7 Things to Consider When Starting Your Own Blog

Having a blog on your website is fast becoming a fundamental essential for every business – both new and established. That’s because the addition of a blog brings many benefits, for example, did you know that businesses who blog receive 97% more link referrals to their website? And that’s not all, search engines love websites who have content-rich blogs which are updated regularly. Then there’s the fact that a blog is a very useful tool for creating your businesses’ personality and interacting with your customers.

Yes, having a blog is a must for any business, but when deciding to create your own blog what factors should you consider?

1: What Will your Blog Be About?

It’s incredibly important to know what your blog content will be about – after-all, you won’t gain a loyal readership if you post a new random topic every day. For most businesses, choosing their blog topics should be simple. For instance a bed company could write about effective ways to sleep, back pain management, bed bugs etc. However, it would be unwise for a bed company to write about pop music as this will not help sales or show potential customers that you’re an expert in your field.

2: Who’s the Competition?

Once you know what topics your blog is going to focus on, it makes sense to research your competitors. From these other blogs you’ll be able to see what people are doing successfully and unsuccessfully and from that shape your blog to be better. Try putting “top X blog” into your search engine (replacing the X with your desired topic area). There are many sites that list already established blogs that you can take inspiration from (check out this example for soccer).

3: Where Will your Blog Live?

Blogs can be put in your own subdirectory such as www.yoursite.com/blog or on a separate subdomain such as www.yoursiteblog.com. You should keep in mind though that search engines will treat subdomains as separate websites so you if you do choose that option your main website won’t reap the rewards of your blog’s content, traffic or links.

4: Will You Utilize Social Media?

It can be very frustrating to see beautifully written, relevant content on your blog but with a very low readership. One way to drive content to your blog is through the use of social media. Keep in mind though, social media can be time-consuming and deserves its own marketing plan. Choose your social media platform carefully and concentrate on just one or two. Remember not to just post endless links either – social media is meant to be social so get involved with other conversations to help extend your reach.

5: How Often Will you Post?

There is absolutely no point in having a blog if you’re only going to post fresh content once a month – you simply won’t get any of the benefits. Instead set yourself a goal to post at least once a week at first. In time raise this to two or three blog posts a week. You can even try to schedule posts for the week if you find yourself too busy.

6: Where Will you Find Content Ideas?

One of the hardest aspects of writing a blog is constantly thinking up interesting topic ideas. It makes sense to plan your topic ideas for the month ahead, look at up-coming events such as Valentine’s, Mother’s Day etc. and consider if any of these could be adapted to your topic range. Also keep an eye on the news and your competitors for new ideas.

7: Who Will Write your Blog?

A lot of businesses are put off by a blog as they don’t want or know how to write one. However, these days it’s incredibly easy to hire freelance copywriters to do the hard work for you. Sites like PPH allow you to find writers within your budget to do your writing for you. You can even ask people to think up new content for you too if you find yourself struggling.