To keep your company’s new business pipeline full, you should consider creating a blog with content that adds value to your market.

The primary “gateway” to your company is shifting away from the website (static, online brochure) to a value based blog. As important as it is to have a website for your company, it is now becoming even more important to have a blog that adds value to your audience.

Benefits for creating a blog for your business:

• Is better designed for SEO
• Provides more “benefit” to your prospective target audience
• Gives your audience a reason to come back frequently
• Is a platform for dialogue and feedback from your audience
• Generates new business leads for your products and services

Here are 14 tips and recommendations on how to get started:

1. Use the WordPress.com blog platform. It is easy to use. You don’t have to involve your IT Department or initially anyone from your creative department. Keep the process simple. To begin just concentrate on doing two things: reading and writing. Content trumps everything.
2. Own your URL. WordPress is a free service but they do charge $10 to allow you to use your own URL. It is a necessity to own your URL. It will allow you to change blog platforms in the future without losing your traffic.
3. Identify your audience. One of the most critical questions to answer, “who am I writing to?” Your blog will have no focus and you wont be able to generate traffic without choosing an audience. Think “narrow and deep” rather than “wide and shallow.
4. Create the subtitle for your blog before your blog title. The subtitle should be your “descriptor” that states clearly what your blog is about. The descriptor statement is more important than your blog’s title so create one that is crystal clear.
5. Identify the categories that you will be writing to. This provides an outline for your blog and will help you to stay focused. I would suggest keeping them around 10 to 12 instead of a large number.
6. Prominently provide a way for your readers to subscribe to your blog. Place it toward the top, above the fold in your sidebar.
7. Use your photo as a logo. Keep it consistent, not only for your blog but across all other social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.).
8. Get in the habit of publishing a post 5 days a week, Monday through Friday. These can even be written and a publish date and time preselected.
9. Re-purpose your blog’s content through an email newsletter that highlights the posts that are trending higher in traffic. This simplifies the creation of a newsletter which helps you to be consistent. Also repurpose posts through Twitter and tools such as Tweetlater. These things will also greatly increase your blog’s traffic and traffic generates new business opportunities for your power and energy company.
10. Write your posts the way people read online. They usually don’t start reading a posts word-for-word, they tend to scan. Make your posts scan-able.
11. Lead with the “nugget” the “benefit.” The inverted pyramid style of writing that copywriters use. Peoples attention span and patience for online reading is much shorter than print.
12. The “Top Level Executive” or “President” should have a prominent role writing for the blog. They are the consistent face of your company your industry and prospective customers want to know the “leaders” perspective. People always want to work with people they know, like and trust. A blog provides a great way to introduce yourself to them.
13. Create a list of keywords your audience will most likely use to find your blog. Check these keywords with Google’s Key Word Tool. Select the words or phrase that you should try and dominate in search.
14. Read. Read. Read. – The more you can stay current on the news, tends & happenings in your audiences industry, the easier it is to continue your writing (posting). Get an RSS reader and start subscribing to blogs and news sources that pertain to your target audience.

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About the author

Norman Wright Jr.

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