Famous Bloggers

How To Blog and Start a Business

Home » The Famous Blog » A Business Blog Needs to Be Professional

A Business Blog Needs to Be Professional

- by

Business Blog

There are thousands upon thousands of blogs out there. Some are great and others are spammy attempts at getting keyword rich content in as many places as possible on the web. While there are blogs that discuss pretty much any topic imaginable all blogs fall into two main categories, business blogs and hobby blogs. There really aren’t too many rules for hobby blogs, but if you own or operate a blog for business there are certain best practices that need to be followed.

Here are four tips to maintain a professional-looking business blog:

Remain Active

This is an area in which many businesses struggle. They understand the value and importance of a business blog so they set one up, write a few posts, and then let it sit inactive for months at a time. This simply isn’t acceptable. If you include a link to your blog content from your website, website visitors are going to click over to it. If your last post was from four months prior, that doesn’t look good. Visitors may get the impression that you are lazy or that you aren’t organized and don’t have your priorities in order. Four months is a long time. Depending on your industry, it could be very possible that your last post discusses now irrelevant information.

A business blog should be a main priority. If you can’t dedicate any time to it, don’t start one.

Monitor Comments

If you are going to allow comments on your blog posts, you need to actively monitor them. Never allow all comments to go through because you will be left with a bunch of spam comments that include links to irrelevant sites and content that isn’t even related to the post. In many cases, it will be pure gibberish. The blog comments contribute to the post quality overall. Blog visitors will take note of the fact that you don’t take the time to monitor the comments, weed out the bad ones, and respond to the good ones.

Pay for It

Never start a business blog on a free platform like Blogger or the free version of WordPress for two reasons. First, it will look like thousands of other blogs out there. Do you really want your business blog to look like Ron’s Car Fanatic blog? Second, you will have limited control. Paying to host a blog on your own site is well worth the cost.

Take Design Seriously

Businesses are judged by the look of their web properties. If your website or blog looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1999 or is hard to navigate, it leaves the visitor with a poor impression of your business. You may have great website content that is well optimized and a great product or service, but if the website looks outdated you will appear to be outdated as well. It’s important to invest in a website re-design every few years just to keep things fresh and professional looking.

About

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, a full-service web marketing services and SEO consulting firm in Boston, MA. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by daily updating his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal.

Reader Interactions

Related Posts

{ 21 Responses }

  1. Kimsea says:
    Thanks for your tips, I think that it is a great tips for me, Right there is no income without investment, the professional blog should has a customize domain name. I will buy it but now I just use co.cc domain because I want to get more knowledge before invested on it.
  2. Deimar says:
    Totally agree with the design. It is really important. However, keep in mind your blog should still run fast. Adding fancy images, java effects and so on will slow it down, and people hate slow web pages. If it takes too much time to load, they will close the tab and go elsewhere.
  3. Farrell John says:
    These are very important pointers in building a professional blog. I have already seen a lot of blogs who aren't performing really well and most of their contents are wasted because of poor website design or a lack of activity and interaction which is vital to a blog's health.
  4. Morgan says:
    You got it, Nick! It really saddens me when I go to a website or blog that is trying to be a serious business but they're hosted on some free blogging platform. It doesn't cost much to get a great theme and hosting and it'll be the smartest investment you can make. Great stuf!
  5. Sunny says:
    Hey Nick, thanks for such an Informative Tips on business blog & design . I'm thinking of launching a blog , After Reading your blog I have decided that I won't use free template for my business blog. Now I know How and Why company should take its business blog seriously. Once again Thanks for such an Informative post.
  6. Arthur Taper says:
    Hi Nick! Among the points you mentioned, I believe the criterion of "timeliness" is one very important factor. You see, people expects a business blog to be updated regularly. In the first place, who wants to get stuff from a businessman who doesn't have time to entertain his/her potential customers? The more active a blogger is in creating new posts, the better chance he/she has to attract clients/buyers.
  7. Ebere says:
    The recent template changes for blogspot are really good. Makes it very easy to create professional looking blogs. I have just used the template for my compliance blog and it has never looked better
  8. Azhar says:
    For business blog it is very necessary to update the consistently and always write relative contents. Involve your visitor in your post by replying each comment.Never make your blog dormant
  9. Jeanie says:
    I do agree with you and all your tips! If someone decides to create a blog, so it should be of top-quality and should be very often updated (I mean not only posts, but also design and other interesting features)
  10. Maja says:
    Agree with these tips.It is very essential for a business blog to have professional look and unique contents. A business must have communication with his readers.
  11. Peter says:
    It must be a professional blog because its for business. If its not professionally handled then you will not get a big respect from your users.
  12. Geoff says:
    Hey Nick, excellent point on design. On top of avoiding free blogging platforms it's a good move to avoid free blog templates as well. When you visit a blog that looks like 10 blogs you've seen before (even if the design is new) it's a big red flag that this business has a small budget and went the cheapo route when creating a website.
  13. Robert says:
    I agree with you here, the amount of blogs that I've seen businesses start up for "providing a better customer experience" and then ignore them and stop updating them really annoys me! The least they can do is appoint somebody to look after it, it's not a whole lot of work
  14. Mark says:
    I'm a big believer in having an active blog. Nothing bespeaks a ghost town of an outfit like an inactive blog. I say blog daily if you can so that subscribers can get their daily fix if they need one. Great list...solid fundamentals, Nick. Mark
  15. Tony Scott says:
    That is definitely a great set of tips for newbies in business blogging. It's true that as the blogger, it is our responsibility to make the website accessible and keep it updated to sure of regular site visitors. Thank you for sharing!
  16. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Some folks set up a massive disconnect between online and offline businesses. If you are running a brick and mortar business, you treat it like a biz. Some people think "online biz", and get really lazy, because virtually anyone can start a blog in 20 minutes while starting a brick and mortar gig takes a little longer. Your blog business grows in exact proportion to the time and energy you invest in it. Thanks Nick! RB
  17. Marty says:
    People most of the time fail to use their business blog properly. I've seen most business are just promoting their services or products instead of connecting and building a relationship with their costumers. Problem is most of them don;t realize what a blog can do for their business in the long run.
  18. Tushar Agarwal says:
    Very right Nick, New bloggers often lose focus when they are blogging. they take things lightly and often that proves dangerous even if the blog is good. Being professional is very important and of the points you have mentioned above, the important are Being Active and Paying for it. these two things build your credibility
  19. Kris says:
    I really believe that being professional and making your blog as you wanted it to be will make your blog more approachable to the market that you are targeting. Respect also comes with the trust that they will put on it.
  20. Paul Salmon says:
    With the amount of themes that are available for Wordpress, you can have a great looking, and professional, business blog with very little coding. The comments is something that a business blog should look at seriously. You don't want to leave comments that are quick, one-liners, as they just bring down the professionalism of the entire blog. But you must also ensure that any customers that arrive at your blog, are still allowed to voice their thoughts, and that you respond to your customers in a professional manner.
  21. Raj says:
    Looks are important, I agree. There are certain professional blogs hosted on the free blogger platform that look amazing. There are professional templates for Blogger too, like WP.