Tips and Tricks on Growing a Good Blog for Your Small Busines

[AlexFord]

Guys, I would like to start this thread to collect valuable tips about how to grow a good small business's blog.
I will share tips every day. You are welcome to join and share your best practices as well.
Please try to post really valuable things here, so, we could help each other save time and get on-time instructions how to act and grow a blog right now.

First tip - Publish at least 1 post per day and share it on all social networks where you are.
Start a blog for your company as soon as possible. There is a fact that companies with an active blog generate 67% more leads per month! You can google it, it's true.
Once you started it - write regularly. Even if you fail on schedule, just continue to push yourself and publish.
We are not ideal and what is really helping is to pushing yourself to continue no matter what.
Your first goal - publish 1 post each day and share it on all social networks where you are.

Come back tomorrow and find another one tip!

[shadojake]

I have a blog and still feel very 'green' at it. I do love writing but feel I need to hone my skills for blogging. I would love to read tips from those who have developed a great blog.

[AlexFord]

Shadojake, great to see you here!

Second Tip - use pictures in your posts and make quality titles.
Pictures:
Just use it in every post you publish. Great picture is a magnet for users, so they can catch the text of your post after the picture.
One picture from google images can be really enough to get 40% more views.
Titles:
Use not more than 7 words. 7 words - it's a physic limit for human's short memory.
Make it catchy - title is a ticket to your post, same a s a picture, good title works like a magnet.

Stay tuned and I'll share more stuff on how to write cool posts.

[shadojake]

I have read somewhere else about including photos in posts to blogs and facebook. I try to do that if at all possible with both. Sometimes I have to make a quick post/announcement without it. But I do find that a photo helps with "views".

[NZBSS]

Also just starting out & i reckon unique engaging content is key to success. If the content is good, then the various social media sites will work, as the reader will naturally feel like sharing the content. So key tip from me is have/write good content, also look into "guest" bloggers. Nice thread, will watch closely.

[VeritasCustom]

Would you suggest using a blog platform like blogger / wordpress.com or hosting your own?

[KristineS]

It kind of depends. Don't use blogger for a business blog. I'll say that up front. It just doesn't look professional. I've used blogger to start blogs in the past, but moved the blogs to self hosted Wordpress as soon as I could.

Wordpress.com is a different animal. A lot of people may not even be able to tell if you host the blog yourself or if your using their service if you use wordpress.com. We have three business blogs for two businesses, and one of them is on wordpress.com as I write this. Still looks professional, and I can guarantee that most people reading the blog won't know the difference.

That said, I tend to go for self hosting. Quite frankly, if you pay for premium services on Wordpress.com, which you're probably going to want to do, you'll spend about as much as you would to pay for hosting of the blog on your own.

[JohnF]

Wordpress and Wix are both good. Wordpress is more full-featured and generally cheaper, but Wix is easier. I'm on Wix rght now, may switch to Worpress next year.

About posting every day- I wouldn't compromise quality of posts for quantity. Following this rule can be counterproductive is you're posting even when you have nothing to say. I'd also be wary of putting too much time into the blog vs actually running your business. Pictures are good, titles are important- Tim Ferriss wrote something a long time ago about how he uses Twitter to split-test titles for his blog posts, but you need a sizable following to do that well.

[LeadMaster]

Blog titles are important. It's ideal to not give the article away in the title but rather to have the reader question what you will be sharing. For example "Sony Vegas is great for video editing" vs "Edit your video efficiently with this program" - what title will have more draw?

[on_my_own]

Do you mostly use pictures, videos, articles etc from other websites often when posting a blog?