Having a handful of really great blogs on your RSS reader helps a lot with this; but really great blogs aren’t that easy to find. Some of the “old favourites” (mentioning no names here – no really, for once we’re actually not going to mention any names!) have got a little stale and repetitive, and others have got drawn into hyperbolic, clickbait headlines which they can’t really deliver on when you read the article.

That’s pretty much our pet hate, because ten minutes spent finding out that “Six Guaranteed Pro Tips for getting business from Google+!!” actually consists of amazing advice like “fill out your profile” and “connect with people you know!”, is ten minutes we can’t use for doing something useful.

So, if you’re looking for something a little more quality (of course you are, that’s why you’re here, right?!), below is our Top 5 list of current social media blog greatness. These are some of the folk we read here to get fresh opinions and interesting takes on what’s going down in the Social Media world. In no particular order:

1) Just Ask Kim

A great source for tips and tricks of all kinds related to social media and online marketing. No fluff, just valuable, well explained content. Slightly more on the technical side, and some great posts about parts of WordPress that make the less confident user start to tremble a little.

2) Jon Loomer Digital

We recently heard Jon described as “where it’s at with Advanced Facebook marketing – kinda like where you go when you’ve outgrown Mari Smith”!. Possibly a alittle harsh, but Jon certainly focuses on the more advanced aspects of Facebook, particularly the trickier aspects of the Facebook Advertising Power Editor. We’ve not come across anyone else providing information at near this level of complexity, so Jon has to make the list.

3) Postplanner

We’re a little bit lairy of “social media product company” blogs on the whole, but this one has really won us over. It’s more suitable for beginner to intermediate social media marketers, but nonetheless has consistently valuable articles and is particularly strong on real-world, case study type examples of using social media well.

Our only criticism is the incredibly annoying popup which you can’t get rid of without signing up for the PostPlanner product – but add the Blog to your RSS reader and that’s no longer an issue.

4) Instagram for Business

Most people are aware of the LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter official business blogs, but not everyone has found the Instagram equivalent yet. It’s not the prettiest site (oh, the irony) but it’s solid at delivering nice case studies of brands using Instagram in innovative ways, as well as technical and product release updates.

5) Viperchill

Not new, and not really social media, but still always interesting! Glenn at Viperchill talks about what’s *really* working to get visibility online – as against what Google *says* should work. He was on to the clickbait ViralNova type sites and their business model way before we saw anyone else talking about it. The blog is mostly SEO focused, but also looks at broader ways that people are making money online (such as advertising on social media), too.

We’d love recommendations from our readers, too! If there’s a company or individual who you think is doing a quality job with their blog, and where you regularly find interesting or helpful stuff, please do post it up in the comments section.

Previously, the key benefits of blogging were keeping fresh content on your site, and providing informal insights into your organisation’s work and related topics. For most businesses, that was enough, and if they built a regular audience of readers who liked the “newsletter home” type of content, so much the better.

That approach though tended to lead to what I call a “whimsical” posting style.  So a typical article might involve giving a personal opinion or commentary on current affairs, often linked (with varying degrees of awkwardness) to the business’s products or services. That’s how you get articles like “Why cupcakes are like the Olympics” or “Have you made anyone’s day this week?“.

Now, there’s nothing terribly wrong with that; it does give some insight into the personality of the writer (and thus the organisation), and if readers are enjoying it, then the “fresh content” and “informal engagement” boxes are definitely ticked. But, to really make your blog deliver, you need to start thinking a lot more out of the box.

Shareability – that’s what you need

There are two things which have changed in the last year or so.

Firstly, Google’s algorithm has had a few changes, all of which favour genuine, original content which is being shared on social media. The days where crude keyword stuffed articles (think those About.com style posts which seem to have been written by robots),  and random bulk-bought links from websites which had nothing to do with your industry, pushed you up the search engine results ladder are rapidly disappearing over the horizon.

And of course, there’s a virtuous circle of more links > more traffic > more authority with Google > more visibility in SERPS.

Secondly, the rel=author markup has come along. This is designed to identify an individual as the author of a body of web-based content, even if that content is spread across a number of websites (for example, guest posting). If you’ve got your blog or website set up to use the markup, it further enhances the value of great content and helps that content to stand out in search results.

So, if you can take your articles to the next level and start creating content which your readers want to tell other people about, it will make a big difference to your website’s authority ranking – as well as enhancing your credibility with readers.

