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You know you need to be blogging for your small business, but you have no idea where to start.

Sound familiar?

In today’s digital world, blogging for your small business is a no-brainer. In a recent post, we talked through the reasons why your business website should have a blog.

When it is executed correctly, it can become one of the most effective tatics in your marketing strategy. In a nutshell, content marketing through blogging can become a highly effective tool for attracting the right kind of targeted audiences which provide the highest likelihood for conversion into leads and sales.

Not only that, but writing a blog on your small business website creates a new dimension for your brand. It gives it personality and opinion, and most importantly, gives it the opportunity to become an authority. If you’re knowledgeable about your industry and are consistently creating helpful content for your target audience, you will soon establish yourself as an authority in their eyes.

It all sounds incredible, right? Nevertheless, the thought of starting a blog for your small business website from scratch can leave you, well, scratching your head.

To lend a helping hand, we’re talking through the 4 essential steps you need to take in order to start and maintain an effective blog for your small business website.

Step 1: The Basics

At first glance, the thought of setting up a blog can seem daunting. But believe it or not, setting up your business blog is the easy part. There are a few basic but very important elements that go into making a good quality blog for your small business.

Blogging Platform

Choosing your blogging platform is one of the most important decisions you can make for your blog. Choosing a platform that isn’t a good fit for you and your business website means that your efforts could go to waste. So where do you begin?

There are a ton of free blogging platforms out there, such as Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress.com – to name just a few. While all of these options are user-friendly and won’t cost you a dime to use, they will limit you in terms of design, functionality, and SEO. Although great as a beginner platform, they aren’t so great for long-term business blogging benefits.

The highest recommended blogging platform comes in the form of WordPress.org (note that this is much different to the .com version) as this allows you to create your own self-hosted blog. This gives you more control over your blog in the long-term.

Domain

Once you’ve chosen your blogging platform, it’s important to establish a relevant domain. This will be the URL that is used to access your site and needs to be purchased separately from a domain provider. There are many companies that can offer this, with some of the most popular options being GoDaddy and 1&1.

Web Hosting

Although free to use, WordPress.org requires you to pay for web hosting. There are many different companies to choose from.

Theme

Once you’ve got everything set up, it’s important to consider the overall look of your business blog. With many blogging platforms, including WordPress, you are able to easily customise the look and feel of your blog.

An important aspect to keep in mind is the responsiveness of your blog’s theme – you need to be sure that it displays correctly on a variety of devices, from desktops, to tablets, to mobiles. Your audience may drop straight off your site if it does not display correctly on a certain device. And, if your blog is not fully responsive, it may negatively affect your SEO.

Step 2: Content.

At the end of the day, a blog isn’t a blog without content. As mentioned before, a business blog can become a highly effective content marketing tool. As such, an effort is undoubtedly required if you want to make it work that way.

What type of content should I share?

At its core, blogging is a highly creative industry. As such, you can be as creative with your content as you see fit. Your blog content might come in the form of text, graphics, infographics, or even videos. It’s entirely up to you what kind of content you wish to share with your audience.

However, the two most important questions to ask are:

• Who is this post for?
• Does this post provide value for them?

The content that you share on your business blog should be of high quality, be worth reading, and should provide value for the targeted audience. Unfortunately, it’s no good to constantly write posts that shamelessly promote your brand, products or services as this will provide little value for someone who is discovering your brand for the first time.

Instead, a business blog should serve as a valuable introduction to your brand. As mentioned before, by providing consistently helpful content, you will soon establish yourself as an authority in the eyes of your target audience. As a consequence, they will see your brand as worth their time.

Who should create the content?

When it comes to curating content for your business blog, there are numerous ways in which it can be done. And it doesn’t have to be an expensive process.

You may have a blogging team made up of in-house staff, meaning that you have full, convenient control over the content that is produced for your business blog. Alternatively, you may hire freelance writers to publish content for you.

Another option for this is guest bloggers. Someone with an already established blog, relevant to your niche, who can create quality content for you and share it with their audience also may be something worthwhile considering.

How often should I post?

In the world of blogging, it’s super important to remain consistent in order to keep your targeted audience engaged and returning for more.

Regularly publishing content at least once a week is a great place to start. It means that your site is always thriving with fresh, exciting content.

Step 3: Promoting.

To put it simply, no one is going to read your blog unless you make the effort to tell them about it.

Relevant readers may find your blog organically when you make use of relevant, searched for keywords within your content. However, as well as that, social media marketing is a super important part of promoting your business blog.

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook makes it easy for readers to discover and share your posts, as it is right there in front of them. Your post may even go viral and reach a high organic audience just through social media sharing. You can also add a social media policy page to your blog to increase your users’ trust.

Organic Promotion 

When you publish a new blog post on your business website, don’t hesitate to schedule this across your social media platforms, in the hopes that your established audience will click through, and also share this with their own followers.

As well as this, it’s important to make it as easy as possible for your readers to share your post. Installing sharing buttons within each of your blog posts means that your readers can share your content to their own social media platforms with just a few clicks.

Again, guest bloggers can come in extremely handy for organic promotion. When they post on your blog, they can share this with their own established audiences, bringing your blog to the attention of fresh batch of relevant people.

Paid For Advertising

Of course, you can always promote your content through paid for advertising through platforms such as Facebook. However, it is super important to ensure you’re not wasting your money. If you’re not properly creating campaigns, narrowly targeting your audience or effectively optimising your ads – you could run the risk of pouring money down the drain as you won’t be reaching the right people nor compelling them to take the appropriate action, eg. like, share or click through to your site.

In a nutshell, it’s important to have a strategy behind promoting your business blog through paid for advertising. If it is not measurable and does not result in a profit of some kind, it is not worth doing.

Step 4: Setting Goals.

At the end of the day, your business blog will not become an effective content marketing tool unless you set appropriate goals and measure progress regularly.

To better refine your goals, you can use analytics tools to gain valuable insights. For example, utilising Google Analytics can help you to better understand your audience, their behaviours and what types of content they are searching for. Even more importantly, you will get a clearer idea of what types of content aid in generating leads, and so content will become much easier to create in the long-term.

So there you have it! Our top tips for establishing an effective blog for your business. Blogging for business may require time and effort, and may sometimes be all about trial and error, but as you can see, the benefits that content marketing can bring to your business can be entirely worth it. So what are you waiting for?

New to Irish Parcels? Learn more about us…

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The thought of working for a company that is just kicking off might be a little scary.

Working for a larger corporate company can seem much more appealing for a number of reasons. You’ve got the job security, the attractive paycheck, the spacious, luxurious office building. But what do you do once you’ve climbed the corporate ladder as high as you can and suddenly find yourself at a standstill? Where do you go from there?

It’s hard to ignore the risks that surround working for a startup company. But is it really all doom and gloom? Is the grass really greener at a bigger corporation?

Irish Parcels recently turned one year old, and as a relatively new business with a small, thriving team – we just happen to know a thing or two about what it’s like to work within a startup.

Believe it or not, the horror stories are far from correct. In fact, working for a startup company might just be one of the most rewarding things you could do in your professional career, and there is a plethora of reasons why.

Here are 4 ways working for a startup can enhance your career.

1. Work is challenging, but recognised.

There’s no secret that working for a startup is challenging. In a small, fast-growing company you’re likely to find yourself doing a little bit of everything, instead of being limited to the job role you were hired for. While it may be a stressful thought, the key thing to remember is that at a startup, it’s nearly impossible not to give credit where credit is due. When you work for a larger corporate company, the chances of your efforts being ignored by the big boss is fairly high. Yet at a startup, your team are likely to recognise your achievements instantly.

However, this does mean that when you make a mistake, it will be much harder to shy away from it. Though believe it or not, that’s actually a pretty good thing. It will keep you focused and always on the ball with your tasks, because the very last thing you’ll want to do is let your team down.

2. You’ll be given more opportunities.

As mentioned before, working as part of a small team means that you’ll be no stranger to wearing multiple hats. While you may have been hired for a particular position, you’ll likely find yourself doing a little bit of everything, as will the rest of your colleagues. The endless list of opportunities that arise in a startup on a regular basis will allow you to develop your skillset in a range of areas, allowing you to become a more well-rounded professional. As cliche as it sounds, you really will find yourself learning something new every day.

3. You get the chance to shape the culture around you.

When a company is only just kicking off, it is often still finding its feet in terms of identity and company culture. The employees who are there in the early stages will be the ones to shape the culture that will continue to alongside the business.

When you work as part of a small team of people, it’s much easier to form bonds and connect with people on a more personal level. All of you will be working towards the same dream, and you’ll be working those demanding hours together. You’ll witness the progression of the business together, and see our combined efforts pay-off. It’s likely to create more of an informal, relaxed, yet highly driven atmosphere where you are all constantly inspiring one another. Each of your ideas will shape the company’s culture to make it an innovative, enjoyable place to work.

4. You’ll have a better chance at career progression.

At larger companies, climbing the corporate ladder can be incredibly tough. You may reach a certain level, but find that your career progression is growing stagnant – and then you’re left wondering where you’re supposed to go from there. At a small startup, you’re much more likely to make progression in your career. When the time comes for an expansion, promotions are much more likely to come from within rather than externally, and if you already have a well-established role, this can be a fantastic advantage.

Thanks for reading!

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6 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Use Social Media

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Hashtags are an integral part of social media – but how can small businesses use them to their advantage within their social media strategy?

In this helpful guide, we’re going to break down exactly what hashtags are, how they differ between each social media platform, and how small businesses can use them to their advantage within their social media strategy.

The Ultimate Guide To Hashtags For Small Businesses

What exactly are hashtags?

The use of the hashtag began with Twitter, but has since extended to numerous social media platforms. Hashtags are simply a word (keyword) or phrase which are preceded by the hash symbol (#). Using hashtags across social media platforms helps users to target specific audiences, and allows users to search for niche content that is relevant to their interests.

Why should small businesses utilise hashtags?

Social media is constantly growing and for small businesses, it is absolutely vital that they make use of this large audience market in order to grow their brand. Using a hashtag on social media is an extremely useful tool in growing your audience, as a hashtag will immediately expand the reach of your tweet to anyone who is interested in that hashtag phrase or keyword.

Hashtags across different social platforms

To effectively implement the use of hashtags into your small business’ social media strategy, it’s highly important to understand their effectiveness across different social media platforms. Each platform uses them differently, and understanding this is key.

For example, Tweets with 1 or 2 hashtags have higher engagement than those with 3 or more hashtags. Using too many hashtags devalues the strength of the hashtag and makes each additional one more meaningless than the last, so it’s important not to over do it.

With Instagram, it’s entirely different. Instagram posts with 11 or more hashtags are proven to have the highest interactions, as these are likely to reach a much wider audience without devaluing each other. Many Instagram users use lots of hashtags on their posts to build a community. For example, beauty bloggers will use hashtags such as #bbloggers to search and discover similar content within their niche.

Yet with Facebook, many users find that posts without a hashtag actually fare better than those with a hashtag.

Understanding how each platform uses hashtags will allow you to plan your social media campaigns more effectively to garner the best results.

Creating a hashtag for your small business/brand

Creating a catchy and memorable brand hashtag is a valuable (and fun) way to boost brand awareness. A good brand hashtag will be unique and relevant to your brand and/or campaign. Using a generic word or phrase should be avoided, as it will not be distinctive and will be much harder to track across social media.

Jimmy’s Iced Coffee frequently use the hashtag #KYCU, an abbreviation for ‘Keep Your Chin Up’ which is their brand slogan, included on their product packaging. With this simple hashtag, they are able to monitor brand awareness across their social media channels and engage with their customers on a deeper level. It’s also just a really nice message, too!

Ta da! First look at 1 Litre. Thoughts? #KYCU https://t.co/82bThBy4pA pic.twitter.com/ia2Fj9wolo

— Jimmy’s Iced Coffee (@jimmyicedcoffee) 21 June 2016

Hashtags in the wild

Not only are hashtags hugely powerful online, but they can work well when placed outside of the Internet, too. Jimmy’s Iced Coffee place their hashtag in advertisements and even on their exclusive clothing range, which prompts hashtag use amongst their customer base online.

Although not every small business will have such an advertising budget, a similar idea can be executed on a smaller scale through flyers, posters and more.

One last note:

Ultimately, hashtags are a great way to increase your small business’ exposure across social media and are easy to implement into your social media strategy. Embrace their power, but don’t go crazy. Avoid simple mistakes such as breaking a hashtag with a symbol or spacing, and ensure that when capitalization is removed the words in the hashtag do not create other words or messages. If a hashtag can be misread, it will be!

Choose the most relevant and effective hashtags for your brand and consumer base, and you’ll soon see a boost in your brand awareness.

Thanks for reading!

New to Irish Parcels? Learn more about our low cost courier services!

More blog posts:

Selling On Depop – The Ultimate Guide To Making Money

Why Small Businesses Should Collaborate With Bloggers

6 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Use Social Media

Learn more:

Parcel Delivery Ireland

International Parcel Delivery

Our International Courier Prices

Ireland To UK Courier