Dude, Blog Your Business!

We always recommend to our business clients that they use images in their blog posts. Not only does it make it much more interesting for the reader, it makes the whole blog much more attractive and enticing, much more likely to encourage the casual browser to stay and explore deeper. However, images are also extremely effective SEO tools as well.
 
The two places you need to optimize for the search engines when it comes to images are the image file name and the alt tags. The file name is a great opportunity to use one or two relevant keywords. Instead of naming your image “pic1.jpg”, name it something useful. For example, I named the image for this post “blog_seo_tips.jpg” –  3 good keywords that could be picked up by the search engines. You can further enhance the SEO by filling in the alt=”*” tags in the html view – for example, “How images in blogs enhance SEO”. ALT tags are the things that describe the image, showing up as text as you mouse over the image itself. Search engines look for subject relevant text and these are two additional places where you can get those keywords found.

Images should always be relevant to the subject and should be used at at least medium size if not large. Thumbnail images should be avoided as they just don’t look right in the blog post, and large images are more likely to be perceived as important to the post’s textual content. It probably sounds obvious but you should also make sure that you use good quality images. Badly framed or blurry images will create a poor impression of your blog and by implication, your business. Also, always place the image at the top and center justify for large images, left justify for smaller images which will let the text flow around the right edge of the image. It is important to be consistent so that your blog has a uniform and professional look.

Finally, if you can, vary your images with the odd video. Find something relevant on YouTube – they are easy to embed into your blog and, although you don’t get to use alt tags with them, it does make it a more varied and interesting experience for your readers – and that, afterall is the most important aspect of any blog, business or otherwise!

There is no doubt that a blog is greatly enhanced when you get participation through the comments section. Although you, as the business owner, are trying to demonstrate your knowledge and authority through the blog, readers insights, questions and conversations greatly add to that depth of knowledge. It also goes to increasing a sense of community where people will be much more likely to return and join in that conversation because their input is valued.

There are a number of ways that you can encourage that participation by what you write in your posts. One way is to ask! Simple eh? But how many bloggers do it? At the end of your post you just add a sentence that says something like “If anyone has a different opinion on the matter we’d love to hear from you” or “If anyone knows of other …” etc. Most importantly you should always make the time to answer a comment when you receive one, otherwise you risk missing out on that conversation.

When you do reply, be sure to reply with more than just a generic “thank you for making a good point”. Reply with depth and with something that moves the conversation along. If another person replies to a comment, don’t feel obliged as the blogger to join in the conversation. Sometimes it is better to let the conversation run and, maybe, join in if you have something pertinent to say. If you get a lot of comments on your posts this can be a great way to let the readers lead the conversation rather than you having to answer each and every comment. But it is something you need to closely monitor.

We always try to encourage owners of business blogs to stay positive with both their blog posts and their comments. It sets the tone for the readers and while a negative reader comment can sometimes be useful, in that the business owner can be seen to overcome it, it should always be answered in an equally positive manner. In the end, conversations are what makes blogs so powerful for businesses. It is the next best thing to a face-to-face networking event. Make the most of your conversations!

Something I hear fairly often when I talk to business owners at networking events is that they worry about how much time it is going to take. Well, it is like anything in life, if you don’t put anything in you won’t get anything back. Business owners attend networking meetings – how much out of their day does that take? Two hours? Ultimately, it is the business owner who knows most about their business, and it is their authority and expertise that is being built through the blog – so are they not the best people to post on the blog? We at Dude, Blog Your business certainly think so – we encourage, and even train business owners how to post on their blogs.

In terms of time, it shouldn’t take more than half an hour to post on your blog. You should certainly post on the blog at least twice a week if possible, and space the posts out so each gets picked up by different search engine crawls. The more often you can post the more attention you will get from the search engines, but the content must be useful and worth reading to a potential client. Visitors to your blog won’t bother to return if they see poorly written or unhelpful content. Neither will they share your content with their friends – the point of Social Media Marketing!

You don’t have to write a novel, though. There are no hard and fast rules but 200 – 300 words is plenty. People are more likely to read several bite-sized chunks rather than one long piece. Keep it light and chatty as well – remember who your potential audience is. And PLAN AHEAD! If you need to use technical terms or jargon terms, explain them. Most importantly, always include a picture. It makes the blog post more appealing, more fun to read and will draw people in to the blog far more if you use plenty of images, and videos of course. Just make sure they are relevant and not copyrighted! YouTube is a good source of videos and make it easy for you to embed them into your post. For still images StockXchng   has a good selection of copyright free images.
 
Business owners will need to incorporate their blog into their daily routine, and it is a different mind set than with a website, but it is a rewarding one both on a marketing level and a personal level. And, if you ever need to get an idea of how a post should look and feel, we have plenty of examples on our blog!