Small Business Philippines

If you are a member of every social and business networking site currently available on the internet, then the only thing you are missing is a great corporate blog!

The only way your future customers can find out about your products and services is to be in as many places as possible, and that includes all avenues the internet has to offer. That includes blogging!

Whether you own your own home business or operate a growing online business, it is time to increase your web presence one more notch by starting a corporate blog to present yourself to the world. Here are ten quick tips to get you started.

1. Identify the purpose of your blog and who your intended audience is, before you even start typing! Just having a place in the blogophere is not enough, you need a valid reason to be there and that must be obvious to others who stumble upon your space.

2. Learn about effective SEO (search engine optimization) practices so that your posts will be picked up by the main search engines and give you a larger internet presence. Avoid stuffing keywords into related posts—that doesn’t work anymore!

3. Never let your blog appear dead. Keep regular updates coming whatever you have to do. Daily updates are best, but at least get one article posted per month. The more content, the more interest others will take in your blog, and your business.

4. If you can’t keep up with the daily posts, write a week or more at one time so they are ready. You may even want to hire a copywriter to do some of the work if you cannot keep up with it.

5. Don’t approach your blog as if you are talking to a bunch of suits sitting around a long table. You want to be approachable and understandable to anyone who finds you, so use friendly, accessible language. Humor is always a plus!

6. Pay attention to grammar—not just because it takes away from your credibility but because it is simply annoying for most people to read text littered with typos. It will appear as if you don’t care about what you are doing.

7. Don’t waste your time quickly typing out whatever comes to mind and posting things that have little value to anyone. Instead, aim to post informative articles that others will want to read. This may very well be your first impression on future customers or business partners.

8. Don’t just write your blog, but read other blogs as well! Hearing what others are talking about in your industry will keep you at the top of the heap and one step ahead.

9.Your own business or company website should not be your primary focus of every blog. This is not the place for hard selling or to shove products down someone’s throat. Use this space to demonstrate that you know your field inside and out and are aware of what is going on in the industry as a whole. Tap into news articles, other blogs, and anything else that is attention grabbing. If it interests you, there is a good chance it will interest others as well.

10. Instead of posting really long messages, break them up into installments to keep your readers coming back, and make it easier to update on a regular basis! Aim to keep posts under 500 words.