How to cultivate and grow your small business blog: Part 1 of a 2-part series
If you own a small business such as a restaurant or chiropractic practice or retail store or you are an artist or musician or run a small non-profit, chances are you scurrying everyday to do what it is that you love to do. What the heck do I mean by that?
I mean if you own a restaurant, you work hard everyday to cook delightful food and serve it up to your patrons. If you are a chiropractor, you are meeting and engaging with your patients. If you are an artist, you are in front of your easel painting or drawing and delivering sold work to your patrons.
And, this is only one aspect of running your own business. You know you still have a ton of other roles, responsibilities, expectations to face – everyday – to keep the lights on, clients happy, your work carefully crafted.
You may have also heard that the best way to cultivate an online presence is to have an updated website that looks great on all devices, has Google Analytics installed and an active blog among many other things. How in the heck can you meet your business’s primary goal of serving patrons (restaurant owner), seeing patients (chiropractor) or painting work (artist), if you’re in front of your computer for (fill in the blank here) several hours each day updating your website and blogging.
Let’s not even start to talk about the time requirements of ‘engaging’ with people who ‘like’ your business Facebook page, follow you on Twitter or think your pins on Pinterest are groovy. You just can’t do it all but you want to do something more effective online. Where do you start?
In this 2-part series, I will offer some sensible and realistic steps you can take to ‘spiff up’ your online presence while still having the time to get on out there and engage with your ideal client. I am assuming that you have an up-to-date website that works well on all devices (also described as ‘responsive’), a website that has Google Analytics installed and a blog that’s up and running. If you don’t have these things set up, please find a reliable web designer to help you with this first. I would be glad to help you, of course, but if you already have someone you work with and trust, please ask him or her to make sure your website is responsive, has Google Analytics installed and a blog.
What’s next? Blogging! If the web is an amazing and huge ‘garden’ of business websites, then your website is the virtual ‘tree or flower’ for your business, your blog and its posts are the ‘leaves’ or ‘blooms’ and ‘roots’ offering helpful and informative content to help reach your ideal client. What should you blog about? Anything relevant to your business. In particular, write down the top 20 questions you hear from your prospects and clients. Creating blog posts that address your top 20 questions will keep you busy with blog posts for the foreseeable future.
How lengthy should a blog post be? Aim for 600-800 words. If writing a blog post this long seems overwhelming to you then make your posts shorter! Just commit to cover a specific question with a detailed answer that you hear from your business prospects or clients. If you are concerned about spelling or grammar, know that most content management systems including my preferred system, WordPress, have spell checkers, proof reading systems and other tools built-in to help you double-check before you hit the ‘publish’ button.
Now that you have a post ready to go, how do you encourage ‘growth’ in the ‘garden of the internet’ which is also known as engagement and easy follow-up on your first and next blog posts? If you are using WordPress, be sure to include the ‘Share this’ plugin so that people can easily share your content via Social Media and email (more details on social media in part 2 of this series).
What else helps your reader get updated posts easily? Here are two ways: One option is to make it easy for people to read your blog posts via RSS. The second option is to have your readers sign up to receive your latest blog posts by email. The simplest way to do this second option is to create an RSS to email feed in Mailchimp. Whoa – wait – what does this second option mean? It just means that someone who reads your blog and likes what they see, can receive your blog posts in the future by signing up with their email address right on your blog page.
Once you’ve set up your RSS to email feed with Mailchimp, you can send out blog posts with ease, grow your online presence in the internet and keep your online prospects and clients informed with helpful, relevant information. With this approach, you spend the least amount of time necessary to promote your business online so that you are serving that favorite patron (oh mighty restaurant owner) or helping that patient (super-duper chiropractor) or finishing that fabulous painting (thriving artist).
Here’s hoping this helps your business, retail store, practice or art, thrive and grow in the virtual world of the internet. In part two of this series, I’ll describe super helpful tips to get savvy about social media. In the meantime, share your experience for easy blog posts and ideas here, too!
10 Comments
Jim Dyer
June 28, 2013Sounds like I ought to work this into both my insurance practice and the wine consulting I’ve started. Not generally ‘chatty” on line……maybe more carrot juice in my AM smoothie.
