Does Your Blog Help Your Brand?

Business blogging is a necessary part of marketing in 2012, now and in the foreseen future. Why? Because doing it right ‘keeps you in the loop.’ If sharing your content, commenting on blogs, and linking to your website are the accepted way to prove you have a relevant business, you can’t really develop new and loyal interest in your site unless you’re actively blogging.

Blogging doesn’t have to be text, it can be adding videos, audios or images, too. It does have to be good for the reputation you’re building around your brand.

Here are a few bad blogging situations you should avoid if you want to clearly position your brand as a recognizable leader in your arena.

• Irregular blogging. Develop a routine and stick to it so people can learn to ‘expect’ your content.
• Humor in poor taste. It’s one thing to be funny, another to insult a group that might buy from you. By the way, ANYBODY might buy from you. Keep it light.
• Focusing solely on your company instead of answering your customer’s questions and concerns.
• Poor categorization and tag use. Make information very easy to find, not cute.
• No ability to share your content, and no Google Analytics set up to monitor visitor behavior. Without this, you have no idea if you’re on the right track with language and content.
• Bad spelling and grammar. These things are easy to fix, so when you don’t, it reflects poorly. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to act like your readers are intelligent.
• Foul language or nudity. Come on. That probably won’t attract the types of customers you want, and may discourage the ones you’d like to have.
• High Kincaid Score. Keep your readability between a 5.5 and 7.5. That’s between a fifth and seventh grade level. Using easy words and sentence structure makes reading your material more pleasant and shareable, even when you have a highly educated audience.

With these things in mind, go start blogging regularly. Soon it will be part of how you do your day-to-day activities, and from there – if you’ve followed the advice I just gave you – you’ll have good strong internet legs when the online environment changes again. Only this time you’ll be prepared and remain steady, easily convincing your prospects that they want to work with you and not the other guy.

What should you be blogging about? What keeps you from doing it? Share your blogging issues here! (You just may help another business who is dealing with the same struggles you are.)