Member Article

Blogging sins and how to avoid them

Every business from any sector can benefit from a company blog, but what happens once you’ve taken that initial leap of faith and launched your company online?

Many companies expect instant overnight success when introducing a business blog. Who can blame them! They’ve done their research, invested time (and often money) into building, designing the look of the site and are setting precious time aside to write and upload content.

But what happens if, despite all this effort, you have yet to have had even so much as a visitor?

While patience is the Holy Grail when it comes to blogging for business, there are some common blogging sins and pitfalls many a company can easily find itself in. Follow my tips on how to identify sins on your very own blog, and more importantly, what you can do to attract that ever-elusive reader.

Think visual

Research suggests that you have five short seconds to inspire your audience to stick around from the moment they visit your blog. So whether you spent a week choosing a colour scheme or an hour picking your layout; if you have a garish, cluttered and unsightly blog, you’ll lose potential readers before they’ve even had a chance to read the company name. While you don’t need to be a graphic designer, you do need to ensure that the colour scheme reflects your business goals and target audience of your site, as well as being easy to read. Bold fonts may stand out but are a blogging no-no if you have a lot to say. If in doubt, follow a brand that inspires you and keep your layout clean with easy to read content.

Reader relevance

These days we are told to blog about anything and everything. Some companies take this quite literally, and without a clear direction of what they want to achieve, churn out post after post of thoughtless content. This is a common pitfall in the blogging world, where we are programmed to think that content, regardless of its quality, is better than no content at all. To maximise your company blog’s potential, ensure that articles are relevant to the reader and offer engaging content that will then set the foundations of a firm relationship between brand and reader. A key thing to remember is that sometimes less is actually more.

Know your audience

It’s easy to jump feet first into the wide world of blogging without giving a second thought to your audience. Surely, if you build a blog, your target audience will automatically follow, right? Wrong. Content generators need to know their target reader like the back of their own hands, otherwise you run the risk of wasting time and effort in creating content that is irrelevant to you, the business and the reader. Getting into the mind of the reader and finding out what makes them tick is what separates an average blog to a site that’ll keep readers hungry for more.

Blogging for business is often a simple case of trial and error, after all, nothing is perfect. But by becoming actively aware of your reader and common mistakes that repel them, you’ll be well on your way to a blog that will get people talking.

3 blogs that are getting it right:

Marriott on the move

Personal style, informative, regular posting, opinionated, social media friendly

Topshop’s Inside Out blog

Image heavy, traditional blog format, layout and content are fit for target audience, regular posting

Taylor Wimpey

Clean layout, engaging, targets audience, easy to navigate

https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/blog

By Daniel O’Mahoney, managing director, Bradley O’Mahoney Public Relations

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Bradley O’Mahoney Public Relations .