Tristan White, owner and founder of physiotherapy company The Physio Co and a SmartCompany blogger, attended the Problogger conference after first starting blogging in January 2011.
White says he initially started blogging about his thoughts in the form of an online journal but found many of his blog posts were about the culture he was building at The Physio Co, which is the subject he now focuses on.
“Doing that has attracted a lot of employees,” White says.
“By blogging, we have been able to show what happens at The Physio Co, which has resulted in a lot of new employees joining.”
White says the information on the blog allows potential employees to see what the culture is like at The Physio Co and some are instantly attracted, while he jokes others “think it is some sort of cult”.
For White, blogging enables him to show what the inside of the business is like from the outside while an added bonus is improving search engine optimisation for The Physio Co’s website.
“Blogging does not drive sales because we do not do sales online but it does help with search engine optimisation and Google rankings,” White says.
Problogger conference attendee Adam Franklin is also the co-founder of Bluewire Media and he uses his blog to generate sales leads.
“About 1,500 people visit my website each week and more than half of them are finding it through the blog,” Franklin says.
He estimates 75% of people are looking for information and the next 23% are looking to compare service providers.
“At the end of each blog post we have a call-to-action and more premium content. I find it really effective because people get to know you for free, then you are educating them and our whole job is educating them,” Franklin says.
Franklin sets aside Thursday afternoons to write his blog post but always has Evernote open on his phone so he can jot down notes on the go, which “eliminates the paralysing feeling of looking at a blank page” when he goes to write a post.
The final word on the topic comes from Google’s chief technology advocate, Michael Jones, who recommends writing a blog to improve the popularity of your business’ website.
SmartCompany spoke to Jones last month and, according to him, you need to ask yourself a few simple questions about your business’ website.
“Why would somebody come to your website? Why would they spend time there? Why would they recommend it to their friends? Why would they bookmark it?”
“The way you get ranked more highly is to have a genuine interest in other people,” he says.
For example, Jones says if a florist wanted to be ranked higher than other florists, the florist should have a section on its website’s front page that showed a new floristry tip every day.
“That would certainly cause your relevance to shoot up in Google without any strange or unnecessary activities, you’d just be more popular, and people would come to your site more often,” he says.
Want to learn more? Find out more about topics like business blogging and Google SEO strategies by reading regular SmartCompany bloggers such as Jim Stewart, Craig Reardon and Fi Bendall.
This article first appeared on September 25th, 2012.
Cara Waters is a former SmartCompany editor. Previously, Cara was a senior reporter for the Financial Times’ website and worked for The Sunday Times in London.
