Does your business blog have a focus?
Apr 20, 2009 by Marissa Berger
Blogging for your business can take a lot of time. To make your time and effort count, you want to make sure you choose the right direction for your blog. Business blogs can fall into three main categories:
1. Marketing
Marketing blogs are designed to build traffic, awareness, and sales. The focus of your marketing blog can be to:
- help visitors understand and interact with your market
- raise awareness and visibility
- sell specific products
- support current and prospective customers
2. Public Relations
Public relations blogs are designed to enhance image and influence public perception. The focus of your public relations blog can be to:
- deal with negative press and disasters
- build reputation and recognition
3. Customer Service
Customer service blogs are designed to assist and inform customers or potential customers. The focus of your customer service blog can be to:
- help customers after the purchase
- provide frequently asked questions
- offer solutions to issues that have come up in the past
Your business blog could really overlap among these main categories, but it’s a good idea to choose a specific focus for it. It will help keep your writing on-topic and it will make sure you are targeting the right audience.
If you want more information about blogging for business, I recommend Publish & Prosper: Blogging for your Business by DL Byron & Steve Broback. This post is a quick summary of some of their content.
At MB/I, we chose our blog to have a marketing focus. We write informative articles for website owners with all sorts of tips, tricks, and resources for the care of their websites and other online topics. Our goal is to increase traffic to our site and increase awareness of our services. You may say that public relations is a secondary goal since we hope to build up our reputation through these posts. It’s one thing to say you can build a website; it’s another to show the knowledge and experience you really have.
Which focus did you choose for you business blog and how is it working for you?
[...] James Ernst acknowledges that a lot of game designers like to start with the mechanics and then apply the theme after they know that the rules will work. However, this can result in games where the motifs created by the mechanics are at odds with what the theme is supposed to be. This can also creep into a web site if you build mechanical elements before settling on a design. Those of you already familiar with Marissa have probably heard her talk about the importance of focus. [...]