How to Start a Blog For Your Small Business

Starting a blog for your small business is one of the best decisions a business owner can make. Yet many businesses I speak with, who are not blogging, confess it is not because they can’t, rather it is because they simply don’t know how to get started. Some common road blocks are:

• They don’t know what to blog about
• Technology limitations
• Fear of not “doing it right”
• Time and resources to write the articles
• Not sure who should “own” the responsibility internally

Doesn’t it make sense that if you want your products or services to be found online, then you must have information about your products and services readily available to be discovered online?

Think about how consumers shop nowadays. First we do research. We educate ourselves on pricing, products, options available, etc. Next we ask friends and/or family for input, and perhaps even post questions openly to our social media platforms asking for advice.

How you make your information available (and searchable) online is through your blog. Blogging allows companies to post fresh content (educational information) regularly. And guess what? Search engines LOVE new content. So throw the search engines a little ♥ and give them a reason to display your content in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Start a blog for your small business today!

As an added bonus – use your blog content to fill up your social media profiles and begin to build an online following!

The first decision you will have to make is to determine how you will host your blog. WordPress is probably the most popular platform, but there are many solutions available for the do-it-yourself blogger. Don’t let the technical side of getting a blog up and running stop you. Depending on your budget, you can hire someone to set up your blog and look after all of the techy details. On a really small budget? The folks at companies like Go Daddy are usually super helpful and are there to get you up and running.

Once you have the technolgy in place, it’s time to start writing! Let’s take a closer look at one of the road blocks listed above – How to Pick Blog Topics For Your Small Business.

Try to set some time aside each week to write your articles. You should also think images to go along with your topics. Getting a subscription to an image library might be a good idea or even better, take your own pictures.

Maintaining an active blog takes work – but the reward is worth it. If you can’t do it alone – consider hiring someone to help you. (I’d love to help you and am happy to discuss options that will fit within your budget!)

Stay tuned for future articles to learn how to overcome the other road blocks you may be experiencing.

Hope this helps!

Leanne