If your brand were a human with a personality and an attitude, then your brand’s blog is the voice!
Your blog is the one place you can communicate with your audience, engage in dialogue and create engagement.
“Consumers like to buy products from business owners who are relatable, and a blog for your business is the perfect venue for this.”
Now answering one of the many questions in your head, the reason why you should write a blog for your brand is simple – to keep your existing customers engaged and informed, and to generate more business by acquiring new customers.
So the importance of writing a blog for your business is clear, but where should you start from? You may have a lot of questions and reservations about starting your blog. Below we have answered some of them for you, so that you find yourself a starting point. Hope it helps!MORE
1. Whom are you writing the blog for?
Picture your audience in your head. Pick one person in your mind and write the blog as if you are having a conversation with that person.
2. How should you write the blog?
The do’s and don’ts of writing a blog for your business:
| Dos | Don’ts |
| Create interesting and shareable content. | Don’t just put in just facts and figures in your blog and make it sound like another Wikipedia article. |
| Tackle your readers’ problems and give them solutions. | Don’t write about your life story or sell your brand. If they want to know about your business, they can find it on your website. |
| Give examples, write anecdotes and share interesting stories. | Don’t write for the sake of filling content. If you can’t find time to blog, hire a ghost-writer. |
| Create value by writing about stuff that matters to them. | Don’t be inconsistent. Set realistic goals for the number of posts you can manage in a week. |
| Write regularly. Decide on the number of posts you can do in a week (say 2 a week), and stick to that. |
Don’t post copied content. Be original. |
| Ask questions. Encourage discussion. Have conversations. |
Don’t write very lengthy or word heavy posts. Be concise and precise. |
| Keep it current and relevant to your business. | |
| If you are sharing someone else’s work, make sure to credit them and inform them. |
- Top 10 lists
- Dos and Don’ts
- Interviews
- Pick 20 common problems and write a how-to-fix-it blog of 500 words on each.
- Your industry trends
- Upcoming events in your industry
- Tips and tricks
- Invite guest posts
- Build ad partners
- Run contests on your blog
- Back linking with other blogs: Ask a blogger in your niche, if they’d be willing to put a backlink to your blog and return the favour by doing the same.
- Promote your blog: Update about your posts on social media like Facebook, Twitter. Include the blog in any newsletters that you send out. Include links in your forum discussions. Add links to new blog posts in your email signatures. Have your blog mentioned on your business cards, flyers, banners at events, etc.
asha chaudhry
welcome to therodinhoods tanya!
this is a really interesting post you’ve written. a lot of our members already have blogs but i’m sure the ones who’ve been thinking about it will take a cue from this post.
what you may not know is that rodinhood.com started as alok’s personal biz & experience blog; which got extended to a community for entrepreneurs – therodinhooods.com! so yeah, a lot can happen by merely starting a blog!
this might interest you – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/how-blogging-changed-my-life
How blogging changed my life
As featured in the The Smart Manager Nov-Dec 2012 issue:
I am a devout Art of Living disciple and have been practicing my ‘Kriya’ (spiritual practice) very diligently for the past 12 years now.
A couple of years ago, I noticed that despite meditating with utmost devotion, I wasn’t experiencing a ‘high’. What was worse was that even if I missed my meditation for a couple of days, I wasn’t experiencing a ‘low’.
Something was wrong and I met my teacher to ask her the reason.
She said, “Alok, your cup is full to the brim. You need to empty it to experience a sense of replenishment. Go and give back.”
That really struck me like a thunderbolt and it occurred to me that I had to give back to society – from whom I had received everything.
The problem was that when I tried to do the conventional charity stuff (going to hospitals to donate medicines, etc), I was repulsed. Those places made me uncomfortable. I was puzzled on how to ‘give back’.
That’s when it hit me that as a digital entrepreneur who had been lucky to survive 14 long industry years, I had seen and done a lot. I had the knowledge that so many entrepreneurs needed. I had the scars on my back that needed to be shared.
When you wish for good things, good things happen.
I woke up one night at 3 am with the name ‘Rodinhood’ in my head. It was the combination of Augustine Rodin who had sculpted ‘The Thinker’ and Robin Hood who did good things.
Rodinhood.com signified their combination – to ‘Think and Do’.
