10 elements every successful business blog needs

Over the years, blogging services have become much more professional than ever before and there are many ways to make your blog look interesting while providing resources to your readers to enhance their personal experience with you. Besides the enhancements, there are more elements that are equally essential to a blog and it is essential to have a look at these. Here are 10 elements you need to keep in mind to secure your business blog’s success.

1. Domain name

Most blogging platforms allow you to have a sub-domain that is a component of their own domain name, like for example bestshoes.blogspot.com.  However, it is always better to have a custom domain name for your blog. The Domain Name (the unique part of your URL or the web address) should indicate what the blog is about and whom it belongs to. If you have a website, then it is easy to assign a sub-domain to the blog. If not, then be careful in selecting the domain name for your blog so that the URL signifies either the brand or the business it represents.

2. Title

Most people arriving on a web page through a search engine will not look at the URL but the header, i.e. title of the page. You need to have a catchy title that stands out on the page. If you have a business logo, include that as well. This will ensure that the title will embed itself in the mind of the visitor. As is standard practice, both humans and search engines read the page from top left to right bottom, so it makes sense to put the title on the top left of the page.

3. Post headline

Anything you post on the blog needs to have a title that tells the visitors what you are writing about. The title should catch the essence of the entire article and be able to stand by itself. Most platforms will make the post title stand out, but if they don’t, make sure that they are bolder and larger.

4. Post

Obviously this is the most important part of the blog, the one that the visitors to your blog are interested in. The post should be educational, informative and written in a conversational style. The content and quality of the post is what gets the reader to explore your blog further and maybe come back for more.

5. Date/Timestamp

An integral part of the software, each post needs to be time stamped in order to archive it in the proper place. Most blogging platforms will do it automatically provided they are made aware of your correct region.

6. Comments

If you want to engage and interact with the readers, the only way to do so is to allow them to comment on your blog posts. Many bloggers make the mistake of not allowing comments and in the process make it a one-way communication channel and frankly no one is interested in your views if you are not interested in theirs.

7. Archives

Whatever you post on the blog involves effort and why would you not want your readers to access the content posted in the past. There are many ways to allow that. Since you want to engage your reader make sure that there is either a chronological archive of your earlier posts or a tag index which allows the visitor to see all the posts related to the keyword of his choice or you can make some arrangement to display related posts (posts related to the topic of the current post) for the visitor to explore your blog further.

8. Feed

Providing a prominent link to the RSS or Atom Feed of blog posts in the side bar is probably the best way to get people to “subscribe” to your blog content. This is helpful for individuals and other blogs or websites that may have liked your content, style of writing or may simply want to be updated on the content of your blog. The “Subscribe to:” link is generally available at the bottom of each post in any blog.

9. About

This is probably the smallest but the most important part of a blog. The visitors are curious to know who is writing the content, what his qualifications are and what makes him the expert on the subject. Therefore, efforts should be made to have a detailed profile of the blogger including his position in the business. In case of a business blog, it also needs to be indicated that it is the official blog of the business.

10. Contact Information

For a business blog it is essential to highlight the different ways that the readers can contact anyone or someone in the business by providing adequate details of either the mailing address, phone numbers /e-mail or a simple contact us form that can be filled and submitted from within the blog. A link to the company website should be placed in a prominent location on the page. If there are any social media accounts, these can be displayed as well, so that the readers can follow your activity on those accounts too.