But whilst we’ve known this, it has been a big learning curve for many organisations.

Some have done their research beforehand and when they first come to us, they know exactly what to expect and in many ways, what they want us to do.  They know business blogging is beneficial, they know what they want it to impact on and they simply need us to develop and implement the actual strategy for them.

With many other clients, however, they’ve heard of business blogging, but don’t know exactly how it can benefit their organisation.  It’s with these clients where we see the steepest learning curve – in a good way, as it’s fantastic to see the realisation on their faces as they begin to understand just what business blogging can do for them.

And we’re proud to say that over the years, we’ve implemented business blogging strategies that have been particularly successful.  They’ve met – if not exceeded – the client’s expectations and made them aware of how fantastic business blogging can be.

Yet there are still so many organisations out there who although are made aware of business blogging’s benefits, don’t want to utilise it.  They know it’s there, know what it can do, but don’t choose to invest in it.

That’s even when we discuss pieces from third parties who have explicitly stated – and proven – that content delivered via an established business blog can be the key to their digital success (and in many instances, their offline success, too).

So today, we want to put the question out there and ask – if you’re someone who understands the benefits of business blogging, but are still refusing to invest in it, why?  What’s stopping you from having a business blogging strategy implemented; one that can be proven to work before you even make an investment?

We really do believe that every single organisation can benefit from regular business blogging.  No exceptions.  But that’s only if they make the first move themselves.

For further information on any of our business blogging services or if you’d like to find out more about how they could benefit your specific organisation, don’t hesitate to contact us – we’re more than happy to talk about business blogging for as long as you would like!

Over the last few months, content marketing has been touted as the thing of 2013. Industry experts have predicted that not only is content going to become more important than ever in general, it’s going to have a huge impact on how successful an organisation can be – that is, assuming they use it properly.

But what does ‘using it properly’ mean? What does it entail? And when we consider the primary aspect of business blogging is the delivery of quality content, if 2013 is the year of content marketing, does this also mean it’s going to be the year of business blogging?

With so many questions needing an answer, it’s difficult to know where to start, so let’s look at the most obvious point, which is why content marketing is expected to be so popular.

What you have to realise about content is that its importance has always been huge. The problem is many people have often overlooked it or not truly realised just how beneficial it could be.

Naturally over time, things come and go. Something becomes popular and something else falls out of favour with the general public. Tie into this the fact that we’re continually looking for the next big thing to help us succeed online and when you consider Google’s push for quality content, you realise it was almost inevitable that content marketing was going to explode sooner or later.

But how does this tie into business blogging?

Content obviously makes up the key component of blogging, but the fact content is being seen as more important than ever is the crucial point here. To the consumer, its importance is essentially irrelevant. All they care about is whether they’re getting access to the content they need – and this is exactly what’s going to be more widespread with the growing importance of content marketing.

Organisations are realising how valuable it can be – so when they’re realising it and more specifically, delivering it, it means their target audience are getting what it is they expect, making them more satisfied than ever before.

And with blogging the ideal way to deliver content to both the masses and to individuals, it’s easy to understand why 2013 really could be the year the popularity of business blogging explodes.

To find out more about how content delivered through our business blogging services could be of benefit to your organisation, contact us today.

Even more surprisingly, only  28% of them maintained a regular blog.

Whilst there’s no doubt these figures are alarming – if anything, you’d expect tech companies to be the ones leading the way with digital media resources – there are various theories why they are as they are.

At The Blogshop, however, we feel there’s one real reason, which is because there’s a belief the whole process is too time- and resource-consuming.  With so many digital technologies and resources to consider, we believe it’s felt blogging and social are two that just aren’t worth the investment.

Although there’s an entire other argument that blogging and social media should be an organisation’s key focus when it comes to digital technologies, assuming this came to be understood, we strongly believe that business blogging alone could alleviate any time or resource concerns that an organisation is having which are preventing them from taking advantage of the resources.

The reason behind this is if a business blogging strategy is developed and implemented in the right way, it could essentially act as the base for all social media activity, greatly reducing the amount of time required to maintain a presence on social media.

