One of the most frequent questions I get when working with small to medium local business is: “Should I add a blog to my site”. In most circumstances blogging is a good idea not only because it can help with organic search engine rankings, but it can also help add a different slant to your product/service offerings.

Why Blogging is Effective for SEO

The reason why blogging is an effective method for increasing your search engine rankings is twofold. First, a properly written blog is full of highly relevant keywords for your business. The second reason is that often your website lacks search engine friendly qualities.

For example, let’s say you start a blog for your wedding cake bakery. It would be smart to structure your blog so that each post targeted not only the keywords “wedding cake” but more specifically focus on the geographic areas you service. So, an example title of a post on your blog would be “Todd and Jeanette’s Leaning Tower of Pisa Wedding Cake”. Then, in the post you would include pictures of the cake and text like: “Jeanette wanted a reproduction of the Leaning Tower of Pisa for her wedding cake. Their tasteful Phoenix wedding was held at the Pointe Hilton…” When the search engine spiders visit your blog it will pick up these keywords and help rank your site higher for the phrase: “Wedding cake phoenix”. This is only one small piece of the blogging puzzle. The second reason why your blog helps with SEO is often because the rest of the site lacks optimization.

Many websites are developed by firms that do not build a search engine friendly structure from the start. The site can suffer from improper keyword targeting, the directory/page structure can inhibit the flow of keyword relevancy (link juice), etc… With a blog you can help mitigate some of these shortfalls. This does not mean you should forgo search engine optimization on the rest of your site. The blog should work in tandem with the rest of the site reinforcing your offering.

The Goals of Small Business Blogging

Aside from the SEO benefits of blogging, what should be the goal? Your blog can serve as an excellent way to demonstrate how your business is serving the needs of your customers. This is not the same as a white paper, case study, or press release. Your blog can be used to showcase your knowledge of a specific market by providing things like tutorials. It can be used to demonstrate how real people have benefited from your product/service or as in the case of the wedding cake example above, actually show just how great your product really is. In a broad sense think of your web site as the sales and customer service area of your business with the blog acting as public relations and as an indirect sales person.

General Tips for a Small Business Blog

So, if you are thinking of starting a blog or want to make it better, keep these points in mind:

1. Put your blog on the same domain as your main company website. Do not buy a different domain just to host your blog. You want one big comprehensive site.
2. You do not have to call your blog a blog. You can get more mileage out of it by calling it something relevant to your site. Using the Phoenix wedding cake bakery example above you can call it: “Wedding Cake Creations” and make the directory structure look like this: http://YourBusiness Site.com/wedding-cake-creations
3. You don’t have to use a blogging script to have a blog. It can be simply a part of your web site that is regularly updated. But if you do go with a script, which I highly recommend, go with WordPress.
4. Make sure to include pictures. It helps break up large blocks of text thus increasing the number of people who read the entire article.
5. Don’t be stingy with links. Use your blog to share some link love with your favorite vendors and other folks you respect in your industry.

Social Media Marketing is all the rage right now.  Going viral or hitting the front page of Digg, Reddit, etc… seems to be the Internet Marketer’s Holy Grail.  I have to admit it is very useful for:

1. Getting immediate feedback from customers
2. Managing a company’s brand
3. Connecting with likeminded individuals that would have otherwise not have been exposed to your product. 

And the list goes on, but what is often left out of the hype is the idea of doing it “right”.    Take one social media outlet Twitter.  I’m a fan of Twitter.  The best way I can describe it is image wandering through a big cocktail party listening in on various conversations.  In one corner you’ve got people talking about the latest stock tips.  In another you’ve got techno junkies discussing SEO or the latest iPhone gadget.  If you listen to the right conversation you can hear what your customers think about your product or your company over all.  You can hear what they have to say about the virtues and shortcomings your competitors.
What makes this social ecosystem go round is the idea that real people are talking about their real feelings and experiences.  The tech-savvy online crowd has industrial strength B.S. detectors.  Like sharks who can detect a drop of blood from miles away, the social media crowd can quickly sniff out a sales pitch in the midst of the social media sea.  And once that happens, your social media street-cred goes down significantly.

So what does this all mean and how can it help your business?

The first thing I would tell you is to drop the hard-sell in-your-face type of advertising.  It just doesn’t work in the social media world.  Spam an affiliate link or two via Twitter and your followers will unfollow you faster than fair weather sports fans dropped the Cardinals after they lost the Super Bowl.  The goal is to be a part of the community, whatever community that may be.

How to Get Started:

1. Sign up for a Twitter Account
2. Upload a photo and customize your page as much as you can. This is important because it is a quick and easy way to separate yourself from the fake spammer accounts.
3. Download and install a program called TweetDeck that uses Adobe Air. Don’t worry both are free.
4. At the top of the window will be several icons. One of them looks like a magnifying glass. Click on that one to search for specific keywords related to your industry.
5. Start following people who are tweeting about your area of expertise.
6. When someone tweets about your area of expertise contribute a comment with a “Reply”. Just hover over their photo and click on the icon that looks like a curved arrow.

You’ll find that a lot of the people you follow will follow you back. Make sure to tweet regularly with useful tips, news, insights, etc… that would be interesting to your audience. Remember you don’t want to come across like a spam bot but as a real person that adds value to the community. Once you are established as someone who adds value, then you’ve tapped into a powerful network of people who see you as an expert in your field. This can be used to find clients, get valuable answers to your own questions, and can help you spread a message across the Internet. Not a bad ROI if I do say so myself.