It’s second nature for businesses to have a blog these days, but businesses often have a very loose definition of the term. Surely you’ve seen the abandoned ones, with posts dating back two years promising updates coming soon. Maybe the business is dead or maybe their social media has gravitated towards Twitter and Instagram. While those things are important, neither of them should get in the way of a business maintaining it’s blog on the regular. Why?
You’re not writers, but your customers are readers
You didn’t get into your business to blog (unless you’re a blogging business, but even then). However, when prospective customers are checking out your site, their eyes may glaze over your features list, no matter how detailed it is. Emma Siemasko of Grasshopper tells us, “We have a blog because it’s a great way to generate regular traffic to our side, and we’re an online SaaS business that only exists online, so that’s really important.”
Be it BuzzFeed, Slate or Mic, your digital customer probably consumes a lot of their online content through paragraphs long and short. You don’t have to mimic these sites in terms of style, production, or even quality, but having regular presentations in a news-style format will provide a familiar pattern for your customers and might make your specs more digestible.
Those three news agencies listed above publish article multiple times a day, of course. There’s no need to try to strain your production, Siemasko says. “There are lots of ‘best practices’ out there that say you need to post 3 times per week, or post content that’s this length, or something else to be successful. I believe that if you’re providing really useful content that reaches your audience, you can be successful with a blog. These best practices are just tips and tricks, but they’re not a sustainable strategy.”
A chance to get nerdy
You’ve put in the time, you’ve memorized jQuery backwards and front, you’ve optimized for hours. If your customer couldn’t tell you what SEO stands for or differentiate CSS from HTML, there’s not much to let them know about your qualifications outside of a blog. An engaging dialogue on the topics you’ve passionately used to build your business will show customers you know your salt. Take this blog post by mobile app maker ShoutEm, who we featured previously here. Could you get more out of this conversation if you’ve used Swift? Sure, but even if you haven’t, it’s easy to appreciate the passion these guys have.
Pre-emptive support
Despite your best efforts, people can have problems with your product. That’s okay, these things happen! However, wouldn’t it be great if you could solve people’s problems before they started? A blog can be a great place to work through early complications and let customers know that you understand their problems even before they have them. “Focus on being crazily helpful above everything else. If someone finds what you say extremely useful and helpful, they’ll have tons of respect for you,” Siemasko says. “Use your blog to show you’re an authority in your industry”.