Blogging For Your Business

Charlene St. JeanThe Purple Diamond Marketing Blog was launched a year ago, Oct. 6, 2009.   It started as my own experiment to see how time intensive blogging would be for a small business with limited staff and if it actually generates new business.  Ninety-six articles published in a year on this Blog and our stats were strong with a significant following for a small business that goes after a local market.  Purple Diamond’s blog  started off with 5 marketing posts per  week last October, but dropped off to once a week as business grew tremendously as a result of my own marketing efforts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and attending local business networking groups and being a speaker at several events.  The average time for writing the blog post and then promoting it on other sites directly after was estimated at 35 minutes to one hour with most articles being a couple paragraphs in length.  And, posting the blog articles on weekdays in the morning seemed to get more attention.  So, what can I offer about Blogging for Business to someone reading this and considering launching a Blog for their own business right now? Create a Marketing Blog Plan and understand that you need patience and willingness for the process to work!

Today there are over 144 million blogs and many Bloggers quit within 2 years.  Why is a Blog important for your business today even if you are a small business in a local market? Well, it will definitely help to generate exposure for your business if you are also using other social media tools in which you promote it from and it will increase traffic to your website and business and increased search rankings.  You will generate qualified leads because they will know more about your business by your Blog posts and you will stand out in your field if you are the only one who is Blogging.  Business partnerships and connecting with other Bloggers is also a helpful plus for why you might want to have a business Blog.  Finally, my own Blog helped me to recognize what were the hot marketing topics that Business owners were interested in by watching the higher traffic to those articles.  I then used this information to adapt my services and product offering and marketing collateral to include this so that I gained more clients instantly.

It is important to have a strategy for your Blog and a business goal and metrics to measure if you are meeting these goals.  Other key points to consider before you launch your Blog: know your Blog topic or industry well, enjoy writing or have someone on your staff who is a decent writer, keep your Blog active even if it means having shorter Blog posts, use key words that support your marketing strategy and PROOF READ! Finally, be sure to thank those who read your Blog and ask them to share it with others.

Thanks for reading the Purple Diamond Marketing Blog~ Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”