By now, most business owners realize the benefits of having a company blog. A company blog can help bring traffic to your site, give insight into your company’s culture, and it’s an overall great inbound marketing technique. Unfortunately, a lot of companies aren’t getting the results from their blogs that they expected. The reason why? Well to put it simple, they’re not doing it right!
Here are 5 reasons your company blog might be lacking:
1- It’s too promotional
Is the only time you post on your company blog when you have something new to promote? If so you’re making a big mistake. It’s tempting to think of a company blog as just another advertising avenue but you have to resist those urges.
An occasional post about REAL company news is fine, but when every post is about a new product or pushing customers to buy from you, you might be overdoing it. Treat your company blog like a regular blog; Seek to inform rather than to promote.
2- Your blog posts are soulless
Nobody wants to read a boring blog. A lot of companies are worried about looking unprofessional on their blogs so they tend to be overly-cautious. By definition, entrepreneurs are risk takers. Don’t chicken out when it comes to your blog.
You can create content that is enjoyable while still maintaining a certain level of professionalism. Breathe some life and personality into your blog by writing in a casual tone instead of being too formal. Don’t be afraid to throw a contraction in there every now and then or speak directly to your readers instead of writing in 3rd person.
3- People can’t find it!
Just like any other website on the internet, if nobody can find your blog, then they nobody will read it. The problem with your company blog might not be the content, it could just be that it’s impossible to find. Luckily this is an easy fix.
Whenever a new post is published, get all the employees to share it on social media. Tweet it, Pin it, and post it everywhere possible to get the word out. If it’s a good post, it will spread naturally once it hits social media.
Another step you should take is to make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. SEO has become somewhat of a buzz word these days with the growing importance of internet marketing. You don’t have to become an SEO expert, but simple things like including relevant search terms in articles can go a long way. You can also use these DIY SEO techniques to help promote your blog posts.
4- The last post is from 2001
People don’t enjoy reading dead blogs that haven’t been updated in years. You should aim to post on your company blog regularly. Even if it means outsourcing content creation, a blog that’s updated regularly has a higher chance of building an audience.
Updating your blog is actually a lot easier than most people realize. Every blog post doesn’t have to be 1,000 words long. You can post a summary of industry news and link to your source for the full story. If you can get the entire company involved in blogging, you’ll have an endless stream of content to post. Google has employees from different departments post on their company blog which creates diversity and continuous content.
Have a set number of blog posts that you want to publish each week and try to post on the same days every week to help create a routine.
5- There’s only text
Humans have developed very short attention spans. Expecting people to read through a bunch of 500 word articles with nothing but words is wishful thinking. Blog posts need images, video, and structure in order to break the monotony of reading a huge wall of text.
Break blog posts into different sections with subheadings. You should also use bulleted lists and relatively short paragraphs (3-5 sentences each). What this does is make blog posts easier to scan which is what people do when they read.
You should also try to add a mixture of media to spice things up a bit. Use videos, infographics, interviews, and other types of content instead of solely relying on text articles.
Start getting more out of your company blog. Just like every other aspect of your business, you’ll only get out what you put into it.
Dominique Jackson is a freelance writer, internet marketer, techie, and entrepreneur. You can read his blog for business tips, tech news, and general awesomeness.
Image Credit: www.edeneatseverything.com
