Demonstrate your expertise
Creating a blog on your website or a separate blog is a great way of demonstrating your skills, expertise and knowledge of your specialist area. Your customers and prospects will see from your blog that your business is proactive and passionate about what it delivers, and that you are educating your marketplace, rather than selling to it.
A web log, or ‘blog’ for short, is a regular online article about a specific theme or subject. Articles are normally 200-300 words long, and could contain images, photos and references to other online trusted sources. A blog is usually in reverse time order, with the latest blog article is being at the top of the blog.
Searchable
Most blogs are searchable by keyword or subject. When creating a blog, the author often ‘tags’ articles with different tag words and phrases to allow readers to filter blog articles by these categorised tags.
A really populate blog technology is WordPress. Creating a blog in WordPress is easy – as WordPress is very easy to setup and use. Many websites are now written using WordPress technology, as WordPress is a Content Management System as well as a blog management tool.
Tips
Tips to blogging include always thinking about your readers first. Sounds pretty obvious, but what ongoing themes would interest them enough to come back to read your next article? What frequency should you blog at – monthly, weekly or daily? Report the facts and data carefully and accurately. When creating a blog, make personal opinion obvious that it’s your personal opinion. Many people now rely on the ‘blogosphere’ and assume, perhaps wrongly, that everything they read is accurate and factually correct. In the USA, Barack Obama is really concerned about the number of citizens treating online blogs as fact-based news content.
Recommendation
Before creating a blog, my recommendation is to look at a few blogs in your industry sector, and have a go at writing a monthly article to start with. Keep it short, accurate, make references, and also state a personal opinion or recommendation too.
Martin Lewis – MoneySavingExpert Blog