Julie Holmes
June 28, 2013Hi Jim,
Thanks so much for reading this and – yes – I think blogging would work for each of your worlds but – as an artist and a business person, I’ve been finding it challenging to blog in both worlds.
Not sure if there’s a creative way to combine both your work and your wine consulting into one blog but it might be possible to ‘take a break’ from insurance world by sharing your knowledge and expertise in wine. This would also create less pressure to have to produce content in both worlds.
Meantime, I can’t wait to hear if you add more carrot juice to your morning smoothie!
Beth
June 28, 2013Thanks for this; it makes the idea of blogging seem manageable and broke it down into pieces that clarified some things for me such as the whole RSS business.
I hope in a future post you will talk about blogging in terms of artists. This post makes sense if you have a business but what if you want to blog without a specific product to sell? What if you want to blog to develop a presence on the web? I’m told by fellow writers that the blog is a great way to develop my “platform.” Since you are both a business professional and an artist do you have insight into the blogging artist’s world and tips for doing that?
Thanks!
Julie Holmes
June 28, 2013Hi Beth – I actually read some writer’s blog posts to check for some possible ideas that might be different from my suggestions. However, I actually think you can apply the same ideas to your work as a writer.
For instance, the artist clients that I have seem to answer some questions that you may hear from your readers including:
1. what is your process for writing (aka how do you write)
2. where do you write
3. who is your favorite writer and why
4. what inspires you
5. what do you do to overcome writer’s block
6. how long does it take you to write a short-story or full novel
7. what surprises you when you are in the midst of the writing process
8. what are examples of good craftsmanship in writing and why
9. do you know how your story is going to end when you start writing
10. if you were to offer advice to a new writer, starting out, what would you say
These are just a few ideas and you may not see these as relevant to your work but there may be some nuggets here that might suggest some blog posts about your writing.
I look forward to hearing what you think about these ideas. Even more importantly, I am excited to become a reader and fan of your blog!
Anne
June 29, 2013Oh, that was a GREAT and helpful post Julie! I really appreciate hearing how small business owners can break the HUGE task of building an online presence into manageable bites. Thank you!
Julie Holmes
June 30, 2013Hi Anne, Soooo glad that you found this post helpful! I especially enjoy that you see this as helpful because it’s breaking down the task into ‘bites’ or ‘bytes’ (ha ha). In that sense, you and I are in the ‘same’ business. Don’t you think? You break the ever-so-huge task of interior design into manageable bites and hopefully I do the same for clients’ websites and blogs.
Declare your Independence: Ditch Facebook! Part 2 of a 2-part series | Julie Holmes Design
July 3, 2013[…] that you, small business owner (artist, writer, non-profit), are writing fabulous and relevant blog posts for your small business and then you’re posting it to your business Facebook page. (Sad […]
kathy mmichaud
July 4, 2013Hi- happy 4th
I met with my friend Dian yesterday, we are brainstorming ideas and your post today has me confused. We both are planning to create a website and a blog. Why wouldn’t posting on Facebook be happy?
Julie Holmes
July 5, 2013Hi Kathy, Here’s hoping you had a Happy 4th!
Regarding your excellent question, to the extent that you and Dian would like to have patrons find your art (and buy it), then I would suggest using a social media tool that indexes each of your posts. This is one of the biggest differences between Facebook and Google+ because Facebook does not index any of your posts whereas Google, the largest search engine in the world does.
Your friends, family and artist colleagues may disagree because Facebook has 1.1 billion people on it. But my goal of working with solo entrepreneurs, artists, writers and non-profits is to suggest a solution that uses your time most effectively so that you can spend time doing what you love: creating art.
Why does this matter? Because whether Facebook has 1 or 2 billion people on it, if they can’t find, for example, a post you wrote last year with your painting you did on January 10, 2012, then it’s not a very helpful or useful tool. Facebook does not offer a viable search solution nor are any of it’s individual posts indexed in a search engine. So all of your hard work in Facebook isn’t ‘working for you’ while you create your art.
Blogging and creating posts in Google+ are indexed so, over time, you will have a presence on the internet that will help your ideal patron find you and your fabulous art work.
I hope I answered your question and feel free to check out more details in this post, too!
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February 17, 2014[…] at least 300 words (some say write between 600-800 words but if you’re a solo business owner or artist and you struggle with posting blogs aim for 300 […]