When you first set up a business blog, you have two options for hosting – a standard blog platform such as wordpress.com or self-hosting via a variety of methods. If you sign up to a platform, your blog name will be generated for you in a format approximating:

yourcompanyname.yourbloghostsname.com/DD/MM/YY/title-of-blog

This has some SEO value (especially if you’re linking your anchor text back to your main site), but for maximum impact, hosting the blog on your own website is the way to go. A good web developer will have no problems integrating a Wordpress blog platform into your existing website.

However, if you do decide to host the blog away from your main website, spending significant time on choosing your title is a good investment. So what makes a good blog name?

The ideal business blog name should be reflective of your brand and industry, while retaining a descriptive element. Contrary to popular opinion it is not necessary to have ‘blog’ in the title; so many sites now have this as a keyword that it’s impossible to compete for high rankings – far better to focus on your USP and content.

You need to ensure that whatever name is chosen is also future-proof. Something that is very cutting-edge now may date quickly, forcing you to change the title. This will destroy any reputation you have built under that business blog name, essentially putting you back at square one.

Always check that no-one else is publishing under the same, or similar, title. As well as forcing you to directly compete for traffic, it can also lead to all sorts of nasty copyright issues which could, in a worst case scenario, force the closure of your business blog.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much a free rein. Business blogs are a great opportunity to showcase creativity, and that begins with your title.

If you write business blog articles regularly, one of the biggest challenges you’ll face is trying to come up with innovative, engaging, and original ideas. So how do you keep your content fresh and interesting week after week?

To keep both yourself and your reader engaged, you want to mix up the ways in which you interact. When you’re writing articles for your company’s blog, rotate between the three main types of content:  comment or opinion; list posts, such as ‘Top five ways to boost your business’; and news posts which react to current events.

If you focus more on articles for other websites (i.e. if you’re following a guest blogging strategy), then try to write for a variety of online publications. Keeping your style shifting and evolving will keep you engaged by making your brain work harder and appeal to your readers as they are always given something different and new.

But where does the content come from? Everyone has their own way of sourcing ideas, whether it’s through osmosis or research. Most writers keep a notepad in constant attendance, jotting down ideas as and when they come, whether it’s from a conversation held, a book read or a radio show listened to. The book can be a home for anything and everything; if it fires your imagination, write it down.

Don’t be afraid to mix these ideas up with your own thoughts and opinions either – the most important thing, whether writing articles or blogs, is to provide something people haven’t read before; so don’t just repeat ideas – improve on them.

Write My Site will be exhibiting at this year’s Online Marketing Show, which is one of four shows that comprise Marketing Week Live. It takes place on Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th June at the Grand Hall, Olympia.

As part of the show, we will be delivering a workshop called ‘Blogging for Business’ at 1.20pm on Tuesday 29th June.

Tickets for Marketing Week Live cost £20 on the door, but you can get free tickets in advance by clicking the banner at the top of this blog post and entering ‘Write My Site’ in the invitation code box.

Hope to see you there! (We’re at Stand A420, near the cafe).

P.s. We’re giving away free chocolate on our stand. Not that we’re trying to tempt you or anything …

So, you’ve written your new blog article, now the question is – how do you get people to come and read it? One way to attract attention is to spend some time thinking about your blog categories and tags, but what are they and how can they be used?

Categories: Categories are the internet’s equivalent of a filing system. You can create your own category list, which should consist of very broad headings that cover a wide range of topics. A good example would be one category for each key business area and a miscellaneous.

These categories will form a key part of your website’s navigation strategy. Every blog should be filed under one category only, allowing those who visit your site to easily navigate to the content they want.

Tags: Tags work in tandem with your categories to provide more detail. They are more specific and can cover as many topics as necessary; however, there should not be multiple tags on the same topic. For example, an art blog should choose between ‘drawing’ and ‘sketching’ as a tag and use the same one across all relevant posts.

Tags are a search tool; they enable a customer to type in their keyword of interest and instantly see everything relevant your blog holds. If used effectively they can not only help you gain traffic, but ensure that visitors are seeing exactly what they want to see.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the nitty-gritty of blog writing. The finer details of SEO, word count and Google rankings can sometimes obscure the entire point of writing a blog in the first place. So, why should you invest time in business blog writing?

First of all, it’s a cost-effective marketing tool. Publishing online can be done at little or no cost across many different platforms, whether you wish to utilise established networks through multimedia sites, create an account with an independent blog platform, or integrate a blog facility into your own website, ensuring continuity of brand identity.

Whichever route you choose, a blog provides an unparalleled opportunity for you to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, with a potentially massive audience. The instant, and relatively ephemeral, nature of blog publication means you can create and publish unique web content extremely quickly, reacting to industry developments and current affairs almost before they happen; placing you at the cutting edge of your field.

Returning to the golden rule of web content (i.e. it is all about the customer) blogs are an excellent way to provide advice, answering problems that you know are prevalent amongst your client base. This advice can act as a teaser for your own services, attracting more custom. They also provide a fantastic opportunity to interact with clients through a comments section, creating a dialogue.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article PR or SEO copywriting. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Blogging is not a formal writing style and as such you don’t always need to adhere to the strictest grammatical or structural forms. Here are our top three rules that you can bend – and one that you shouldn’t.