So, what should I be writing?

Think about the last few articles you personally have bookmarked or shared. What did they have in common? The chances are, they will be doing one of the following:

• First out with industry news
• Showing you how to do something
• Articulating something you’d not quite understood previously
• Providing a resource – the best free WordPress plugins, or top 10 beautifully designed websites in your sector.
• and so on

No matter which sector you’re in, there will be aspects of your own business which lend themselves to these kinds of articles – which will provide real value to others, and which they’ll want to share.

If you’re a printer, you could include a downloadable “cheat sheet” explaining key printing terms and options which your clients will need to understand to get the best from your work.

If you’re canning sardines, you might want to talk about sustainable fishing, but could also include a well-researched survey of the latest stats around global fish stocks.

If you’re helping people get to grips with social media, showing the thousands that get phished each day on Twitter what’s happened and how to fix it might send you hundreds of web hits each week (it does!).

So whether you’re writing about double glazing or ballet slippers, start thinking more widely about your topics. Think about what your target customers would get kudos from sharing with their peer group, and how you can make their lives easier. They, and Google, will thank you for it.

There are lots of free resources out there, such as WordPress.com, Blogger, Tumblr and more, which will let you set up a blog. Apart from being free, these sites are also attractive because the setup time is almost non-existent: you can set up an account and begin blogging within minutes.

However, using a freebie site rather than incorporating a blog into your  main company domain can do your online marketing more harm than good in the long term. Here’s why.

It can screw up the SEO benefits of blogging

Search engines love  a content rich website, with lots of reasonably text-heavy pages. They also give preference to sites which are frequently, and recently, updated. So by putting all of your quality, fresh content onto a freebie blog, you’re depriving your main website of that search engine “oxygen” and all the benefits which come from it.

You risk competing with yourself in search

A free blog is always a subdomain of the providing platform. So, instead of www.rosemcgrory.com/blog, you get something like www.rosemcgrory.wordpress.com.

Although creating links between your main domain and your freebie site can transfer some of the “link juice” (increased authority for search engines), Google will always treat the sites as separate – just the same as if you owned one of them, and a competitor owned the other.

So, when someone searches for your company or products, there are two possible results which could be damaging: your freebie blog becomes more successful in the Google rankings than your main site, and prospective customers don’t make it to your key domain; or, both sites come up in the listings, resulting in confusion for users.

Marketing strategy fail

Being able to set up a blog in five minutes on a whim can be dangerous. A blog will take time, care and attention to become an asset to your business, and it’s well worth giving it some proper thought before jumping in. The process of setting up a blog within your site tends to encourage more thinking time, and a proper strategy in terms of the objectives and content plan. If your blogging efforts aren’t properly integrated with the rest of your online (and offline) marketing strategy, you might end up undermining good work that’s been done elsewhere.

Spoiling your brand

Most businesses invest in the look of their main site, and have it customised to present the best possible appearance. You’re much more restricted in the level of customisation you can achieve with a free blog site, so it’s almost impossible to maintain your “look and feel” to that of your main domain. Additionally, most people are aware that “X.tumblr (or Blogspot or WordPress).com” is a free domain, and may perceive that as being “cheap” – a bit like having a Hotmail account for your business email. Creating a significant web presence on a platform you can’t control properly risks undermining your brand.

Zombie site risk

Developing a second key online presence means twice the work – twice the number of logins that can be lost, twice the amount of content needed to keep both sites updated and fresh. There’s a much bigger chance that one will fall by the wayside, giving customers the impression that your business is no longer active.

Free sites can be a great way of starting to understand how the blogging format works, and we’d definitely recommend having a play with one for that reason. There are even a (very) few businesses whose only online presence is based on one, although they are sometimes the exception that proves the rule. But in general, proper integration with your home domain is the way to go.

Keeping up with them can be time consuming, though. First you have to bookmark them all, then remember to check back regularly to see whether there are new articles – and often, there won’t be. Once you’re following more than a few, it can be difficult to manage and you’re either going to be loading a lot of pages with no new content, or forgetting about it altogether and missing out on information that could be really helpful.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just look at a single web page, which brought together all the articles from blogs you were interested in, and showed you at a glance where there was new content to check out?

