For a business blog to earn engagement with its readers and to convey a friendly and approachable tone, it really has to display the personality of the company.
Your blog is your window display and your ‘friendly doorman’ to your company and what you write there and how you respond to comments reflects the nature of your staff and your company but how do you set the appropriate tone? How do you convey the principles and the personality of your business?
- Ensure there is an ‘about us’ page that describes the company’s mission statement (in conversational language) and provides the necessary information on the company and its members. Include some good quality photographs of key staff members – a picture can tell a thousand words.
- Include photographs of staff members, the premises, the work you carry out and your products in blog posts rather than using stock photographs.
- If there is more than one person blogging for the business, each blogger should sign their name to their blog posts, thereby enabling regular readers to get to know them.
- Tell readers about what is happening in the business – share good news of award nominations or wins, for example. Let them share in the good news.
- Write as ‘I’ rather than ‘Our’ especially if you are a small business. Businesses often try to appear bigger than they actually are but you will come across as friendlier and more approachable if you write as ‘I’ and refer to the reader as ‘you’.
- While it is good to stick to business topics, it doesn’t hurt to refer to a topic that is personally interesting to the business or the writer for a few sentences within the blog post – tell us about your favourite club’s football win or the company’s Christmas party or that the sales manager just got engaged.
- Respond to comments – take care of your readers on the blog and that will communicate the message that you will take care of them when they want to purchase from you too.
- Give your readers interesting content that they will want to read over a coffee, not a press release. Mention the features of your new product or service but elaborate on the benefits for them, the readers, the potential customers.
Give your readers reasons to want to engage with you and the business leads will soon follow.
Lorna
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