Too many business blogs sit there not doing anything special.

If these blogs were on a menu at a restaurant, the restaurant would soon be out of business.

The meals would be bland in flavour and unsatisfying, and there would be no dessert on offer. The seating arrangements would be set up to suit the restaurant, with no thought to your comfort or needs.

If you were a diner at this restaurant, you wouldn’t return!

What kind of blogs are we talking about?

We’ve all seen business blogs with five or six posts that were written a year ago.

Or blogs with a trickle of half-hearted posts that read as though the owner has little interest in their blog.

Worse, those same posts were all promoting the business itself.

There’s nothing to keep visitors reading or engaged, and there’s nothing to there to help them in any way.

How can I make my blog more appealing?

Good design

A well-designed blog will have clear navigation and an appealing, fresh look.

But you don’t have to have the shiniest blog on the block. Your content is far more important.

Good incentives

Free stuff always works well  :)  You could offer people a free e-book, a sample or a discount that is only available through your blog.

Having your best content easily accessible on the homepage helps. (You might be able to do this through a ‘Most popular articles’ plugin or widget for example.)

Having a lot of good content also helps– people won’t be able to read it all at one sitting, but they will bookmark and return at a later point.

Solve a problem

If a visitor arrived at your blog from a search engine, they might be looking for something very specific.

If you can provide the information the visitor is seeking, the visitor will be interested in your blog.

You could even offer a set of tutorials or simple how-to’s.

Entertain

Keeping people entertained is difficult. People are incredibly busy. And if the content at your blog just talks about your business, a visitor will not hang around for long!

If your blog concerns certain products, beautiful photographs of them are helpful and are infinitely better than just talking about a product.

It’s best to keep your blog focused on a topic (even if loosely) – but it’s a good idea to break out every so often and entertain with something amusing.

At the blog of EP Designs, owner Elena Perotta posts gorgeous photos of her timeless ‘recreated treasures’, business tips, and also posts her wonderful ‘Chocolate moments’ regularly.

Many of us can relate to a love of all things chocolate:

• I  don’t understand why so many “so called” chocolate lovers complain about the calories in chocolate, when all true chocoholics know that it is a vegetable. It comes from the cocoa bean, beans are veggies, ’nuff said.

 

• Put “eat chocolate” at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you’ll get one thing done

EP Designs chocolate moments

The Business Mums Network Blog Awards last month also shows examples of business blogs that offer extra value for readers.

Jazzing up your business blog shouldn’t take time away from your business. Start by adding just one thing a week.

It won’t be long before you’ve built up something tasty!

Photo credit