Creating a business blog that increases your search engine visibility, establishes your credibility, generates quality leads and helps you grow your business. Yet, too many small businesses and non-profits jump into blogging without a plan in place. This mistake leads to lots of missteps, false starts and costly errors. Here are final five of the 10 biggest mistakes small business bloggers make… and how you can avoid them.
6. They don’t leave comments at other blogs: Leaving intelligent comments on other blogs serves many purposes. It shows that you’re an active, contributing member of the community. It generates good will with the blogger in question, and it creates a link back to your own blog. Why does the link back matter? If you’ve said something of value, visitors to these blogs will follow the link back to your blog to see what other brilliant insights you might have. WHAT TO DO: Leave intelligent, appropriate comments on the blogs you read. However, if your comment comes across as a crass attempt to lure new prospects to your blog, expect that these other bloggers will delete your comment, and might even ban you from commenting again.
7. They don’t engage their community: Personally, I don’t believe that comments reflect how effective a blog is. Certain blogs and topics are just going to attract more feedback than other. Want comments? Start a political blog or take a stand on a controversial issue. However, when people leave comments on your blog, they’re most often responding to something you wrote, or an experience they had with your company. They’ve taken time out of their day to add to the conversation on your blog. WHAT TO DO: When someone leaves a comment on your blog, do your best to follow up with them by answering their question or addressing their issue. You may also want to email a copy of your response directly to them, in case they don’t revisit that post.
8. They make it difficult to subscribe: There are two kinds of readers at your blog: those who discover it via a search engine of a link, and your subscribers. Once someone has subscribed to your blog via RSS or email, your content is delivered to them automatically. Almost all blogging platforms offer RSS feeds right out of the box, and many also allow your readers to subscribe to the feed via email, delivering each post into their inbox. However, some small business bloggers don’t enable these tools, or make them difficult to find on the home page. WHAT TO DO: If your platform doesn’t offer RSS and/or email options, or if you want more control over your feeds, you can use a third party service like Feedblitz or Feedburner. Both of these services offer RSS feeds, email feeds, tracking tools and more. In addition, you’ll want to place your subscription options “above the fold” on your blog, making them easy to find.
9. They don’t take advantage of social media: A blog is not an island. It’s part of your social media activity. These days, sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon can deliver substantial targeted traffic to your blog. Ignore this at your own risk. WHAT TO DO: Encourage your readers to share your content on a wide variety of social media platforms with a tool like ShareThis. Although it might seem redundant if you already have ShareThis enabled, you can also get great results from a “TwitThis” or the “Retweet This” button that appears at the top of blog posts encouraging people on Twitter to tweet a link to your post. Of course, you don’t need to wait for others to promote your post. However, people who only submit their own work usually don’t see the same level of results as people who also promote the work of others. If you are going to use StumbleUpon or a similar tool, try and promote other people’s work in an 80/20 ratio to your own. Trust me on this one…
10. They measure the wrong things: They focus on how many comments they receive, how many “followers” they have, or how many people have subscribed to their blog. Comments aren’t customers, and subscribers aren’t sales. Measure what matters… what moves the bank account. WHAT TO DO: Review your business goals, then take a look at your traffic reports to determine if you’re achieving your goals. If you wanted to increase your search engine traffic, your analytics will show that. If you wanted to double the number of qualified leads to your web site, your analytics can show you that as well.
Final Bonus: They’re not committed to the blog’s success: Too many entrepreneurs are excited about the idea of a blog, but aren’t willing to put the work into it that it requires. Or, they start strong, but after a few months with little to show for it, they cut back on their blogging. Few blogs are successful in the first six months. They take time and commitment to the process. WHAT TO DO: Budget 3 hours a week to blog for a minimum of six months. In that time, you should be able to generate at least three posts a week, and leave comments on a handful of related blogs to drive traffic back to your blog. Don’t use the excuse that you don’t have time. One of the great things about blogging is that it can be done at off hours. Fit in some time on the weekends and when the kids are in bed. Sacrifice a night of TV each week, or eat lunch at your desk and create another post. It’s your business after all. Probably, your blog is the most versatile tool in your web marketing toolbox. It powers both your search engine optimization and acts as your social media hub.
By avoiding these Top 10 11 Marketing Mistakes, and by committing time and resources to your blog, you’ll increase your online visibility, drive more qualified leads to your web site, and help convert those leads into real business.
About Wendi McGowan