Phil McElhinney via Compfight

Blogging For Business – Getting Started

This is the first in a series of articles aimed at businesses that want to start blogging as part of their marketing strategy. There are loads of reasons why you should do this but the main ones are:

  • Improving your website SEO with regular content updates
  • Reaching more potential customers through the internet
  • Proving your expertise and knowledge through customer-focused articles
  • Building your reputation and trust

Through these articles I’ll help you understand how to set up a blog, how to decide what to write about, and how to get your message out there. The good news is that there are great free blogging tools to help you and it’s all a lot less complicated than you might think.

Setting up a blog site

The first thing you will need is somewhere to create, store and publish your content. I’m a confirmed WordPress devotee and it’s what I recommend to all of my clients – so that’s what I’m going to focus on. It’s easy to use, flexible and powerful. Other tools are, of course, available.

There are two options for setting up a WordPress site. You can either have a site hosted by wordpress.com or you can host your own. WordPress.com is the simplest option but there are a few trade-offs.

WordPress.com sites

If you want a basic site and are happy to have a blog address that is something like rshcopywriting/wordpress.com, then you can be up and running in minutes at no cost. If you want an individual design, customised domain and so on you can still be up and running quickly with .com and the cost will be $100 – $150 per year depending on what offers are running. If you’re not a confident IT user and don’t want to spend time maintaining your site .com could be for you. It’s not a perfect solution (I’ll explain why in a minute) but it’s a lot better than doing nothing.

Here’s the link to wordpress.com

Self-hosted blogs

A more powerful option is to host your own site using wordpress.org, which is a fully open source solution. The .org option gives you more flexibility for how your site looks and the options you have for sharing your content and optimising it for search engines.  Also, because you are hosting the blog on your own domain you can integrate it with your brochure website so that you benefit more directly from the internet traffic and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that your blog creates.

If you have a website, your existing developer/host should be able to help you get set up without a huge cost. If you don’t already have a website you could consider using WordPress for everything. WordPress recommends several hosting companies that have a ‘one click’ installation. Pay your hosting fee (usually a few dollars per month), choose your domain name, click the button and you’re ready to start building your site.

You can add pages to your blog so that it looks just like a ‘normal’ website and I know several smaller companies who have decided to use this option rather than paying a website design company. Many web designers use WordPress to create cost-effective sites with a content management system rather than building from scratch.

Themes, Widgets and Plug-ins

You will get an admin login for your blog which will take you to the ‘dashboard’. The dashboard allows you to add and edit pages and posts, and control everything that your blog does. This applies to .com and self-hosted but you get a lot more options with self hosting.

The first job is usually to select your theme. This controls the look and feel of the site (colours, fonts etc). There are several free themes available to give you plenty of choice. Be careful to use something from a reputable source to make sure your site works properly. There are also themes that you can buy for a modest annual cost. Look at any user feedback before deciding. Again, self hosting gives you more options for controlling the appearance of your site.

Another option you will see with self-hosting is ‘Widgets’. These allow you to add little bits of functionality to your blog. If you want a calendar, index of topics, weblinks or text displayed in a sidebar or footer, you can achieve this easily by dragging widgets around the dashboard screen.

You then have a range of options to include plug-ins for the important functions on your blogging site. I’ll say more about these next time but the essential ones are for social sharing, SEO and security. There’s an an easy to use search function so finding suitable plug-ins is simple.

Hopefully this introduction has encouraged you to give blogging a go – it really is worth the effort.

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