Tag Archives: business blog

When Should You Start Your Business Blog?

Business blogging is a resource that can be used for a variety of reasons.  Sales.  Marketing.  Customer Service.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  Whatever business process or strategy you have in place, business blogging can support or supplement it.

However, the primary focus of any business blogging strategy should be to communicate and engage with your audience, but because of this, many organisations believe they have to wait until they actually have an audience online;  people visiting their website both initially and time and time again.  It might not be hundreds or thousands of people, but some believe that until they have at least some returning visitors, a blog is unnecessary – if it’s for speaking to your audience, what’s the point in developing one if you don’t actually have an audience?

In one hand, this point makes sense, as by launching a blog before you have an audience, you’re likely to be talking to yourself for at least a little while.

In the other, however, it’s completely wrong – and that’s because an effective business blogging strategy will not only engage with your audience, but it will attract your audience and the more you blog, the bigger this audience will become.

It’s for this reason why your business blog should ideally be launched at the same time your website is.

People will visit your website for a specific reason.  It might be to find out more information about the products you offer or further details on the price of your services.  You’ll of course get visitors who have landed on the website by mistake, but the visitors who are truly going to be beneficial as top of funnel leads are the ones who are looking for something in particular.

Without a blog, you’re relying on these visitors getting exactly what it is from the few pages of content you have available.  This content is static and there’s nothing additional to it, which means it effectively has to be perfectly suited to your customers’ needs.

By utilising a blog, however, you offer customers so much more.  Yes, they may only land on one blog post to begin with, but a regularly updated blog could have dozens – if not hundreds – of related blog posts after only a few months.  Each and every post you publish (and make readily available) is another resource that could keep your customers on your site longer – and the longer they’re on your website, the more chance there is of them converting into a customer.

What’s also worthwhile noting is that you could see some considerable results if you actually launched your blog before your website went live.  Giving you the opportunity to start developing an audience, an effective business blogging strategy could help to attract numerous visitors on a regular basis, stirring up interest in your website so that when it does launch, you already have a ready-and-waiting potential customer base eager to find out more about what you have to offer.

Blogging is very much like SEO in one sense.  People have heard of it, they know it’s important, but they often fail to realise that it needs to be implemented as soon as possible – ideally at the launch of your website, if not before.  This isn’t to say you won’t see success by implementing a blogging strategy today, even if your website has been live for several years, as you most definitely will, but if you had a choice between starting a blog at the launch of your website or delaying it for several months, the first option should always be chosen.

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How Far In Advance Should You Schedule Your Business’s Blog Posts?

No matter which business blogging strategy you look at, the one constant between them all is the production of quality content on a regular basis.

The topics will change from organisation to organisation and the style, tone and general approach can all vary massively.   It doesn’t matter what type of content it is, however – the most effective blogging strategies are the ones that deliver quality consistently several times a week.

To the reader, it can seem as though the blog post was written and published immediately that day.  There is nothing to indicate otherwise.

However, the business blogs that see the most success are very often the ones that not only utilise a long-term content strategy, but the ones that schedule content ahead of time.

Having an array of benefits, one of the questions we often get asked is just how far in advance you should schedule your blog posts.  A content strategy might be accurate for the next twelve weeks, but does this mean you need to have twelve week’s worth of blog posts scheduled and ready to go live?

Generally speaking, the answer is no.  In fact, with all of our business blogging services, we generally work one week advance.

Meaning we can produce content that’s topical or on trend with the latest discussions, getting the content ready a week in advance also ensures that any changes that need to be made can be done so with enough time from our point of view and the client’s.  It could be something small, such as a quote has been made that now needs to be included or it could be something similar to a full rewrite, due to a change in the news that has brought something new to light.

Imagine that happened if you weren’t scheduling your blog posts.  It’s never a good idea to edit an already published blog post, so you’d simply have to keep it unchanged, something that could potentially have a negative impact.

Whilst one week in advance is a good guide, it shouldn’t be stuck to rigidly, as for some organisations and in some general situations, more flexibility is required to meet the different needs.

One of the most common examples of this is when we are unable to work with a client for a temporary period in regards to messaging or content approval.  It could be a client’s internal project which is going to mean they won’t be available or it might be that they’re simply going on holiday.  In these situations, we often need to schedule blog posts two or three weeks in advance.

It does mean the blog posts won’t be as topical as they could possibly be, but for a temporary period, that doesn’t have to be too much of a problem.  It’s simply a matter of taking the time to develop content that will make readers not miss the topical feel – a ‘How To’ series, for instance.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are some organisations who are almost unable to schedule their blog posts any more than a day or two in advance.  Perhaps they have a technology blog or they simply like to provide the most up-to-date information within their industry, something that their readers have come to expect.

In these instances, although one week is unlikely to be a possibility, there should still be procedures in place that stipulate a blog post needs to be scheduled in advance, whether that’s by 12 hours or two days.  If nothing else, it ensures there is sufficient time to make any last-minute edits before it gets published to an audience of what could easily be thousands.

All blog post content should be scheduled in advance.  There might be the very rare occasion where a last-minute post needs to be published, but these occasions are few and far between.  Giving you a tremendous amount of control over the content that’s being produced and delivered to your audience, scheduling your blog posts should never be the question – instead, it should be ‘how far in advance?’.

And although all organisations’ needs vary, a good rule of thumb is one week.  For the majority, anything less is likely to be unnecessary and anything more could result in content that isn’t as topical as it could be.

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