Blogging for Small Business

As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you might still buy into the misconception that blogging is for individuals to share their personal stories, recipes, or maintain a public journal. Of course it’s a well-known fact that small business blogs can be kept for content marketing purposes, but if you still relate blogging to mind dumping or sharing the juicy details about that vacation you just took… you might feel a little stuck.

In short, your blog is a powerful tool for growing your business if used correctly.

Expand Influence

Blogging for small business enables you to establish authority as a leader within your industry by offering extra information.

For example, let’s say you own an antique store. In your brick and mortar location, your brand is known as a store where people can buy antiques. Yet your blog will open up the opportunity to teach people about decorating with antiques, refurbishing or repurposing antique furniture, even appraising the value of old coins…

Just like that, your small business becomes a trusted authority to a very wide yet targeted audience and that is how you can expand your horizons.

Gauge Interest

If you’ve been considering a new idea or product, your small business blog can be used as an (unofficial) testing ground. Open up comments and you’ll get the insight you need through feedback from an impartial readership, without wasting the time, effort, and money into implementing something new.

More importantly, feedback on your blog is the best source of information to determine what is working for your business model… and what isn’t.

Getting to Know Your Brand

Know up front who will read your blog… and why. While keeping your posts within a range of expertise (avoid topics that can’t be loosely related to your business/audience) it’s okay to give your personal take on things because an effective blog is all about building and maintaining a personable brand that your audience will relate to.

Google Authorship

You might already know that each social network has their own set of benefits and G+ (Google Plus) is best known for search engine optimization or internet marketing purposes. One of the perks is Google Authorship, which allows you to associate your Google account with your blog.

In short, this ensures that your individual blog posts pack more authority and will display on the front page of related search results for a targeted audience. To learn more, visit https://plus.google.com/authorship