There are several different types of business blogs that are considered to be the most beneficial to business owners. The most common types of business blogs are blogs aimed at customers and blog aimed at employees, though it is considered acceptable to maintain a separate blog for each group, since their targeted reading markets have radically different needs and wants when it comes to content on your blog.
An informative, customer oriented business blog is a blog which is intended for customer reading. This type of blog is meant to draw in new customers and maintain a hold on existing customers by providing them with information, news, and other entertaining content. The type of content you include in a customer oriented blog will typically be more informal and personal, though it does depend on your business and who your customer market is—a customer oriented blog aimed at marketing executives, for example, will be much more formal than a customer oriented blog aimed at doll hobbyists. In addition to providing information that will draw in new customers, it’s important to note that the content you include on a customer oriented blog should be as organic as possible. Although it may be tempting to over format your blog entries to perfectly align with SEO guidelines, this type of formatting often results in content that is stiff, difficult or frustrating to read, and—in the worst case scenario—“fake” sounding. The last thing you want is to discourage sales because customers weren’t sure that your blog was the real deal!
Another popular type of business blog is done through a social media account. Social media, which includes websites such as Twitter and Facebook, is an easy way for businesses to connect to the public while spending a minimum amount of money in the process. Unlike traditional marketing, social media accounts are typically free—or, when business accounts are required, can be purchased at a low cost—and can be customized and tweaked in many different ways to tailor towards specific targeted markets.
If you are thinking about opening a blog for your business, you should remember that the key to blogging for business is keeping things as “real” as possible—keep your customer oriented content as organic as possible, avoid overdoing it with the SEO, and you will soon find that your business and your sales are on the rise.