Ask any social media guru and they’ll tell you your business needs to have a blog. But, just as with other forms of social media, it’s not immediately clear how to create and maintain a blog that generates traffic to your business’s site. Here are five simple steps to put you on the right track.

1. Keep it simple

Complispace is a company providing governance risk and compliance programs to small businesses in Australia. To increase traffic through its website the company started a blog, posting monthly updates on what was happening in the governance risk and compliance space.

“We would take what had happened and digest it for the readers in a bit of a fun and sometimes humourous way,” explains Jessica Price, marketing co-ordinator at Complispace. “We’d also take a critical view of some of the things the regulators were doing. This struck a chord with some of our readers and that’s essentially how the blog started to grow.”

Price claims the success of the blog is largely to do with how it manages to turn relatively dry information into a simple format.

“We found success in keeping it simple and light,” says Price. “A lot of our competitors in the industry weigh their content down really focussing on regurgitating what has been put out by a certain act or regulator, whereas we try and take it and make it easy for the reader and help them understand it. We like to keep governance risk compliance simple, and that’s probably what our readers like most.”

Lara Solomon heads a social media consultancy called Social Rabbit. The business’s site consists primarily of a blog that she uses to address various tidbits on how organisations can make the most of their social media presence. She insists that much of the appeal of her site is the simple way she communicates ideas.

“It’s to do with the language that you use and the way you communicate with people, being on their level,” says Solomon.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that a blog has to cater to the lowest common denominator, but instead that the complexity of the content matches audience expectation.

“Some other blogs that I read are aimed at a much higher level where you need to have an understanding of XYZ before you can even know what they’re talking about,” says Solomon. “It’s all about knowing your audience. That’s a really big part of blogging, just as it is a big part of anything to do with marketing.”

It’s advisable to keep any kind of online copy as concise and easy to read as possible. It’s also wise to encompass sources of information other than your own business.

“Don’t make it all about you,” advises Solomon.

She actively seeks out and includes links to examples of what she’s writing about.

“That kind of stuff is really good for people because they can see what you’re talking about as well as read about it,” she explains.

2. Keep it up

A crucial element for the success of any business blog is that it’s regularly updated.

“Consistency is really important,” says Solomon. “I try and blog daily. It doesn’t always happen, but that’s what makes a blog successful. When I first started I was blogging two to three times a week, and I did that for the first three months,” she continues. “Then, I switched to daily, and there was a massive increase in traffic, comments and social sharing.”

Pete Williams of Preneur Marketing notes that the biggest mistake that businesses make with blogging is to stop posting regularly.

“People sometimes forget to post,” he says. “They start a blog, and create a prominent ‘read our blog’ button on their website, and they then don’t post very regularly.”

Williams believes that such negligence can have a disproportionately negative effect on the business.

“If someone comes to your blog to get a feel for the company only to discover that the last post was about the Olympics two years ago, and how that related to the business, then the message they’re seeing is that you’re not a market leader anymore, you’re not on the cutting edge.”

3. Make it engaging

The real challenge with business blogging is to create content that keeps readers coming back. Williams believes it’s important that content provides a commentary on the business’s industry, and that owners shouldn’t cede their opinions to avoid controversy.

“Controversy is a good thing,” he says. “You’re going to polarise some people, but in business you can’t be everything to everyone. A blog is a good way for a business owner to position themselves, and actually build some commentary around their industry,” he continues. “That way it’s going to get you back-links to your website, it’s going to start a conversation, and it’s going to show the business owner as a market leader in the space.”

It’s also a good idea not to be too formal, and to let some of the business’s personality into the content.

“Having a personality is a big thing, too,” says Williams. “It allows you to put a face to your business. It’s not just XYZ Inc. talking about a subject, it’s actually a person behind the brand. That way, the reader of the blog can get a feel for the culture of the company, for the brand, and for the type of people they’re going to experience when they open up their wallet and transact with the business. Rather than having to get on the phone and deal with a sales person, they can get a feel of who they’ll be dealing with and whether the culture and fit of the business is actually what they want.”

Another key to making engaging content is to vary the mediums you use.

“You want to try and include photos and videos, not necessarily in every blog post, but you need to make it visually appealing initially, so that people want to look at it,” suggests Social Rabbit’s Solomon.

4. Don’t stress over design

By its very nature, a blog is a relatively simple web construction. Typically, it consists of little more than a stream of posts. For this reason, it’s not essential to a blog’s success for it to be impeccably designed. Rather, it needs to functionally adhere to what people expect of it.

“For example, it needs to be easy to navigate,” says Solomon. “Design is important, but it all comes back to basic stuff like having a search box and categories, so people don’t have to wade through all of your articles.”

Solomon’s own blog builds on the basic layout with a number of designer flourishes, but this largely comes down to the fact that it’s her business’s primary web presence; there is no Social Rabbit website other than the blog.

“There are some simply designed blogs that do exceptionally well,” she says. “For example, ProBlogger has three million people going to it every month. With respect to design, it’s functional, but it’s not as ‘nice looking’ as mine is, in terms of graphics and design. It really depends on who you’re trying to appeal to.”

5. Drive traffic

Given that a blog is essentially the most fundamental form of social media – and provided it’s updated frequently – it makes sense to use other, more complex channels to drive traffic to it.

“Things like tweeting your blog posts and posting them on your Facebook page are a good idea,” says Solomon. “I have an RSS feed that people can subscribe to, and can share with their friends. I have an e-newsletter that I send out to people, and a blog post is featured in that every fortnight. I also go to other blogs and comment.”

Preneur Marketing’s Williams advises that it’s important to keep the business’s core values and products in mind when formulating content and writing plans.

“You have to have that SEO mindset in play when you’re writing the copy,” he says. “Make sure the headline has some keywords in there, because it’s a great way to get some initial traffic and rankings for your website, and to help the rest of your site rank for key products and terms. If you’re an accountant and you want to rank for terms like BAS statement lodgement, or GST advice, or tax advice, you want to make sure that the posts you’re writing have those keywords in the headline, because it will help your blog rank for those terms.”

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