For example, with our business blogging services, we integrate a client’s blog within their social media accounts, most notably Twitter and Facebook.  This means that whenever a blog post is published to the blog, it is then automatically pushed to the social media accounts.

Whilst we’re not saying this should replace all social media activity – as it’s intended to simply supplement existing activity – it does provide a great base upon which further activity can be made.  What’s more, it also ensures that the social media accounts appear to be constantly active and maintained, which is where a lot of organisations fall down.

Business blogging really is one of the most versatile resources you can utilise as an organisation and the right investment can prove to impact positively on – and help out with – a vast array of different business aspects.

Increasing both efficiency and effectiveness in various ways considerably, business blogging shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for separate social media activity, but there really isn’t any need for an organisation to have no social media presence if they’re maintaining a regular business blog.

But with a lot of the clients we work with, there’s a specific goal in mind.  They understand the versatility of blogging and want to use it for a certain purpose – as a sales channel to increase the amount of products they sell or as a marketing tool to make a new service’s launch more effective, for example.

However, one of the most common reasons for having a blogging strategy developed and implemented is for  search engine optimisation (SEO).

And when we talk about all of the possibilities of blogging, it’s easy to see why it can be so beneficial to SEO.  Although we never say blogging should lead a SEO strategy, it’s essentially the perfect tool to supplement all activity within it.

Whilst there are a number of ways blogging can benefit SEO, there’s one single reason why it’s such a fantastic resource for use within a strategy.

And that’s because it’s natural.

One of the key reasons SEO strategies fail is because they’re forced.  People try to ‘cheat’ the search engines’ algorithms.  They research how the search engines rank websites and then put together a strategy that harnesses the strong points and takes advantage of the weak ones.

But the problem here is that the search engine algorithms are continually changing.  Therefore, what works today is unlikely to work in the long run (or even in a couple of weeks time).  The use of backlinks showed this recently, as developing a SEO strategy based almost purely on the gathering of backlinks helped to increase your ranking position – but people were going for quantity rather than quality and as soon as the search engines changed their algorithm to take this into account (and effectively closed this ‘loophole’), those websites built on a SEO strategy around backlinking fell in the rankings considerably.

If there’s one thing you can guarantee is never going to change, however, it’s the delivering of high quality content.  That’s what the internet was essentially setup for and what it’s always going to be about.  Whether people want product or service information or simply to find out the answer to a general question, the websites providing the highest quality information are going to be the ones who become the most prominent and see the most success.

And the simple fact is, a business blog is the perfect way to deliver high quality content to your past, present and potential customers, making it one of the most valuable SEO tools you can utilise.

Right from when we’re at school, we’re taught that perfection is best.  Perfect is something we must always try to be and if we manage to reach perfection, we’ll see a whole host of benefits.

The problem is that as we grow up and get involved in business, whilst perfection isn’t any less beneficial, it’s sometimes impossible to achieve.

This is a very similar situation to the one that those people trying to directly replicate a perfect blog are in – it’s an impossible feat.

And the reason why it’s impossible is because every blog’s audience is different.

At The Blogshop, we develop and deliver business blogging strategies for clients in a wide variety of different industries.  Whilst each strategy has the same, basic foundations in place, the actual specifics and intricacies of the strategy vary massively.

Although this is, in the first instance, due to the organisation’s requirements and their expectations from blogging, it all ultimately comes down to the fact that the organisations are trying to satisfy their audiences and every audience is different.  Often considerably so.

What’s more, audiences can differ hugely for organisations within the same industry, even if it’s particularly niche.

Take two baby product retailers as an example.  Both selling very similar items and targeting audiences with almost the exact same demographics, if one is reaching out to parents in the south and the other parents in the north, this slight difference could be all it takes to mean a completely different focus is needed.

Applying to the layout as much as the content, what works for one audience won’t necessarily work for another, no matter how successful it has been.  Using Mindjet’s Conspi.re blog as an example, it won our ‘Best Blog Design’ award in 2012 and there’s little doubt that it’s a fantastically designed blog that works well when it comes to reader-engagement.

