What to Consider When Designing Your Business Blog

I have a blog. Who doesn’t? Actually a lot of people don’t have blogs. Maybe they don’t think they need one, or they didn’t know where to begin to get one. I have a family photo blog, but for my business, I need something that looks professional.

Everyone has seen a quality looking page verses a poorly designed page. The minute you click on a poorly designed page, or a page built with old technology with clip art images, you want to leave right? Think about everyone else who leaves those pages. With a reported 147 million Americans surfing the Internet, why wouldn’t you consider investing in your blog?

Trust

There is a lot of expectation involved when trusting a company to support your blog. Your name is on it for the world to see- maybe it’s a business blog and you are using it to make money! Just like the people who stray from a poorly designed site, they are leaving partly because they don’t think it’s a blog they feel comfortable trusting in- it may come off as looking amateurish and cheap. When it comes to someone’s time and money, Internet users know there are many more blogs out there to choose from.

More Than Just Your Personal Blog

Companies are looking for that trust too. Blogs have become essential and somewhat expected for larger businesses to have. business blogs are often used by more than one user. Companies that are in the business of building blogs know there are a lot of blogs out there and many of them are about the same thing. How does one get noticed? How do you keep users once they do find your blog? The average user decides whether to stay on a site within three seconds. How can you know your blog will keep users there longer?

Blog Builder

The list is endless when deciding how to build your blog. Many blog builders allow you to have videos on your blog or allow you the ability to have a photo blog. Sometimes the best way to explain what you are selling or what you are trying to convey is best done through images or graphics. A professional blog for your business should have RSS feeds for people subscribing to your site and Linkbacks to keep track of your blogs being linked on other sites. The more you allow your blog to be seen by others, the more feedback you can expect to
receive.

Compensation for Information

So, you create a blog with tons of information and no matter if it is about dog training or a large corporation’s press release, it would be nice to be compensated for your knowledge. Depending on where you decide to finally launch your blog from, some blog businesses can assist you in getting ads on your blog with context-relevant advertising.

Why Didn’t I Think of That?

You don’t need an IT department to create a blog for your business. With a company that helps you build your blog, including design templates, all priced for a small monthly fee, it sounds pretty good if you don’t want to hire a designer or IT staff to get your website up and running. Think about waiting a matter of minutes to see your company’s name in print.

Whether you want to be the next big glossy food blog or the latest underground blog, your blog still needs to have something that attracts the right audience who is going to be interested in investing their time and possibly their money in the information you are posting. By spending a little money on a blog builder, you can gain a lot.

About the Author: Melissa Peterman is a web content specialist for Innuity. For more information about blog builders, blog business or business blogs, please feel free to contact www.typepad.com.