Utilizing a Blog to Create Online Synergy

In our last blog post, we looked at 5 keys to an effective website and ways to measure website performance with Google Analytics. In this post, I want talk about using a blog to generate online synergy. A blog is unique in that it is a website as well as a social medium. Additionally, a blog possesses attributes that enable it to accomplish objectives that can prove valuable to just about any business.

Attributes such as:

Targeting, attracting, and making yourself heard with an audience interested in a specific topic
Making connections and sharing information with readers, followers and other bloggers
Establishing your credibility and authority on a topic
Attracting links that increase search engine results
Segueing visitors to your website
Track-ability (you can track subscriptions, comments, inbound links and search engine results; and, since it is a website you can use web analytics to measure visitor traffic and on-site behavior)

To take advantage of its attributes and realize these objectives, your blog needs to meet some basic content criteria and incorporate certain “structural” elements.

Content criteria include:

A topic that is related to your business and contains information that is useful, interesting and timely
Use of an appropriate name related to your topic
Content that is well written and easy to read
Content that stimulates thought and encourages discussion
Maintenance of a regular publishing frequency interval (e.g. – 1 post per week or every other week)

Additionally, one should leave thoughtful comments on related blogs (to make connections with other bloggers and attract links to your blog).

Structural elements that aid success include:

Use of a search engine friendly blogging platform such as WordPress or TypePad
Having the blog under your business’ domain name (url) to build equity in something you own, and to generate increased search engine traffic to your website
Incorporating important keywords in the blog post title and body content
Use of both RSS feed and email subscription options
Options to share with others via email or by posting on various social media networks
Utilization of categories and tags so that specific posts can be easily searched and located
Linking to appropriate parts of your website

HubSpot (a marketing services provider) conducted a survey of 1,531 of its customers (mostly small and medium-sized businesses), comparing those that blogged with those that didn’t. They found that, on average, the companies that blogged received: