Business Blogging Session 2: IIA Breakfast Seminar

Check out Business Blogging to get the intro to this series.

Blogging Benefits for a Small Business: Aedan Ryan, PuddleDucks.ie    

Aedan has a great story which tells about the introduction and growth of his online business PuddleDucks.ie and, more particularly, how he has used blogging as a tool to:

• Build a community

• Build trust with his customers for his online business

• Improve his ranking on searches

• Drive traffic and ultimately sales through his website.

Aedan is testimony to the fact that anybody can do it: he started as a result of a course he took.  He recommends keeping it unpublished initially while you get used to the content management system, while you find your voice, and develop a routine for ongoing and regular postings. 

Search Engine Optimisation
Blogs, because they are regular updates to your site, are loved by search engines.  It’s a great way to improve your search rankings.  Blogs can be indexed in a couple of hours.

The investment costs
There are many tools out there that are easy to use and inexpensive to get started.

We know that regular updates are important – plan for one a week at least.  That means you can spend anything between 4 – 8 hours per week.  But, blogs are not a prescriptive length.  If you’re busy, make it a paragraph on something that has caught your imagination that week.

Stats
Time for a few stats.  83% of SMEs are vetted online before a potential customer contacts them. (Source: Amarach, 2009).

Spreading the word
Aedan pointed out that your blog will be automatically posted on several sites, once you’ve done the initial setup.  That’s easy.

Irish Blogs
Irish Internet Association            
IGO People             
Your linkedin
Facebook

You can manually update some posts to Twitter. 

Beware though that your blog isn’t too salesy.  There are many ways to sell: relationship building is one of them and a blog will do that in a subtle way.

And, there’s the possibility that you’ll get to like it and enjoy putting your weekly blog together!

Thanks Aedan.