|  When it comes to setting up a new business blog, one of the biggest mistakes that fledgling businesses make is posting too much brand-centered content. Now, I realize that at face value this might seem like the best strategy – it”s your site, why not promote it? – but in reality this tends to turn away viewers who aren”t actively interested in making a purchase at the time.
One of the main reasons that people come to blogs is to get free information, sometimes entertainment if the blog is set up to provide it. When they stumble across a blog that provides a wealth of useful information, they are much more likely to come back to that blog sometime in the future, bookmark it, share it with friends, and basically spread the word about it. On the other hand, if the blog is obviously marketing their own products with every single blog post, they have a hard time feeling secure when it comes to trusting that information. It”s obviously biased, so they would rather just get the information from a source they can trust.
The way to fix this is to add in some extra variety in your blog posts. Rather than taking a product-centric stance on your blogging, search for ways to provide reliable, educational content that people can use – even if they don”t purchase one of your products. Make it a mix between the purely educational, thought provoking opinions, and data offerings to give your visitors enough variety to keep coming back for more.
What will happen as you do this is that your blog will eventually be seen as an authority on your niche market. Since people have the tendency to share information that has helped them, you”ll be able to reach out to a wider audience, in the meantime bringing in more potential customers. Your visitors will begin to associate your website with useful advice and valuable market expertise, which will in turn boost your credibility and give people trust in any products that you offer elsewhere on the site.
To put it simply, your goal with your business blog should be to become a thought leader in your particular industry. When a new industry breakthrough hits the airwaves, your blog will be the first place people turn to, to get the reliable facts. You can do this in several ways, the easiest of which is to simply post informative content based on your own experiences. For example, if you run a gardening supply website, post guides for planting during different seasons. If you have a law firm, put out some recent case studies or factual data, or publish pieces of interest on recent cases that fall under your area of expertise.
The key is to mix it up and take the main focus of your blog off your particular products or services. The more you are able to do that, the more you”ll begin to see that you don”t need to constantly plug your products to keep up the sales volume.
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