As if possessed, I began to write everything that I had experienced as an entrepreneur. My lawyer read some blogs, called me up and said, “Alok, your blogs are embarrassingly naked, and that’s why they are so good. Keep them up.”
A year later, I had written 100 blogs with titles such as ‘What I learnt at Marwari Business School’, ‘VC is Venture, Vapor, Vulture and Vampire Capital’, etc.
My blogs were a hit and all of a sudden, my life changed.
– Harvard Business School invited me to speak as part of an Indian Entrepreneurial summit they were hosting.
– Young entrepreneurs started coming up to me in airplanes and cafés to asked me questions or share their ideas!
– Leading publications began to ask me to contribute as a guest writer.
The Satori moment came a couple last year when I thought ‘Why Rodinhood? Why singular? Why not many Rodinhoods…?’
I launched ‘therodinhoods.wpengine.com’ – a social network for Entrepreneurs and that was the take off point.
Entrepreneurs from all walks of life found a platform and a place to share, discuss, learn and give back!
TheRodinhoods began meeting up on Fridays in my conference room – we named it the Open House! Initially about 4-10 entrepreneurs would turn up. Within a year we moved to the National Stock Exchange Auditorium with 150 attendees!
Today, TheRodinhoods has over 3600 members, over 1000+ blog articles/discussions and a very vibrant, real community that meet as often as they can. So many Rodinhoods work and co-operate with each other!
Blogging helped me to share. It let me give back. And in return I received a sense of fulfillment that I have never experienced in my life…
****
This and Sumant Mandal’s prodding was really why I kept blogging…
******
Lesson learnt : Give back to society and you will feel fulfilled..
**********
Tanz
This was a great read. Thanks alot for this.
Perzen Darukhanawalla
Hi Tanya,
Thanks for this article – a very great read and I must say very timely for me. While there are a lot of advocates for having a blog, there are an equal amount that now say that there are too many blogs and really having one just for the sake of it is not enough. Rather they recommend that you do guest posts on other blogs that have a better readership to establish credibility for your brand. I would be really interested to know your thoughts on this as I work within communications for a startup and we are currently trying to figure out whether we should be blogging or we shouldn’t. Also what are your thoughts on a company blog curating content and re-publishing interesting articles – I saw you mentioned it as a don’t in your table.
Look forward to your comments.
Anamika Joshi
Tanya
Great start to ROdinhoods. welcome and thanks for sharing your know-how. The list of what you can do in your blog is interesting and very helpful. It might help me in mine and for my client blogs as well. Thanks a lot!
Tanz
Hey Perzen,
Glad that you liked the article. 🙂
I definitely think a company should blog! Guest posts are a great way to introduce yourself in your industry; it will help you establish yourself as a voice and gain you some credibility. But a company blog is more about giving back to your community and having conversations with them. Like how you wouldn’t go and use someone else’s Facebook page or Twitter account to talk to your followers, similarly you don’t want to talk to your community through someone else’s mouth.
And there is so much to share with your readers – your experiences and stories as a start-up, inviting your readers to share their stories, addressing common problems your readers might be facing, updates about what’s happening in your industry. The best part about a company blog, is that it let’s you have a voice for your brand. With guest posts, you may have to stick to topics that that blog would want you to write about or write in a voice their readers are used to. But with your blog, it’s your company that is talking. And you can define how you want to have conversations with them and what you wish to write about.
As for re-publishing content on your blog, it is alright if done with due credit. Ask for permission from the original author of the post before you re-publish it on your blog. And give them due credit by giving a backlink to their post. That “don’t’ was more for copying and posting someone else’s work. But re-publishing with due credit, is great.
Hope the answers were satisfactory. Sorry for being too lengthy.
Tanz
Hey Anamika,
Glad to know this helped. 🙂
And thanks for the welcome. Hope to keep seeing you around.
Pawan Deokule
Interesting points laid down systematically.
Very refreshing synopsis of how to complete the business blog.
Thanks for the article.
Tanz
Hey Pawan,
You’re welcome. 🙂
Bhawana Sahu
Thanks Tanya, this was great insight into blogging. Keep us updated with the more that you come across on it.
merci beaucoup Asha for introducing this article and alok sir’s article to me. So many questions of mine got answered.
God Bless you both.