If you’re looking to increase traffic to your website, generate more leads for your business, and become a knowledge leader in your industry, nothing beats the blog. Small companies can leverage their blog to take their business to the next level, but many of them are making costly mistakes that negate all the hard work. Here are some of the biggest blogging mistakes made by businesses, courtesy of Hubspot’s own business blog. Don’t worry – I’ve included some tips for correcting the mistakes, too!
Mistake #1: Publishing inconsistent or infrequent posts
Nothing ruins a great blog faster than neglect. Many businesses are guilty of publishing a few articles in spurts, then neglecting their blogs for weeks – or even months – at a time. If you aren’t posting on a regular basis, your blog is not getting the chance it needs to work for you. Companies benefiting the most from blogging stick to a regular publishing schedule, filling their blog with continuous fresh content.
The Fix: Commit to blogging regularly, and incorporate it into your or other staff members’ jobs. Start by aiming for one new blog post a week, which is the most common frequency, and build from there. If you do not have the resources to keep your blog current, consider outsourcing this important piece of your online marketing strategy.
Mistake #2: Publishing too many posts about your products
If you’re lucky, you work in a business in which you love your products so much, you could talk about them all day. Even if this is true, you need to accept that your customers might not want to hear about them all day! Actually, this goes for content that is centered on you and your company, too. It is completely fine to mix in some self-promotion, but your content should largely focus on helping your readers by providing interesting, useful, instructional or entertaining information. Your goal is to use your blog for thought leadership while making it enjoyable to read.
The Fix: Use an editorial schedule to plan different types of content for your blog. Focus on educational, data-driven and thought-provoking posts, and then sprinkle in news about your products and company. Using an editorial schedule can help you see the big picture while keeping your content varied.
Mistake #3: Failing to integrate your blog with your website
Where your blog is published matters. If it is published on its own domain, or worse yet, if it is published on a free blogging platform’s domain such as WordPress.com, Blogger.com, or TypePad.com, you are not getting the full benefit of your blog. Publishing blog articles can be thought of as casting a net out into the Web to bring interested people to your website, but if your blog doesn’t live on your company’s main website, you are losing opportunities for search engine optimization and branding.
The Fix: Keep your blog on a sub-domain of your website (e.g. http://blog.website.com) or in a folder of your main website (e.g. http://website.com/blog) to reap the rewards blogging provides for SEO.
Mistake #4: Failing to promote your blog on social media
Marketers often want to know what type of content to publish on social media. Your blog is perfect for generating continuous fresh content to share on Facebook and Twitter, and social media is the perfect place to promote your blog. When you fail to integrate these two communications channels, you miss opportunities to connect with new audiences.
The Fix: Take more time to expand your reach on social media and promote your blog there. In fact, using social media to promote your blog’s content is so important that you should focus on promoting existing blog content before you try to scale up your blogging habits. Build your brand’s presence online, and then share links to your content. Be sure to make social sharing easy by adding share buttons to every article you post.
In my next post, I will introduce you to three more mistakes small business bloggers make, as well as what to do to fix them.
Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae
Google+
