Starting a small business blog is an essential strategy for developing new customers.

If you’re a small business owner or you work for a small business, you likely know how important it is to make your presence online be known. You don’t want to be the very last page that comes up in search results when someone searches for the good or services that your business sells or provides.

One of the best ways to make a statement with your small business’ website is to create a blog with a link to it on your homepage. The problem is, most small business owners don’t know the first thing about writing for blogs and probably will struggle to keep one up.

Well, small business gurus, here is my advice to you.

1. Choose Blog Software Wisely

Choosing a blog software can be a tricky business. What’s on the market selling for the cheapest price may not be the software you’ll want in the long run if your business’ blog grows in popularity.

Do some research ahead of time to determine which blog software will fit your blogging needs (most good softwares can be found relatively inexpensively) and get to work on a domain name and a topic for your blog (it can be a general blog about your business or you could use it for a more directed purpose – totally up to you, the writer!).

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2. Speak Conversationally

Think of a blog like this – if you were to sit down at a bar or restaurant and have a conversation with a friend of yours to talk about what it is you do or give updates on what your business is currently doing, how would you talk?

Chances are, you’d be conversational, and that’s exactly how you want to write when you start a blog. 

That said, though, being too conversational can essentially all but kill your blog. You still want to avoid things like profanities, misspellings and incorrect grammar. Write as though you are speaking professionally. Keyword professionally.

3. Post As Often As Possible

Coming up with topics for your small business’ blog can be difficult, and I’ll give you some advice for coming up with ideas in a moment, but the important thing to remember is that it’s so important to post frequently and keep your blog fresh, lively and up to date.

If you yourself can’t maintain your blog on a daily basis, hire someone else or a blog management agency which can help you with it (if you can afford the extra position).

As soon as you decide how often you’re going to post to your blog, make sure you stick to it. Schedule a blog post in as part of your daily tasks. Don’t ever let it be the task you skip over – in fact, do it first thing in the morning to have it out of the way. That way you’ll never forget or run out of time.

4. Find Your Inspiration

Find something that you think you would be interested in writing about and run with it. If you can come up with several ideas for posts at a time, write them down and keep them in a “bank” for future use. Or even write out the posts and save them as “Drafts” and post them slowly throughout the coming days or weeks.

Set yourself up comfortably when you write. Some people like to listen to music, others prefer the silence, while others still prefer a busy and noisy work environment with lots of people bustling around.

Whatever you have to do, when you sit down to write, make writing your only priority. Don’t worry about what else you have to accomplish during the day – you’ve set aside “x” amount of time for writing your blog post, so take advantage and don’t interrupt the time while you have it.

Here is an interesting infographics to add more value

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5. Be Creative in Topics

Your first blog post should be about you and your company and offer more insight into what you do to your potential consumers or clients. Beyond that, it can become difficult to think of topics. So be creative!

One of the best things you can do with your new blog is try focusing it more on your customers after you’ve thoroughly introduced yourself. Maybe do a post or two a week (depending on how often you post, of course) on a “Customer of the Week” or “Customer of the Month” – someone who frequently shops with you.

Use your expertise in your field to give tutorials on your products or services or create resourceful posts for anyone interested in your field. You’re the expert – share your knowledge!

6. Share Your Blog

Not sharing your blog can be a slow and painful death for the poor thing. Your blog wants to be read, it wants to thrive, it wants to be seen by millions.

OK, being realistic, though – your blog is there for the purpose of being read, and not sharing what you’ve written wouldn’t exactly do you or your business any good. Make people aware of the fact that you have a blog by sharing links to posts on your business’ social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Make sure your blog is easily accessible from your website, too. It should have its own category page and not be a hidden URL that you have to manually type in to access. The easier it is to access, the easier you are to find online, and isn’t that part of the purpose of this whole thing, anyway?

Why do you think starting a small business blog is important for success online?

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About the Author: Alison Waters is a freelance writer who works closely with many small businesses helping to provide them with both blog advice and small business network solutions. She encourages every entrepreneur to start a blog for their business and she can’t stress enough how important it is to keep it going!