With so many people doing blogs these days, the hardest aspect of blogging can be getting people to read it. Perfectly crafted blog entries aren’t much help if no-one is reading them. At the same time, most companies can’t afford the time to promote a blog on top of their site promotion.
Although there are many good reasons for creating a blog, many companies do it at least in part as a support for the search engine optimisation of their site. Good blog content will be seeded with SEO techniques which should draw traffic, but this is slightly beside the point. A blog is most often tactically employed as a double draw for a site. It both provides a medium for keywords and other tasty search engine spider treats and at the same time naturally draws in human readers.
Getting readers for your business blog isn’t a matter of simply writing content. It doesn’t have to be hard work, either. There are a number of simple things you can do to boost your blog’s readership.
The first step for promoting a new blog is to join in the blogging community. This requires a little interaction. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, linking to other blogs is a friendly gesture that is often reciprocated. Leaving of comments on others’ blogs informs the blogosphere that you are interested and intelligent, and also allows you to distribute your blog’s name and URL within blogging circles. These first steps are just a start.
Once you have set foot in the blogging community, you can promote your blog a little more aggressively with competitions and blog carnivals. The first of these can be done purely within your site. Competitions on blogs can be simple or big, depending on your site’s needs and your preference. Prizes don’t need to be particularly large. The key is interaction. For example, a pet supplies site might run a ‘pet advice’ competition on its blog, requiring participants to write a full entry. The prize could be a product or a voucher, allowing for the company’s brand keywords to be featured repeatedly as competition rules and entries are discussed.
Competitions like this are a great opportunity to get your site users to employ your keywords for you, but don’t overdo it. Requiring entrants to use a particular phrase or keyword makes it too much an obvious marketing exercise and will not benefit your blog. The difference between a blog competition and a normal site-wide competition is the tone. A blog competition is more a challenge to interact than a straightforward prize draw, and can boost the community feeling on your blog.
A blog carnival requires a little more involvement from your blog and from others. Blog carnivals entail several blogs posting an entry on a chosen theme. The entries are collected by a central blog and judged. Hosting a blog carnival boosts your site’s traffic, and also spreads your links throughout blogs all over the net.
All traffic you draw to your blog on its own is a huge bonus for your business. Blogs are of value to sites because they both build content, furthering the site’s SEO strategy, and build community. If you would like advice on maximising the value of your business blog, talk to us at .
