A blog is the cornerstone of an active online and social media presence for any business. However, perhaps the  term “blog” is a bit misleading. I’m not suggesting every business needs to create the next “CuteOverload” for daily social entertainment. An effective blog need only be an area of your website where you publish fresh content regularly, which could easily be called your News section. Focus your energy on the quality of your content rather than the quantity of visitors.

A company blog is a business’ number one opportunity to tell all the layers of the story that you want to tell. Here you can really dig into the details of your business. In fact, the more you have to tell and the more frequently you tell it, the better.

This is great news for businesses that have complex offerings or much to say. If your business has long passages of text on your website, it’s important to remember that your potential customers will never take the time to read all of that. It is estimated that the average visitor only reads 20-28% of the content on your web pages. Why not break up this more detailed content and feature it over time on your blog?

A blog is where others really get to know you. A blog is also a great tool for industries that have a long sales cycle. It allows audiences to get to know your brand over time.

Once you’ve committed to the idea of fresh content on your website, the next questions we typically get are:

• What tools and platform should we use for this blog?
• What content should be on my blog and how do we keep coming up with new ideas for blog content?
• How does search engine optimization work with my blog?
• How can our blog integrate with our social media presence?

We’ll be covering these topics in subsequent blog posts as we focus on the art of blogging all this month.