But as great as it is, it’s unlikely to work in its exact state for a business such as a small clothing retailer.  The layout is too formal, the whole experience is very professional and the approach to the content is too business-like for a small business retailer.  The basics could work as they stand, but the rest would need tweaking to ensure success elsewhere.

Every single organisation out there can benefit from business blogging.  No exceptions.

For those already blogging, you’ll find some organisations are blogging OK, some need help and some are doing it so well that it appears they’ve got a perfect blogging strategy in place – and chances are, they have.

But as soon as you try to mimic their success like-for-like for another audience, at best you’re going to see fewer benefits and at worst it’s going to be a complete flop.  And that’s purely for the fact that every single blogging strategy out there needs to be developed and implemented for a specific audience, as only then can you be on the path to perfection.

In many ways, this is just a natural progression of a resource that is beneficial for business – as with many resources, things start off slow and as word spreads, so does the resource’s popularity.

But could it be that blogging itself is actually becoming a more important tool for organisations to utilise?  Word of mouth definitely helps to spread the general news about blogging and how it’s extremely beneficial, but is it also that blogging is now taking on more of a pivotal role in an organisation’s success than ever before?

At The Blogshop, we certainly believe this is the case.

Up until now, we’ve always promoted business blogging as a way to engage with your target audience.  We’ve continually explained that it has a variety of other benefits and can impact on other business strategies that you have in place, but that its primary focus needs to be on the communication with your past, present and potential customers.

Over the past few months, however, we’ve noticed a trend with the by-products of regular business blogging, most notably that they’re increasing in their significance more and more.

Take SEO as an example.  We’ve always known that blogging has impacted on it positively, but in recent times we’ve seen the results be particularly positive.  Websites jumping up in the rankings several pages at a time for various keywords.  Brands being found for more and more keywords than ever before, even those that they aren’t directly targeting.  It has all happened in the past to a certain extent, but lately the results have been magnified considerably.

We’ve then got to look at the fact that the customer experience is playing a more important role in the success of all organisations than ever before.  As consumers, we want organisations to engage with us regularly and we want to be able to easily find out information on a certain product or service.  We want to know more about the organisation than ever before.

And the perfect way to do this from the organisation’s point of view?  Blogging.

We’re always going to be huge advocates of blogging, if not purely for the fact that it is one of the best company-customer communication tools out there.  However, with an increasing amount of information indicating that blogging is affecting other business areas more than ever, it’s leading us to believe that as great as business blogging has been in the past, it could very easily be more important than ever in 2013.

Having been a platform that’s been in use for well over a decade now, some organisations have been using blogs as a way to communicate with their audience for several years.  Whilst the whole process was gradually picking up speed, it wasn’t until 2012 – or more specifically, the latter part of 2012 – that we started to realise the penny was dropping with more organisations than ever before.

We were finding that as we were getting busier and busier, delivering our business blogging services to more and more organisations, we were needing to educate clients less.  We obviously still talked about the benefits of blogging and the organisation’s expectations, so to develop and implement the most suitable strategy possible, but rather than being asked questions such as “OK…so tell me again, what exactly is blogging?”, we were hearing more of “How can I develop a blog and turn it into a sales platform?”.

Yet as fantastic as this is and as much as we feel confident that this upward trend of business blogging becoming an increasingly popular resource for businesses to use is going to continue in 2013, we also know that there’s still a huge number of organisations who haven’t yet started blogging – or even considered it.

And it’s for this reason why we want to make our first blog post of the year one that asks you to take a look at blogging a little further.

Read through our blog and you’ll find blog post after blog post telling you about the benefits of business blogging.  There’s information about how versatile it is, how it can benefit everything from marketing through to SEO, how the results are long-lasting, how cost-effective of a tool it can be and so, so much more.

We’re passionate about blogging.  It’s what we know, what we do and what we ensure is a complete and utter success for each and every one of our clients.

And simply put, we want you to be able to benefit from it, too.

Whilst many organisations are beginning to understand the benefits of business blogging fully, we know that so many others aren’t.  Therefore, if you’ve got a question, just get in touch.  Or try out our free trial, which allows you to see just what you can expect to achieve through blogging, as well as what you’ll receive from The Blogshop.

Or better still, do both!

We really do ensure our clients’ business blogging strategies are as successful as they can possibly be and truly believe that every organisation can benefit from blogging – and if you haven’t utilised blogging for your business to date, 2013 should definitely be the year that you start.

It really does only seem like yesterday that we were coming back to work after particularly enjoyable New Year’s Eve celebrations, getting ready for the year ahead – and now we’re at the point that we’re preparing for next year!

Looking back on the year, there’s little doubt that it has been a great one here at The Blogshop. In fact, we’d probably say it has been an absolutely fantastic one!

From the moment we stepped back into our offices after Christmas and New Year 2011 right up until this week, it has been an almost continuous journey of development, growth, customer satisfaction and best of all, successful business blogging strategies for each and every one of our clients.

Working with a vast array of different clients thought the year, we had the opportunity to deliver strategies with everyone from multi-national brands through to SMEs, each and every time tailoring our business blogging services to suit.

Understanding the importance of developing and implementing a blogging strategy that is truly going to integrate with our clients’ audiences, the initial stages are without doubt exciting as you get to see the project coming together before it launches – but it’s the results that are obviously the most important points!

And if there’s one thing we’ve noticed in particular when it comes to results, it’s that the SEO benefits are greater than ever before.

Content is a key component to any successful SEO strategy and although we’ve always known blogging can be the perfect way to deliver it, it’s only in 2012 that we’ve noticed just how beneficial it can be. It has been to the extent that some of our clients are jumping pages at a time for terms they didn’t even think would be possible to rank for, never mind rank for via a process that only considers SEO to be a positive by-product.

A wonderful year for all involved, we really can’t wait for 2013 to being. Organisations have really started to understand the importance of regular business blogging and coupled with the improved SEO points above, we’re expecting another busy year, if not the busiest yet – and we really can’t wait.

Thank you to everyone we’ve worked and engaged with right throughout 2012, Merry Christmas and we hope you all have a fantastic 2013.

This blog post is part of the ‘How Can Business Blogging Benefit’ series.  Click here for a full list of blog posts within the series.

If there’s one type of organisation you can guarantee is going to have loyal fans (who are essentially customers), it’s going to be football clubs.

Fiercely loyal to their clubs, happy to travel the length and breadth of the country each and every week and more than happy to spend money at the start of every new season on what is basically just a slightly tweaked version of a product, in which other industries could you find such customers?

However, as loyal as football fans are, they still need to be treated like any other type of customer.  They need to be engaged and interacted with, listened to and understood – and a business blog could provide the perfect way to do just that.

24/7 Interaction

Football is one of those sports that people go mad for.  It’s not just something that people just read about on an evening or weekend, but it’s something that you’ll find hundreds of thousands of people are continually searching for online, wanting to do as much as they can to find every little bit of information possible about their favourite club.

With a business blog, you essentially have a platform upon which you can provide as much information as you want to your fans quickly and easily and in a format that allows you to interact with them right around the clock.

Many clubs have took to using social media and this is great, but even if you scheduled your activity in advance, if there’s no one available to respond to messages immediately, the impact of using social media is going to decrease.

Use a blog, however and although it’s a two-way platform, it’s expected that comments are going to take a little while to respond to.  Therefore, even if you published something late at night and got a deluge of comments in the very early morning, as long as they are replied to during the following day at some point, your fans will be completely satisfied, such is the nature of blogging.

Improved Reach

One of the most beneficial aspects of having a blog is that you can talk to your audience wherever they are and whatever time it is.  It’s because of this why they can make fantastic resources to allow football clubs to maintain relationships with their overseas fans.

