webDreamSites

I’m Starting a Business Blog: Now What?

John — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:34:52 +0000

OK… you’ve decided to take the plunge and start a blog for your business or practice. But what are you going to write about?

Here are some topics to get you started:

A look at our newest product.
Some new uses for an existing product.
A project we’re working on.
Our new sales manager.
Why we started our business.
How we choose a product.
How you should choose a product.
How to get more out of a product.
We’ll be exhibiting at these shows.
What to do if you have a problem.
A customer service issue and how we resolved it.
How we can improve.
Meet some of our employees.

You can also use the blog as a tool to recuit employees:

We have a job opening.
What we look for in an employee.
How to apply for a job.

If yours is a service business or professional practice:
Medicine, Therapy, etc.

A new breakthrough in our field.
Our treatment philosophy.
Discussion of an illness/condition we treat.
How we handle the end of treatment.
Insurance and billing isues.
Example of a client/patient who benefitted from treatment.
Meet our new employee.

Legal, Accounting, Architecture, etc.

Cases we’ve just won; buildings we’ve designed.
The importance of support staff in our practice.
Our opinion of current issues in the field.
This is a good time to go over your will/portfolio/etc.
The process of handling a project from start to finish.
Recent awards and honors.

See… there’s lots to blog about. Need more ideas? Go over the emails and correspondence you’ve received over the last few months and see which subjects reappear. Anticipate the concerns that customers, patients and employees might experience.

Keep it short and focused… and you’ll begin to get some loyal readers.

Why Blogging Is Good for Business

John — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:08:23 +0000

Do you think that people who write blogs are egotistical blowhards with a lot of time on their hands?

Some are. But many bloggers are clever marketers who’ve found an effective way to connect with clients and customers.

Here’s why blogging works for small businesses and professional practices:

Blogging increases sales. If you’re selling something online, chances are your web pages are seen as mere advertising. But when you write about your products or services in an editorial forum, website visitors get the feeling they’re being “informed”… not simply being “sold.”
A blog is the perfect way to promote a special deal, item or service. Because you can broadcast information almost instantly, blogging can be used to test your promotions before a fullscale launch.
It establishes you as an authority. When you write about your business you’ll be seen as someone who is tuned in to the latest trends and ideas. Blogs also create dialogs with your potential customers and make them feel as if they are on the inside.
A blog will improve your website’s search engine ranking. It’s no secret that Google is partial to blogs because they are information-driven. Blogs created on the WordPress platform are automatically optimized for searches engines. And because they are regularly updated, blog posts have a better chance of showing up more often in search results.

If you begin now, you will be ahead of the blogging curve. A recent survey found that only 41% of small businesses have interactive websites equipped to host blogs… and many of those have not yet started blogs.

Blogging does take some time. To be effective, you should plan to publish at least twice a week. But your blog doesn’t have to be long; and once you’ve done a few, writing them becomes easier.

Coming up soon: Ideas for your blog topics.

CMS: Becoming the Master of Your Website

John — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:19:23 +0000

Most drivers know the feeling: When your car breaks down, you’re at the mercy of the mechanic unless you spend the time and effort to learn how to fix it yourself.

It’s the same with a website: If you don’t know to put one together, you can’t update or change it yourself.

As long as there are cars, we’ll always need help repairing them. But not so with websites… thanks to content management systems (CMS).

This system is perfect for small businesses and professional practices who want to control their website content without forking over a ton of money to third parties.

I began looking into content management about a year ago, in response to a growing number of requests from clients who wanted to be able to update their websites without my help.

Until recently, CMS was the bailiwick of gargantuan developers; and as such, it came with an enormous pricetag. A deep-pocketed corporation could pay upwards of $100,000 for a website that could be updated by non-programmers. That’s no help for those of us trying to produce a website for a few hundred dollars.

But in the last few years, the cost of managing one’s own content has declined dramatically, thanks to the generous developers and programmers who gave us open source applications. These are programs whose architecture is available free of charge to everyone. Open source creates communities of users and experts who share their knowledge and experience.

In the area of web content management, the solution includes an administrative back end that makes changing a website’s content as simple as sending an email. The new CMS platforms also feature an easy-to-manage database system that can make the website interactive, with features such as message boards and e-commerce.

For several years, WordPress was an open source CMS platform used almost exclusively by bloggers. We’re now beginning to see that WordPress also provides a great content management system for all kinds of websites.

There are a ton of advantages to using WordPress:

There are literally thousands of free templates (known as themes) available. Instead of creating new themes from scratch, a designer can now customize a template and come up with a more attractive and efficient website in less time.
Likewise, thousands of free WordPress plugins allow websites to feature special functions on demand.
The WordPress administrative section lets the website owner add or delete content, graphics and even pages or entire sections.
You don’t need to know any programming or markup code to make these changes. WordPress includes an editor that works just like a word processor, and operational functions can be switched in a snap.
WordPress includes the most flexible and intuitive blogging platform available.

In short, this system is perfect for small businesses and professional practices who want to be able to control the content of their websites without forking over a ton of money to third parties.

WebDreamSites can create a content management website for you — and show you how to use it — for just a few hundred dollars. Check out our home page for more information.