Blogging To An Empty Room (Updated!)

We first posted Blogging To An Empty Room in November 2013. It has proven to be a very popular post and we felt the time was right to update and repost on this topic which is close to many small business owner’s hearts.

The key question is, “If there aren’t many people reading your blog, is it really worth doing?”

The answer is “Yes! Absolutely!” and here is why….

1. To Show Your Personality and Expertise

The main body of a website is generally quite formal and is usually written in the third person. It offers information, facts and figures and it needs to be clear, concise and informative. However, in a blog you can really let your hair down. You can write as you would speak and share emotion, ideas, expertise and excitement. The blog section of a website lets you show your personality and allows readers insights into who you are and how you work.

2. To Build A Valuable Resource

Try to include posts that are informative and helpful for your clients and target market. For example, mini guides exploring a particular topic and explaining how things work. Your posts will stay relevant for months or even years and you can refer people to them when they ask questions.

3. To Help Your SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a tricky subject, but one thing that experts agree is that search engines like to see regular new content that contains your key words. Writing a blog about topics in your field is an easy and natural way to provide this.

Search engines also like to see plenty of content on your site. If I asked you to write 20 pages of quality website content you would probably baulk at the thought. However, with regular posts, that is exactly what you can achieve.

4. To Draw People To Your Site

A store of quality blog posts gives you a rich resource of ideas and thoughts to share on Social Media. Regularly sharing comments about your blog posts (and including links) is a great way to draw people to your website. Once they are on your site and reading, a good layout and more quality content will keep them engaged.

When we started this blog, we were definitely blogging to an empty room, but now our blog is getting more popular.

We recently had one of our posts, Love you Website Too!, widely re-tweeted and shared on a paper.li newsletter. We’ve seen an increase of traffic to our website as a result.

If you don’t blog, I hope this encourages you to start and if you do, well done and keep going!

Next week we will be sharing our top tips for successful blogging.