Blogging can be a great way to enhance your company’s profile online, as well as help you connect with other business blogs in your industry. However, there are so many nuances and intricacies associated with blogging that you need to be careful exactly how you approach it, and how you expect it to work for you. Take a look at just a few of the myths about blogging and why you should keep them in mind as you are developing content for your blog.
Myth #10 – A blog needs to be updated everyday. – Most blogs, especially business blogs, do not need to be updated each day, but you should keep content coming up on it regularly.
Myth #9 – You can write about anything you want and be fine. – This is not true since you need to be focused on your industry or what your business does. Sporadic blog posts about holidays, events, etc. are fine, but that shouldn’t be what your blog is primarily about.
Myth #8 – Internal linking isn’t important with a blog. – Internal linking within your blog is extremely important, it helps search engine spiders push your entire website higher on the results page when someone searches for you or your industry.
Myth #7 – Your blog is the main factor in search engine ranking positions. – This is not true, however it does play a big role in how highly you get ranked. A good blog can mean the difference between the #1 and #2 spots, but a blog won’t bring a website to #1 from #100.
Myth #6 – Bloggers need to have extensive knowledge of their field. – While knowledge of the field is helpful, you don’t need to know each and every little detail about everything that your blog encompasses. Generalities can work well on business blogs since your visitors will probably not be a homogeneous group.
Myth #5 – People will find your blog no matter what. – This is completely false, you need to market your blog, whether that means making it clearly visible on your front page, or doing external marketing. Very few visitors are going to find your blog randomly.
Myth #4 – User experience doesn’t matter, visitors only want to read. – The way a user experiences your website helps them to determine if they want to use it again, and if they do, will they visit it weekly, every once in awhile, or possibly daily.
Myth #3 – A blog is just a place to put ads. – Your blog can be a very important place to share information about your business, your industry, or other things happening in your area. Letting visitors know about new products or services without blatantly advertising them is a great way to use a blog. You can put ads on your blog pages, but they shouldn’t be seen as the main reason why your blog exists.
Myth #2 – Not that many people even read blogs. – Millions of people read blogs daily, some very large websites either started out purely as blogs, or still exist primarily as blogs. With a blog that is attached to a business website, your content should keep people engaged and coming back, which they may not have done if all you ever had was your static homepage.
Myth #1 – Having a managed blog isn’t worth the money. – A managed blog can be well worth the money, especially when you outsource to a company that can deeply research what would work best on your blog, and provide the content for you, so you don’t have to spend your own time writing for it.
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