People move abroad and there are huge ex-pat communities in countries all around the world, with football bringing them together regularly.  By using a blog, you can essentially bring them back into the centre of your club, allowing them to engage with both you and other fans, something that’s only going to be hugely positive for their satisfaction.

But what also needs to be understood is that there are people out there waiting to be turned into fans today.  They may not be able to get to any of your games or even live anywhere near you, but if you can engage with them via your blog, there’s every possibility you could turn them into loyal fans.

An Extra Sales Channel

At the end of the day, every football club is a business and they need to make money.  Although merchandise sold in the club shop is going to help with this considerably, football clubs need to think like businesses and continually expand their sales channels – and a blog can be the perfect way to do so.

Over time, what do you have on your blog?  Hundreds or thousands of readers – fans.  And what are your loyal fans happy to do?  Spend money.  Therefore, rather than just talking about your fixtures, results and players, throw in the occasional (and it really does need to only be occasional) blog post about some new products you’ve got for sale and you’re effectively promoting them to a ready and waiting audience.

OK, you’re not likely to get every reader buying them, but for the sake of 500 words, it could prove to be the best ROI you see in terms of your sales and marketing activities.

With business blogging being so versatile, we strongly believe that with the right development, any organisation can benefit from a business blogging strategy – and if you’d like to find out how your business can benefit from blogging, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Whilst we’re more than happy to fully develop and implement a business blogging strategy without involvement from the client, there’s actually a lot they can do to further enhance the benefits they see through blogging.

With various different points to mention, one that clients often shy away from, but which can in fact be the most beneficial, is engaging with other bloggers.

Bloggers are influential.  They can easily attract regular audiences of tens of thousands of people and whilst we’re not saying it’s cult-like and the audience will do whatever the blogger says, they do have a huge amount of influence, more so than many actually believe.

By engaging with bloggers in your industry – and this can start with something simple, such as commenting on blog posts – over time you’ll build up a relationship with them.  You’ll come to expect their posts and understand their viewpoints on a certain topic and similarly, they’ll come to expect a comment or two from you on everything published.

As time passes and the relationship develops, you can begin to engage with the blogger outside of the comment section of their blog – and it’s at this point when you can start to think about how the relationship can potentially benefit your business.

What we want to say at this point is that all professional relationships that are developed should be done so in the best of faiths.  Blogger relations should be a two-way process and you should never strike up a relationship with a blogger, expect something from them and as soon as you receive it – if you receive it at all – stop all communication with them.  Aside from anything, it’s particularly bad etiquette and will quickly earn you a bad reputation.

When you’re talking with other bloggers regularly, you build up trust and confidence in one another.  It’s essentially a friendship.  And when you’re friends with someone, you’re more than happy to help them out on occasion.

In the blogging world, this could be something like allowing you to publish a blog post on their blog, in front of their audience.  Whilst this post shouldn’t be sales based, it’s a fantastic opportunity to get your company’s name known in a new audience and start to develop yourself as a thought-leader.

But what it could also be is assistance when you’re launching a new product – if you’ve got a great relationship with 10 bloggers and they each have 5,000 regular readers, asking them to impartially review your new product puts it in front of 50,000 people instantly.  Generally for free.

Where else can you get that sort of promotion for free?

The important point to note here is that this shouldn’t be a regular occurrence and you need to be more than willing to reciprocate.  In fact, we’d go as far as saying you should urge the blogger(s) to think about how they can leverage your blog’s audience themselves.

Similarly, you shouldn’t just expect help from a blogger, even if you feel you’ve got a fantastic relationship with them.  There’s no harm in approaching the subject, but don’t expect them to respond in the way you want them to.  Remember, their assistance really is only a by-product of the relationship.

Developing relationships with other bloggers in your industry can be just like being part of a business networking group.  If you take the time to truly engage with them and develop a professional relationship with the blogger – and they do the same – your organisation could very easily benefit in a variety of different ways, as long as you understand this shouldn’t be the sole focus of the relationship.

If it is, as with any relationship with a purpose other than friendship and loyalty, it’s going to do nothing but comeback and impact you negatively.