WordPress is an amazing open source tool that your company can use to build up your small business. Blogging is a great small business tool for driving traffic, sharing store information, and helping educate your audience on some really cool topics. It is also a great resource to use with your companies Social Media campaigns for things like contests and giveaways. For more information you can also check out our previous resource for Why Small Businesses Should Start Blogging Now; also please feel free to check out our SEO and blogging resources.

Two Types of WordPress

WordPress.com

There are two types of wordpress that can be utilized for your small business one is WordPress.com which allows you to create a blog for free that is hosted on wordpress. Your blog URL for a wordpress.com site is going to be “yourusername.wordpress.com”. This is a great resource for people who are new to blogging, may not have a full website for their company yet, or don’t want to host incur any additional hosting costs or migration costs associated with creating a blog on their current site. For more information on creating a blog please check our Small Business Blog Development page. Keep in mind that if you do eventually want to host your wordpress.com blog on your website you can do so.

WordPress.org

The second type of WordPress that you can use is a self-hosted wordpress.org blog. This type of blog is directly attached to your website and it will give you the url structure of “http://www.yourdomain.com/blog”. Generally in order for your website to pass any “link juice” onto your overall site you will want to choose a wordpress.org self-hosted blog. For more information on why link juice is important and what SEO means for your company please visit our Link Building Resources.

How to Use WordPress for Business

As mentioned above blogging is a fantastic way to build business for your company. Blogging about your top allows you to become the Industry expert on your product. Generally speaking, informative information, that is relevant to your topic is a great way to build credibility, build links to your blog, and drive traffic to your company. Google specifically prefers to rank more informational material than commercial material. Through the sharing of information on your blog – you have the opportunity to create a lot of extremely relevant and informative content that will increase your search engine rankings through link building and drive more traffic to your website as a result.

What to Write About

Answer Customer Questions: One of your greatest resources for content is going to come directly from your clients or customers. I’ll use my family’s business as an example, many customers ask what the difference between American made and foreign made flags. Chances are if your customers are asking you questions in your store, there are plenty of other people out there looking for the answer to that same question. By creating quality content that will give them an answer to their questions you have opened the door to becoming the authority on flags for them. My grandmother always says, if you have a customer and they’ve gotten great service, they’ll tell at least 5 other people – likewise with online content – if you’re sharing quality content, the readers are likely to share it with their friends. Driving more traffic to your content, and even linking back to it from time to time. This is the type of environment that you want to create in order to maximize your company’s reach on the Internet.

For more topics to write about see our article What to Blog About: Topics for Small Business

Tutorials (Video)

• How to Use WordPress.com
• How to Use WordPress.org Self Hosted Blog

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

Blogging is a fantastic strategy to help build your business. Using a blog as an extension of your business to inform people on topics that are relevant, informative, and of a high quality is a huge factor in raising your search engine rankings. If you’re interested in finding out more about this topic please see the additional resources below or check out our Small Business Blog Development page.

Additional Resources

• Example Link Building Article for Small Business
• Two Easy Ways to Gain TONS of Traffic
• Three Easy Ways to Build Links for Your Small Business
• The Ultimate Link Building Strategy
• 10 Places to Promote Your Business For FREE
• Small Business Link Building Resources
• Small Business SEO Resources

Have Any Questions?

Please feel free to Email Me | Tweet Me | or Connect with me on LinkedIn – I would absolutely love to discuss this article with you or any other general questions you have. Thanks for reading – keep reading, and keep learning – it’s the only way to stay ahead of the competition. Also, if you liked the article please feel free to share it with your friends and family below. Cheers!