you’re going to invite over to watch the big game… until you notice that there are 3 typos on the homepage, including the brand name of the TV you’re purchasing, and there’s no way to enter a shipping address that is different from your billing address. Notice how quickly you’ve gone from ‘cloud nine’ to ‘too good to be true’.  Chances are, you are not going to be making this purchase and you rationalize that watching the big game on a little TV isn’t so bad, even if it doesn’t have HD.

Credibility is yours to lose.  Visitors will give you the benefit of the doubt until you don’t meet their basic expectations.  Most SEO Professionals and web designers often will give clients little pointers about misspelled words or broken links as part of their SEO Campaigns to improve their marketing results.  Unfortunately, many times, clients don’t seem too concerned about it.  The truth is, every visitor who notices these little things is less likely to convert on your site, return to your site or recommend your site to someone else.

The 3 most common credibility mistakes:

1. Typos and grammatical errors. Examples: loose/lose;  their/there/they’re, its/it’s, a lot (it’s two words, people) etc.  Pick up a copy of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” if you want to set yourself straight on what is proper.  At 85 pages, it’s the most concise miracle ever written on grammar.

2. Lack of (or un-clickable) security assurances in checkout.  In rare occasions with clients, their privacy page is the most visited page by visitors who convert.  This is not un-likely if you have a very methodically minded product like insurance or software because people come to your site expecting to look for detail-oriented information.

3. Un-professional design. Search engine optimization is an ongoing task.  What may have been the norm for website design a few years ago is likely to be obsolete now.  If visitors come to your site and have to think about what they’re seeing, you’ve already lost.

So, proof-read your site, have someone else (preferably not involved in the creation of the site) go through it and make a purchase online, and remember not to give visitors an excuse to leave!

In order for Social Media to have compound effect it requires engagement, otherwise you have missed the best effects of both Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing.

Engagement says a lot about your brand… and YOU too...

Seth Godin in his blog post defined Brand differently than we have thought about in the past:

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.

A brand used to be something else. It used to be a logo or a design or a wrapper. Today, that’s a shadow of the brand, something that might mark the brand’s existence. But just as it takes more than a hat to be a cowboy, it takes more than a designer prattling on about texture to make a brand. If you’ve never heard of it, if you wouldn’t choose it, if you don’t recommend it, then there is no brand, at least not for you.

What Does This Have to Do With Engagement

So basically what he is saying is that if your customers aren’t talking about you, they aren’t talking about your brand either – both because they are not worth talking about. Simple as that.. Similarly, if you aren’t doing anything special, engagement becomes a challenge that even the best of PR can’t overcome.

The following tips are great for creating many fans on your Facebook fan page:

1. Authenticity. Be yourself.

2. Great Stuff. Have something great, and even if others don’t think it is great – sell them on it. You can’t motivate fans for an average product. For a great product, you don’t need to. They’ll come to you.

So what is the secret formula required for engagement? Be remarkable, do something worth talking about, build a product or service offering that stands out and away from the pack.