Sean Romanoff Communications

So you’ve bought in to the value of a blog for your business. You understand it keeps your site vital and dynamic. You know it can position you as a thought leader in your field. And you become a go-to source for information. That’s all good. You’re ready to get started, right? Well…sort of.

Before you put fingers to keyboard, you should answer a few questions. Key among them is – who are you blogging for?

What you’re really doing  by answering this question is identifying your audience. And this is important because it forces you to think about who your clients or customers really are. What do they look like? What are they concerned about? What are they interested in? Are they new or current clients or customers? Are you also talking to others in your field? Are you targeting anyone else at all?

By figuring out who your audience is, you will know the content you should include as well as the style, tone, and words you choose. These decisions will give your blog consistency so readers will instantly know it is meant for them. Once they make that decision, it’s up to you to keep providing the kind of information on you blog that will keep them coming back again and again.

One way to make sure you capture all this information is to take a spiral notebook and quite literally write out the questions and answers. This book becomes your personal blogging guide, and serves as the rudder for your blog. Of course you can change your answers to any of the question at another time, but it gives you a single place to keep all your thoughts about your blog and what you hope to achieve with it.

So NOW you’re ready to get started, right? Well, almost. And we’ll get to that next.

“I don’t even know what a blog is.” That’s one of the first things I hear from potential clients when I suggest a blog for their web sites. Well the easy answer is that a blog is a shorthand name for a weblog, a sort of online diary. But for a business it can be much more.

One benefit of a blog is that it provides a steady stream of new content for a web site. That’s a good thing in the eyes of search engines like Google and Yahoo. When they see that a site is regularly updated with new blog posts, they see it as a place that’s active and dynamic. Sites like that are given a priority in searches.

But you also benefit from what you put in a blog because it gives you the chance to show thought leadership in your industry. In other words, it gives you the chance to be seen as an expert. And as an expert you have more influence, and in many businesses you can charge more for your expertise.

People also come to see you as a source for information in that field too. When they need to learn things about your area of expertise, they come to you for the inside scoop. And this establishes a relationship. It might extend your relationship with a current customer or it could maintain a relationship with a potential one.

And these are just a few of the reasons every business should be blogging. But even if they are the only ones you see, your blog will be well worth any time and energy you put into it.