Raul’s Top 5 Tips for Blogging for Small Businesses (Sponsored by Small Business BC)

Disclosure – This post has been sponsored by Small Business BC as part of my campaign to raise funds for the BC Cancer Foundation. Blogathon is a charitable event and no monies ever come to my hands. The donation goes directly to the BC Cancer Foundation. Thank you to Small Business BC and Chet Woodside for their generous contribution to my Blogathon. Created in 1993 as a federal/provincial partnership and then transformed into a not-for-profit Society in 2002, Small Business BC is British Columbia’s key resource centre for business information and services.

I have been blogging for almost 3 and a half years. The very first question that every single business person I meet asks me when they meet me for the very first time is how do you find the time to blog?

The second phrase they usually utter is “I wish I could blog for my company, but I just can’t seem to find the time or energy”. My response is usually a gentle smile and a nod. The very first thing that you need to know, as a company owner, is that blogging should never be a chore. You should treat blogging (in fact, you should treat ANY social media platform) as you would treat any other element of your business strategy: as a core foundation.

You probably think I’m kidding, and the truth is, I am not. I am dead serious. In the 1980s, people looked for businesses and services on the Yellow Pages and the newspaper ads. In the 1990s, consumers looked at television ads and listened to the radio. In the 2000s, clients Google you. In fact, Googling has now officially become a verb in the English language. The very first thing that someone does when looking for a product or a service is to type the name of the company in Google.com (or Google.ca for us based out of Canada)

Many successful organizations (micro and small) have blogs, for many reasons. The first one, to maintain an online presence (a pre-requisite in this day and age). The second, to communicate with their customers (both existing and potential). The third one, to showcase their products and services. I could go on, but I’ll assume that I have convinced you to have a blog by the time you’ve read this paragraph.

So you’ve decided to start a blog and you need to get down to business RIGHT NOW. And thus, you need a “Blogging 101 for Small Businesses” guide. Well, you’ve come to the right place. I am going to give you my experience blogging distilled in 5 easy lessons. Well, maybe NOT all of my experience, but at least the top 5 elements that I think you need to consider, and the strategies you should use.

Credit: Christina B

1. Write good content. I can’t emphasize this enough. It doesn’t matter if your website is pretty, if it uses the latest Flash animation (by the way I think Flash should be banned from any site, but that’s the topic of another post). If you write crappy content, you’re going to get a one-time visitor who will then gladly forget that you exist. And there goes your potential business. Make sure that the stuff that goes up on your website is good. If necessary, hire a freelance writer (there are tonnes out there). You’ll be thankful you hired someone to do the writing for you if you hire the right person (another whole blog post in and of itself, but we won’t go there here).

2. Tell a story. This is something that most businesses forget. “What do I write about?” they ask me. “I am not funny, I can’t tell a story or a joke to save my life”. Well, you don’t *need* to be funny to tell a story. What you need to do is to think hard about what is the main message you want to communicate. Your business is a jewelry-making micro-enterprise. Tell me (tell your readers) why did you get into making jewelry? How did you start? What types of jewels are there? What have you read lately or seen lately that has caught your attention? Focus on one element at a time, don’t try to tell a full story in a single blog post.

3. Be authentic. Nothing worse than a post written in a way that conceals the true nature of the business or the intent. There is really no need or justification for lack of authenticity. Some of the largest corporations worldwide have taken substantial blows to their reputations when customers discover that behind an apparent authentic face hides an ugly monster of deception. Take responsibility for what you say, be authentic, transparent. Disclose your ties with other businesses and communities and make responsible choices as to what you say online. Being authentic pays.

4. Just let the words flow. This is perhaps the one piece of advice that nobody who teaches Blogging for Business seems to convey to their students. Writer’s block is a real phenomenon, and I have seen many micro-enterprises suffering for lack of inspiration or a fear of writing content that may seem trite or not useful. How to counter that? The best advice I got with my writing came from a professor with whom I took Environmental Policy Analysis when I was doing my PhD. He said “write like you speak – then go back and refine it”. That’s what I advice my undergraduate and graduate students, and that’s what I suggest to business owners. Tell me (the reader) a story about your company/product/service in your own words. Write the first few blurbs that come to your mind. Then come back and revise it. Check for spelling mistakes, typos, grammar. But always, ALWAYS let your first draft sit for a little bit and THEN come back to it. You can always edit something in draft form, but you can’t edit something that hasn’t been written.

5. Choose a versatile platform for your blog. Nothing worse than having a great write up, the perfect content for your blog and then realize that your blogging platform does not showcase how great your business is because it’s not versatile enough to allow you to do the things you want it to do. The platform I have used for all of my sites (my consulting practice, my research and my personal blog) is WordPress. While you can start with a free WordPress.com hosted site (i.e. you don’t need to have your own domain nor pay for web hosting services) I would STRONGLY recommend that you pay those small fees (web hosting AND domain acquisition). You’ll thank me later, trust me. WordPress is an extremely versatile platform (I don’t get paid for this endorsement, I just have really enjoyed the versatility that this content management system has given me.

So there you have it, Raul’s top 5 tips for blogging for small businesses. Implementing all of these five will cost you the incredibly amount of nothing (except, of course, for the time you’ll invest in them, but as I mention, it will be an investment, NOT an expense). Feel free, of course, to contact me should you want to delve in more detail on these topics.

I would also want to give a big recommendation to Small Business BC. It is a non-profit organization that is intended to help small and micro-businesses launch. I recently had the opportunity to quickly tour their infrastructure and offices and was thoroughly impressed. You should check them out.

If you would like me to write a blog post about your company or a topic of your choice and pledge to the charitable cause I am supporting, please get in touch with me via my contact form. Sponsorships range from $ 50 to $ 200.

This is Entry # 9 of 49

If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating to the BC Cancer Foundation. You can find my donation page by clicking here. Every bit helps. Thank you in advance!

Be Sociable, Share!