Why Have a Blog If You Don’t Use It?

You’ve seen those frightful business websites before, hopefully not including your own.

You land on the site and it provides you with detailed information on the respective company. Once you navigate a little more, it comes to your knowledge that the company’s blog is looking like a lost child. One of the first thoughts likely to come to your mind is what exactly were these people thinking?

So, basically what you have here is neglect at its worst, neglect that could end up costing this particular company more business.

Whether your company is unveiling new products and services for your customers, or expanding its operation locally or nationally, the company blog is a terrific resource to announce such moves. Take those blog posts and promote them on social media, you get even more exposure.

So, what to do if your company blog efforts are clinging to life support?

Some of the actions you should deploy immediately include:

Assess the situation

Before you set into panic mode, think about how you got in this position in the first place. Was it because you just did not have the time and/or resources to update the blog? Did you feel your blog efforts were not worth the time? Lastly, have you tried blogging before, but met with little or no success? Come to grips with why you’re in this place to begin with, then draw up a plan to reverse course.

Plan a course

If you are running your own small business, there is a good chance you have limited resources with which to tend to everyday responsibilities. In that case, either put a qualified individual on your team (where applicable) in charge of blogging or outsource the needs to a company that does such work on a daily basis. If you do keep it in-house, make sure the person in charge of blogging keeps the blog relevant, not to mention updated on a daily basis. Along with the importance of getting your message out there, you want to make sure you are getting some love back from the search engines. When you’re blogging infrequently and not staying on message, you lose standing with Google, not something you want to do.

Blog with a purpose

Who are you trying to kid? One of the reasons for blogging is to gain traction with Google and other search engine venues. If you are blogging infrequently not only on your own site, but never reaching out to see if you can guest blog on other relevant sites, you lose twice. One of the great things with blogging on other sites is that you can put a keyword term or two (depending on publisher guidelines) in the post, thereby directing traffic back to your site (offer the same option to relevant blogs). If for no other reason, use that as motivation to get people back to your site, allowing them to see the products and services you offer.

Promote products and services

Finally, do you have a new product or service offering you want the world to know about? Using your company blog to promote it makes sense, plus opens you up to consumers who may not have been aware of you as recently as yesterday. Whether you have started a rewards program, now accept mobile payments or will be discounting certain merchandise, your blog can carry the news for you. And remember, you need to promote the blog itself on your social media channels, giving you more opportunities to land business.

While your company blog may not get your full attention, it should be getting more than you’ve likely been giving it in the past.

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