Blog

Why blog?

If your main aim of starting a blog is to capture more customers there are probably easier and less time consuming ways to do this (such as paid advertising); and blogging is of more value to some businesses than others. But people (and businesses) have different reasons for blogging.

I started my website blog in January 2016 to:

• give myself deadlines to make sure I write regularly (e.g. one article a week)
• become better at writing about subjects that I don’t find easy to write about (e.g. trying to make an article about how to produce accurate transcripts interesting is quite a challenge)
• publish articles that include key words that help promote my business via search engines (e.g. audio transcription, scribing, editing, proofreading)
• provide an outlet for reviewing books, movies and events
• display my skills and knowledge in my subject areas; and by the fact I have written the articles, promoting my writing and editing skills i.e. my business.
• add value to my website with the aim of impressing and winning new clients.

Utilising LinkedIn

Writing LinkedIn articles about topics that interest you, especially topics that are relevant to your business, displays your knowledge, skills and experience in those areas to anyone who cares to look up your LinkedIn profile. Your articles are part of your general profile: your ‘brand’.

For example, the sorts of people who might look up my LinkedIn profile are potentially people who need their policies edited, or need someone to scribe minutes of their meetings, or need audio files transcribed. They may want to find out what sort of person I am – my views and how professionally I’ve presented myself on LinkedIn.

Each time I post an article on LinkedIn I include a link to my blog page at the bottom of the article for anyone interested in reading similar types of articles on my website blog. Each time someone clicks into my business website, that represents a ‘hit’ to my site which may help me get up further on the search engine list.

On LinkedIn, I write articles and join in discussions about things that are relevant to my industry, editing, as well as subjects that may have no relevance to what I sell; for example, managing online businesses and work-life balance. While I try to keep away from political issues, I discuss human rights and other issues I am passionate about but when participating in those discussions, I always try to remember I’m representing my business and always behave professionally.

Has publishing LinkedIn articles and LI networking helped my business?

Yes it has. It didn’t happen overnight but over time, it has proved to be effective.

LinkedIn articles get my information and profile out into the LI network, and then out to other networks through people sharing my articles with  others. Some articles have provoked interesting discussions about editing, managing online business and other topics that may not have won me any new clients but which have given me new insights and information, and been helpful to me professionally and personally; and anything that helps my development is, indirectly, helping my business.

And networking on LI has won me new clients.

Utilising Facebook

I’ve got a Facebook timeline and a number of business pages including On Time Typing Australia. For a full list of my FB pages, go to: About us.

On my FB business pages, I share not only my blog articles but also other articles about editing and self-publishing by other authors and businesses. This is to make my FB pages both more interesting and more helpful to anyone who pops in to check out my business page. They are then more likely to ‘like’ that page, which of course means they are more likely to read my future posts and shares of my own blog articles from my website.

Has sharing blog articles and networking via Facebook been helpful to my business?

Yes it has. It didn’t seem to be very helpful for the first year or two, but nowadays it is definitely an effective marketing tool in terms of both getting my blog articles ‘out there’ and bringing new clients to me either via my website’s ‘contact us’ page, directly via Facebook messaging, or via email.

Over the past year or so, I have also won a fair amount of editing and scribing work due to being part of the Secret Editors Business professional editors’ network (which is a closed Facebook group). 

Keeping my Facebook business pages healthy and active is the best way to attract potential clients who are FB-users and also to keep search engines interested in showing my business platforms to their users.

Helpful links

For more articles about blogging for your business go to:

• Subtle business blogging
• How to get more Bang for your Blog-writing Buck
• How to write perfect meta-descriptions for SEO (15 steps).
• Four benefits of business blogging
• And for other articles, go to: On Time Typing Blog.

This article is based on my own experiences since 2002 when I started writing websites and later, my blog, as my main marketing tool. For more information go to: About us.