Are you blogging for your small business? If you have already started a business blog, you are on the right track, but how to you use it to its maximum potential? Follow these tips for a more successful business blog and you could help to improve your overall brand image and customer connection.

1.    Make your content shareable – and share it yourself

You want to make it easy for your readers to share your blog articles with others. If they read one of your blog posts and are impressed by it enough to share with their friends, you should give them the option to immediately share it on the most popular social networks as well as by email. You should also share your own posts on your business social networking pages to let people know there is a new article to read. You are more likely to get readers and followers that way too.

2.    Choose a good topic

Topic is key. People want something interesting to read. It is important to make sure that your articles have interesting and informative content that will catch the readers’ attention, while sticking to the focus of your business blog.

If you are out of ideas, try out some of these:

•    Company milestones
•    Answer customer questions
•    Write how-to articles related to your products/services
•    Featured customer/client
•    Compare your products or services
•    Announce new products or services
•    Give suggestions to your customers

3.    Be consistent

You want your articles to be relevant to your company, not about some random thing you saw on the internet that you liked. It is important to keep a consistent string throughout your posts that tie back to the reason you are writing blog articles for your business. It is also good to keep your tone consistent too. You may have multiple people writing articles for your blog, but make sure that they are written in similar form so that they come off consistent to readers.

4.    Use keywords

We can’t say this enough. Keywords should be in everything that you write for your business or website. This will be a major boost to your search engine rankings if you are using the right keywords. Posting blog articles to your website keeps your content updated, and search engines like new content. If you are unsure of what keywords to use, do some research first and come up with a list of general words to include in your articles.


These simple tips will help get you on the right track with your business blog. The more you do it, the more you will get the hang of it, and before you know it, you will be blogging like crazy.

It’s that time again…time to present the names of our new and newly designed client launches for the past month.

TWG Design Studio proudly shares our April launches:

Assisted Transportation Systems

Blakey Printing

Central Kentucky Distribution

Coffeys Ornamental Concrete Kreations

Green Dot Bowling Green

Leitchfeild Exterminating

Maywood U-Store-It

Nagasaki Inn

Oshea's Family of Irish Pubs

Service First Warehouse

Starkeeper

Swope Charity Cornhole Event

Tender Touch Senior Services

The Rental Stop

YPBG

There are some things that users get tired of seeing, or not seeing on websites. These things may seem like great ideas in the beginning, but really, they may just turn users away from your site. If your website has some (or all) of these things included, you may want to consider updating your website and adding or removing some of these things to create a better user experience.

1.    Pop-ups
Users generally do not like to be bombarded with a pop up windows when the first visit your site. Let them make their own decisions about what they want to do once they get to your site.

2.    No contact information
Leaving off contact information is always a bad idea. That is one of the top things that people visit a website for. You want to give them a clear way to get in touch with you. After all, you want them to buy your product or services don’t you?

3.    Automatically playing multimedia
Again, people want to make their own decisions about what they want to hear or see when they visit your site. A video or music automatically playing can distract them and make them close the window on your site.

4.    No social media links
With the ever-growing popularity of social media, people want to be able to connect with you on all levels. Plus, it is a great way to stay in contact with your customers and clients and reach them on a more casual level.

5.    No blog
Blogging is like social media. It gives you another way to connect with people in a more casual way and allows you to present more information on your site. In addition, that content is always changing and it gives people a reason to come back to your website.

6.    No call to action
It is important to show people what your ultimate goal is for them. You can guide them with calls to action on how they should navigate through your site as well as the purpose of your website.

7.    Confusing layout and content
Just like with calls to action, your content and overall layout of your site guides people to what they need to look at. If your content is laid out in a confusing way, people will get lost in the information.

8.    Flash websites
Flash websites may look cool, but they cannot be viewed on phones and tablets. This is a major downfall if you do not have a separate mobile version of your website.

9.    Slow slideshows
Let’s be honest – people are impatient. They do not want to wait for a slide to change so that they can see the next deal or special. If you are going to use a slower slideshow for a certain reason, be sure to give the user controls to navigate through the slideshow on their own.

10.    Dizzying background images
Your background image and colors should be pleasing to the eye and not too distracting from the main information of your website. You don’t want to hurt someone’s eyes because they stared at your intense red colored background too long!

These things tend to drive people crazy when they visit websites. You want to provide your users with a pleasant experience when they visit your site, so that they come back for more.

1.    Make your emails interesting and valuable
2.    Offer a discount or special for subscribing
3.    Advertise your email list with a call to action on your website and Facebook page
4.    Use a QR code on print materials to allow people to scan to sign up
5.    Collect email addresses at an event or conference
6.    Encourage your current subscribers to share with their friends and family (You can even throw in a free gift or discount for those who do)
7.    Promote it on business cards
8.    Include the link on comment cards
9.    Do a contest or giveaway that requires an email address to enter (but be sure to include a disclaimer that they are opting in to email updates from your company)

One of the best marketing strategies to implement is email marketing. You can reach your customers directly with news, specials and deals, and other important information related to your business. If implemented correctly, an email marketing campaign can increase your business and sales, and help to engage your customers. The key is to know how and when to communicate with your customers so that your email marketing efforts are not wasted. If you have yet to launch an email marketing campaign, or even if you are in the middle of one, these simple steps can help you to get off on the right foot.

Define your objectives

• Set expectations for your email marketing so that you have a clearly defined goal.
• Create a calendar with upcoming promotions, events, and other information that you want to send out so that you keep it organized and spread out.

Create and organize your email lists

• Announce that you will be sending email updates to get contacts to sign up for your list voluntarily.
• Segment your lists to target certain markets differently.

Create interesting emails to send

• Send interesting and compelling content to catch their attention and get them to read the email.
• Use an attractive email design that includes both images and html text so that all users can see the content if they cannot view the images.

Follow best practices

• The subject line should be short and sweet. You want to get the point of the email across while making it enticing to open. Include a call to action if you can.
• Your from name and email address should be your business name and professional email address so that they know it is coming from a trusted source. You should also keep this consistent across all emails so that your customers begin to recognize your emails.
• Try to keep the most important information at the top of the email so readers see that first. Include a call to action so they have something to do at the end of the email.
• Include links to your website and social media accounts.
• Use plain text in your email.
• Keep your email short so that there is not too much information to digest in one email.

Timing

• Try out different times of the day and week to determine which is most optimal response for your business.

Measure your results

• Use your email statistics to track how often your email are opened and read.

If you follow these simple steps, your email marketing campaign will do great things for your business.