Business Logs

Helping companies communicate better

Your Business Blog Needs To Be On Your Site

Your business blog should be part of your site. However, Krishna De writes that many businesses have opted to create their blog on third-party sites like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, and Typepad.com.

She gives two reasons why it’s so much better to place your blog on your own domain.

First, you want the links of your blog to benefit your site. She writes:

If you are going to invest in business blogging, be good to yourself… don’t have all those wonderful incoming links to your great content go to a blog that is not hosted by you.

Links are the most important factor in achieving higher search traffic. If your blog is on your site, all the links pointing to your blog will raise the search traffic of your whole site including the home page and product pages.

Second, Krishna writes that a blog on your site “makes you makes you look like you take business blogging seriously as part of your online marketing strategy.”

More Reasons

To add to Krishna’s points, here are two more reasons to blog on your own domain.

It’s more professional.

The vast majority of blogs on these third-party sites are not commercially-oriented. Instead of associating your blog with these sites, associate your blog with your business.

Of course, you don’t want to alienate non-commercial bloggers. These bloggers will often be great sources of traffic. But you do want to make it clear that your blog is part of a business.

Finally, if you use a third-party site, they have control over your blog.

I’ve heard of horror stories about third-party sites deleting blogs because of terms of service violations. The bloggers didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. They tried to get their blogs restored but to no avail.

How to Switch Over

If you have your blog hosted by a third-party but want to move it to your site, here is my recommendation.

Write a blog post pointing your readers to the new URL. Also, remind them to update their RSS subscription to your new feed.

What if Your Business Became a Regular Part of People’s Lives?

In this interview back in December 2007, Gary Vaynerchuk talked about the video blog he added to his wine business site.  In less than 2 years, his blog, Wine Library TV, got so much traffic that he was noticed by mainstream media.  He appeared TV shows like Conan O’Brien and Nightline.  His blog was covered on magazines like Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine.

Also, he got an email that said:

Gary, the place in my heart that was occupied by Grey’s Anatomy has been replaced by Wine Library TV. I can only be a one-watcher kind of person and it’s the only thing that I watch now.

Amazing, right?  In the mind of the email sender, a business site was worth her attention more than a popular primetime TV show.

Become Part of People’s Lives Like Traditional Media

The internet has leveled the playing field.  Much of the world’s population is interacting and buying things online.  And it’s cheap to produce online content – even video and audio.  Therefore, any online business can now compete with traditional media for attention.

You can produce a video blog like Gary and start building your own following.

Or you can start an audio blog, or podcast.  Many people have their favorite talk radio station.  Your podcast could become like a talk radio show that people in your target audience look forward to.

Or you can start a traditional blog based on text.  Think about the many people with magazine subscriptions.  Your blog can function like a magazine subscription.  It gives people an incentive to return to your site on a regular basis.

If you publish great content on a regular basis, you won’t need to rely on traditional advertising to get traffic.  Your content will be building an audience of fans that will support you and recommend your content to other people. This will increase your traffic, which will lead to higher sales.

3 Ways Blogging Greatly Increases Your Google Traffic

If you want increase your Google traffic, blogs are the way to go.  Here are 3 reasons why.

1. Google likes updated content.

The problem with many business sites is they don’t publish new content on a regular basis. Just having a home page, an about page, and product pages is not enough today. You need a section on your site that is regularly updated with fresh content.

My friend Ryan, the owner of an internet firm that does web marketing, wrote about his experience with static sites versus regularly updated sites:

One thing we’ve noticed over the last year is that static websites are at a disadvantage. Over the past few years, search engines have added elements to their algorithms that often prefer fresh data. Or, at the very least, the search algorithms of today tend to prefer domains that provide a steady stream of new content.

Many online businesses have greatly increased their Google traffic by starting a blog. They publish on their blog a couple of times a month and Google rewards them with many new visitors.

2. Google likes a lot of content.

Google and other search engines look at many factors to determine their search results pages. One of those factors is looking at the keywords on a page.

If you have a blog, you’ll be publishing a lot of content. This content is what I like to call “Google fodder”. Each blog post you publish is a page that Google can send traffic to (based on the keywords on the post). The more posts you publish, the more keywords you target. The more keywords you target, the more traffic Google will send you.

3. Google likes links.

The biggest factor for getting more Google traffic is links. If you can get quality websites to link to your site, you will greatly increase your Google traffic.

Reputable search engine marketers will tell you that the best way to build links is through producing quality content and promoting it.

On a blog, you share your knowledge about your industry. If you promote your blog, you will build links in no time.

Also, the way Google works is links pointing to any section on your site increases traffic to the whole site. This means even if all your links point to your blog, your home page and product pages will receive more Google traffic.

3 Reasons Not to Target Too Many Social Media Sites

I gave a couple tips for finding the social media sites your target audience is using.  If you follow those tips, you’ll probably find many places where prospective customers are talking about your industry.

The temptation is too join all those sites.  However, this is usually a bad idea.

Less is More

For the majority of business bloggers, participating on 1-3 social media sites is enough.  You don’t want to overextend your social media efforts.

1. Social media marketing takes more time than you probably realize.

If you join a social voting site, it takes time to round up votes.  Also, you’ll need to submit content that’s not your own.  (This keeps you from looking like a spammer. )  Finding content takes time.

If you join a forum, it takes time to respond to other forum members.

Plus, unexpected opportunities will come up, but you’ll need to spend extra time to take advantage of them.  For example, you meet someone with whom you can create a profitable partnership.  But it will take time to send the emails/private messages/IMs to make the partnership a reality.

Social media marketing can easily become a full-time job if you focus on too many sites.  But as business bloggers, we can’t spend all that time.  We still have blog posts to write and a business to run.

2. It takes time to understand a community.

We’ve all met someone and had an initial impression about them.  But as we got to know them, we’ve often been wrong on our impression.

This type of experience also happens with social media.  You may think you understand the members of a social media site.  However, as you participate on the site, you’ll learn many new things about the members and the culture they’ve created.

Much of the benefit in social media marketing is knowing a community well.  This knowledge allows you to promote your business in such a way that appeals to them.

The more time you spend on a social media site, the faster you will understand that community’s culture.  Therefore, participate on fewer sites.  This lets you spend more time on each site.

3. It takes time to build a reputation.

Building your business’ reputation (or brand, in traditional marketing terms) is very important on the internet.

To improve your reputation with a community, you’ll need to earn their trust.  Trust, like in real life, takes time to earn.

On forums, it’s the members that have hundreds – maybe even thousands of posts – that wield a lot of influence.  On social voting sites, it’s members that make thousands of votes and hundreds of submissions that drive a lot of traffic.  On blogs, it’s the commenters that comment regularly that get click-throughs to their site.

You will need to be a prolific participant to become an influential member.  This means adding value consistently to the community for a significant time period – at least a couple of months.

With consistent participation being an important part to building your reputation, it makes sense to participate in a few social media sites.  If you participate in too many sites, you won’t have the time to be consistent.