The rules you can bend

Splitting infinitives: Once of the most notorious TV catchphrases in history is Star Trek’s ‘To boldly go’, the bane of grammar pedants for decades. The entire show is about space exploration and the key word is ‘go’. To hide this mid-catchphrase in ‘to go boldly’ would diminish the entire phrase’s power. It can have a similar effect within your blog.

The one-sentence paragraph: When setting out the structure for your business blog, the general consensus is to cover one key point in each paragraph. The exception to this comes in one-sentence paragraphs which add nothing new to your structure, but emphasise what has gone before.

And that’s a fact!

Beginning a sentence with conjunctions: This is largely frowned upon in formal writing and many people hold it is downright wrong. However, as you may have noticed from the sentence above, it is fine in more conversational forms to avoid overlong sentences and add emphasis. Business blog writers often use this technique as a way of making the content more informal and interactive than other kinds of web content.

The rule you should keep

Here is your unbreakable law for business blog writing.

Apostrophes: An apostrophe can take the place of missing letters – as in don’t for do not – or indicate a possessive proper noun, such as ‘this is Julie’s scarf’. Only use the apostrophe in one of these two situations.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Matt Chatterley of Mattched IT is our guest author for the first of a series of features about how businesses are using blogs as part of their marketing activities.

Once in a while, I wonder if the premise under which we run the Mattched IT Blog is good or not - then I stop procrastinating and get back to the business at hand - typically writing up another blog post.

The reason I tell you this is because our blog is distinctly different from most corporate blogs - partly because we are a small business - and partly because we want it to be different. The goal of our blog (and indeed, this meshes with our whole approach to Social Media) is to engage an audience that is wider than our immediate client base and to promote an atmosphere in which they feel comfortable communicating with us.

Of course, behind the scenes, it’s part of our marketing strategy and ultimately we have the aim of winning more business through Social Media. Instead of constant streams of “Hey, look at our Product X!” and so forth, we try to focus most of our blog posts on issues which come up in the day to day running of our business, topics which we as directors are interested in and items which we feel would be of interest to our audience. The intended results from this are a greater depth of interaction and promoting ourselves amongst said audience as a good source of information.

We recently won a good piece of business with our combined social media strategy.  A prospect got in touch through our website and mentioned they’d been referred to us on Twitter. Not recognising the name of the referrer, we were slightly confused, until upon further investigation we realised what had happened.

One of the people whom we interact quite often via Social Media had recommended us to someone they deal with regularly - because they thought we might be able to assist with an ongoing problem. Although said referree had not yet had time to get in touch, they had been asked if they could help with an upcoming project by one of their own clients. Because they were not able to - and presumably because we were fresh in their mind - they referred the client to us.

I think this is a great example of how maintaining a profile in the world of Social Media is valuable to a business (particularly if service or consultancy based) - and in my opinion, why you should seek deeper engagement than simply telling people what you’re selling. We regularly post links to our blog on Twitter, which has helped establish us as an authority source, and that’s what triggered the chain of events that led to us winning our new client.

Write My Site has today issued a press release, analysing the results of the latest studies into corporate blogging habits, namely that:

• 80% of corporate blogs are never populated with more than 5 articles; and

• 75% of European organisations have yet to add blogging into the marketing mix

Please visit our Press section to read the full release, and use the contact details in the footer for any enquiries.

Given that we have recently set up a group on Linkedin called ‘Content Marketing for SMEs’ it seemed an appropriate moment to explore some content marketing strategies.

Let’s start by examining what sort of content businesses can use as part of a content marketing strategy. Talks for networking events, presentations, pitches, speeches and training materials are all types of content that most businesses produce from time to time. They can be incorporated into an online content marketing strategy by:

•    Turning the material into articles for your corporate blog and announcing it on social networks such as Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.

•    Contributing guest pieces to other corporate blogs (with a back-link to your website, of course).

•    Spinning any news-worthy angle into a press release and sending it to journalists in your industry.

•    Creating a white paper that is available for download through your website … in exchange for the recipients’ email addresses.

•    Writing articles for publication and syndication.

•    Sending a monthly e-newsletter to your database of customers and prospects containing highlights from your corporate blog and any attention-grabbing company news.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article writing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

The main aim of a business blog is to bring customers to your website and to associate your brand with their requirements. Therefore, the more regular readers you have, the more word-of-mouth you are likely to attract and the more successful your blog will be. So how can you turn casual readers into a fan club?

One of the most crucial points of your business blog for grabbing readers is the ‘call to action’, usually a single word that inspires a reader to join your blog. The most popular term in Internet parlance is ‘subscribe’, which can cause confusion among some readers. Off-line, subscriptions usually incur a financial charge, whereas you want your readers to sign up for free. You may like to consider ‘join’ or ‘follow’ as less loaded alternatives. This will apply both within your blog and any ‘sign-up’ buttons.

As variety is the spice of life, it’s best to offer several ways to follow your business blog. RSS is a relatively new technology, popular among web-savvy clients, but not currently accepted into popular use. For clients who aren’t up to speed – you may like to offer an email subscription feed, which follows a more traditional format.

Like most aspects of creating a business blog, your two key aims are to be clear and inclusive. If you apply this to your language, your overall tone and your formatting you’ll quickly see passers-by turn into pals.

Remember Write My Site offers a full blog management service if your business wants to add blogging into the marketing mix. Tariffs start from just £150 per month.