7 Elements of a Killer Business Blog

Blogging has become one of the most effective ways for small businesses to connect with their customers online, spread their company message, and build trust and credibility with their consumers. Blogs a great way to retain and energize your customers and they’re also an effective way to interact with customers and drive website traffic. Blogging can increase your sales, leads, and optimization online but if you want to maximize the success of your business blog. It’s important that you implement these 7 crucial elements of a killer business blog.

1. Consistency (Schedule) – Keeping up with a consistent schedule of posting will probably be the biggest challenge for most beginning bloggers. It’s important that you post on a set schedule (once a week minimum) so customers can rely on getting information from you in a consistent way. A consistent stream of articles will encourage more people to read and subscribe to your blog.

2. Design – Staying on the topic of consistency, you want to make sure that the design of your blog meshes with the color and design of you company’s logos and website. The layout doesn’t have to match your website exactly, but the color scheme should be correct and all logos and branding should match. You also want to make sure your design is professional and eye-grabbing. Remember, you’re one of millions of blogs out there and you want to do what you can to stand out while still appearing credible.

3. RSS Subscribe Button – When people want to be notified every time your blog has a new post, or if they want to include a feed from your blog in their “reader” program, they need to subscribe to your RSS feed. You want to make it as easy as possible for readers to do this so make sure that your blog has a prominent RSS feed button somewhere on the front page. If your blog is missing that orange RSS Feed button it’s not going to be as successful at gaining subscribers as it should be. This is important.

4. Social Media Info – There should be clear and easily navigated buttons that let users follow, like, bookmark or friend your company on their favorite social network site. Make these buttons appear on your front page and encourage customers to connect with you on social sites they use. This way they can stay updated with your company blog using the social network site they’re most comfortable with.

5. Social Share Buttons – One of the best ways to get more views for your blog and build an online following is by having social share buttons at the bottom or top of each post that allow the reader to share your articles on the social site of their choosing with just one click. (See the buttons at the bottom of this post marked “Tweet” and “Share”)

6. Authors – You want to put a face behind the content you’re providing. Build professional online profiles of your contributing authors (even if it’s just one) and put it on it’s own page within your blog. (The “about” page is usually the best place for this)

7. Optimize Your Posts – Another important part of business blogging is making sure that your articles are optimized for search. This means that they are full of relevant keywords and properly tagged in the “tags” section of your blogging program.

It’s Your Turn – Do you have any other key elements of a company blog that should be added to this list? Leave us a comment or contact us with your key element to a successful business blog and we’ll post it in a follow-up blog.