This is what RSS readers were designed for. RSS stands for “really simple syndication”, and it’s basically a standardised format for broadcasting web-based content. Blogs and websites that make their content available in that format tell you so by using the orange icon to the left – ours is at the end of individual blog articles and also in the page footer. The RSS feed “sends out” each new blog article as it’s published.

To receive the articles, you need an RSS reader. An RSS reader, or aggregator, is just a tool that “grabs” each new piece of output from an RSS-enabled site, and puts all the information you’re interested in together. It’s real time, so as soon as a new post comes up on a site you’re interested in, it’ll arrive in your reader within moments.

How does this help my business?

You should be considering both sides of the RSS equation! If you have a blog, make sure that you’ve enabled an RSS feed, as this makes it much easier for customers or prospects to keep up with your news. If you’re using WordPress as your content management system, as we do, it has a built-in RSS feed facility, and most CMS’s with a blog function should offer one.

If you want to efficiently keep on top of all that blog-based content that can help your business, you’ll need to register with an RSS reader. They’re almost all free, and are easy to use. We just use Google’s simple web based Reader , but if you have specific requirements there’s a useful review of commonly used desktop based readers here .

Once you’ve got your reader, the easiest way to bring all that content together is just to visit each of the blogs that interests you, click on the RSS feed icon on the site (you can start with ours below!) and follow the steps to add it to your particular reader.

And that’s it! Your reader will show you at a glance the number of new articles available on each of the blogs you’re following, and you can either read them in simple text format within the reader, or click through to the blog itself.

It’s quick, easy and you’ll never miss a useful article again.

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We’re fans of blogging for the same reasons we’re fans of social media – our blog brings a lot of traffic to our website, and helps us to connect with potential clients. But, it also allows us to do a whole range of things which would be very hard to do using other social media platforms alone.

Increasingly, basic brochure websites which feature the same old content for months on end, just don’t deliver enough.

So here are our top 5 reasons why you should consider getting a blog for your business:

1. A blog significantly increases the value you’re offering to a website visitor.

If you’re in a services business, blogging about aspects of the service you provide can help to educate your potential customers about the challenges involved; and “help” articles provide a free resource which keep people coming back.

If you’re selling to consumers, the topics you choose to blog about can help to build your brand identity – for example, a luxury swimwear brand might blog about high end holiday destinations or spas. Those topics are likely to be of interest to your customers, while emphasising your product’s link to a desirable lifestyle.

2. A blog improves your business’s search engine rankings.

Google and other search engines love “fresh” content, so regular new items appearing on your site is a big plus – and far more constructive than just switching around the phrases on your static web pages!
If you choose, you can use blogging in a very focused way primarily for SEO , although this can be difficult to combine with the value aspect above, so choose your priorities carefully.

3. A blog offers a fantastic opportunity to differentiate your business.

A year’s worth of blogging provides a breadth of content which demonstrates your expertise (for a service business) or aspects of your product in use, far better than a standard web page.
Your static web pages are where you ensure that all the basics are covered for prospective customers; your blog provides an insight into the real personality and values of your company.
When we’re looking for partners, we always look for a blog section on their websites as it gives a much clearer idea of what they’d be like to work with!

4. A blog maximises the impact of your other social media activity.

Being able to Tweet about a new blog post, to a receptive audience, radically increases the level of traffic it’ll get; and conversely, people who enjoy your blog posts are more likely to follow you on Facebook or Twitter.

If the tone and content of your blog is suitable, it’s also easy to integrate with a Facebook page or LinkedIN profile, so that fresh content appears there automatically.

For Facebook, check out Networked Blogs. On LinkedIn, you can either use the WordPress application if you have a WordPress blog, or the Blog Link app – both can be found under the More > My Applications menu when you’re logged in to LinkedIn.

5. Your blog can begin to create a community around your business.

You really should set up your blog to allow comments on each article – if you’re worried about spam or inappropriate comments, most platforms have either a moderation function to allow you to approve comments before publishing, and / or various spam blocker options.

Once you’ve done that, your blog becomes an ideal place for a discussion to begin. As well as providing lots of additional web traffic, you might learn all sorts of things from your readers in the course of that discussion which will help you improve your products or tailor your marketing messages.

There are lots of resources out there which can help you with various aspects of starting a blog, from technical to how to write great posts.

We provide setup, hosting and (if needed) content for our clients’ blogs, so if you’re not sure where to start, give us a call – or feel free to ask any questions below!