Business Blogging for SMEs: Blogger

With Social Media being actively accepted by businesses mainstream, blogging as a communication medium is gaining popularity and ground. While there is much content being generated by both individuals and businesses alike, the medium with which majority of the businesses are reaching out to their target audience is blogging. There are several personal and corporate blogs existing, many of them have also evolved into powerful content platforms globally.

For Small and Medium Enterprises, blogging is one of the most powerful activities of reaching out to the relevant target business audience with the intended message.

What is blogging?

Blogging essentially is about sharing your thoughts on a subject on a 'weblog'. This Wikipedia article defines the blog well. It all started with websites. While websites were the most preferred mode of communication for businesses, blogging has recently introduced a fundamental shift in which businesses communicate with their customers 'online'. With web 2.0 ushering in, the monologue has now evolved into a two way communication, with your customer's getting as much a chance to engage with your business and not just be at the receiving end of 'a' communication.

How is a blog of help to me/ my business?

A blog while being only a platform to express views and share thoughts, is a powerful mode of communication with your customers and not just that. Its a powerful mode of taking your message to the intended target audience. A content driven, high on call-to-action blog which shares insights about the business you are in, which lets your customers know you better and engage with you, which gives people access to information is the best possible choice to make when making a blog.

How do I create my blog?

Even before we go ahead and do it, we must have the purpose clear in our minds. One of the basic most is, whether the blog you are creating, a personal blog OR an official blog! This defines many aspects, starting from the design of the blog to what content goes in there.

Now to the creation aspect: there are many 'free' blogging platforms available, eg:

• Blogger
• Blogspot
• Wordpress

One of the widely used and well known platform which has been in existence for a couple of years now is Blogger. Incidentally the IndiaMART Knowledge Services blog is hosted on the Blogger platform only. A free blogging platform which has gained a global acceptance by the blogging fraternity. Its simple, easy to understand, a powerful content management system and scalable.

To create your blog all that you need to do is, go to the following URL: www.blogger.com and create an account OR login with your existing Google account.

Once done, you will be redirected to the following screen, which will be your blog's dashboard:

To write your first post, you must click on the "New Post" link which is highlighted in the blue colored box right below your "manage blogs" section.

Once you click on the New Post link, you will be re-directed to the following section as shown in the screen capture below:

This is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor and hence whatever you type in the box, will be published as it is on your blog. Using the menu options on the editor you can indent and manage your blog text.

Once you are ready, you can publish your post by clicking the Orange colored, "Publish Post" button. If you are unsure of publishing the post, or if you have not completed the post and want to abandon in between, you can do so by clicking "Save Now" button, which will save your post in the drafts folder, which you can retrieve later on, when you login to blogger again.

You can also schedule your posts, example, if you would want to schedule your post for any day and time of the year, you can do so, by clicking on the "Post Options" blue colored link at the bottom left of the editor, which opens the section as shown in the screen capture below:

Once you have scheduled the post, click on "Publish Post" and your post will be published online only at the specified time and day by you.

You can also have multiple pages (navigational HTML pages) on your blog, example the About Us page. These pages can contain information about your company, yourself and other messages which you would like to communicate with your target audience.

To know more about how you can monetize your blog once you are on blogger, subscribe to the IndiaMART Knowledge Services Blog.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!