11 Blog Topics for Small Business Owners

1. State and Discuss Your Tag Line or Mission Statement:

   Every business has (or should have) a descriptive tag line or more importantly – a mission statement. For most of us, this statement of purpose drives our actions and has special meaning. Share that with your readers! You will show them how much you care. If you have a multi-point mission statement, break it up over several days. Give yourself, and your readers, time to digest the meaning of each point individually (plus, it’s that much more blog fodder).

2. Write About What’s Going Well and Not So Well:

   Most of us don’t really consider the daily minutia of our business to be all that fascinating. The trials and tribulations are our own, we’ve learned from them and have grown/adapted accordingly. I would argue that those details, both the good and the bad, show the human side of you and your business. Giving them a peak behind the proverbial curtain will connect them to you in a meaningful, human way.

3. Developing a New Product or Service? Write About It:

   This topic requires something of a disclaimer. When developing a new product or service, there may be details that you can’t share – either legally or in an effort to keep your competitors away from that information. So, consider this topic carefully. If you can’t actively blog about the detailed experience of creating a new product, perhaps you can instead build anticipation for your new product in a more general fashion. Talk about what’s behind door #1 without opening the door, so to speak.

4. Explain How Your Product or Service Benefits Customers:

   Benefits make the world go ’round. At least that’s what I believe. A product or service is useless to any customer if they don’t understand how it will help or benefit them in some way. Without writing a page-long sales pitch, describe the benefits of your product. Depending on the number of benefits your product has (it could be many!), and the number of products you have – this topic alone could fill your blog post queue for some time.

5. Announce Sales, Promotions and Special Events:

   I love to state the obvious. Always have. And in keeping with personal traditions, this one is a no-brainer. If you’re having a sale, promotion or ANY type of special event – blog about it. I could write a post on this topic and the potential benefits, but I’ll save that for another day. Just suffice it to say, if something’s on sale, tell your readers.

6. Have Burning Questions? Solicit Comments or Conduct a Survey:

   I’ve never met anyone who was genuinely clairvoyant. None of us are mind readers, however much we wish we were. So, whenever you have questions that only your customers can answer – there’s only one way to get the answer. Ask your customers! This is really one of the greatest assets of a blog for small businesses: easy access to your customer base. This could be as simple as writing a brief post containing your question and soliciting feedback via comments. Or if you would like more quantitative data, set up a survey. Tools like Survey Gizmo (and others) make it super simple to create, launch and record results from surveys.

7. Utilize That Cache of Customer Testimonials and Post Away:

   This topic assumes that you’ve been gathering customer testimonials. If you haven’t, add that to your list of priorities! Customers are your most effective sales force. So, take the positive (or maybe not-so-positive, but constructive) testimonials and post them to your blog. The rest of your readers will appreciate the gesture and will like you even more.

8. Get Topical by Providing Commentary on Your Industry’s News:

   Your industry is changing. Seems simple enough, right? Write posts that share that news with your readers. Though don’t stop at merely repeating the news, add your own commentary – your 2 cents. If it’s good news, explain how that news will influence your products or services. If it’s bad news, explain how resilient you are and that you aren’t going anywhere!

9. Leverage Social Media to Capture Customer Response and Blog About It:

   Blogging is a great way to connect with your customer base. Social media is yet another. The environment within the various social networking sites makes it quite easy to participate or start conversations. If you’re in need of a quick topic – hop into Twitter or Facebook and ask a question. One of 2 things will happen: the responses will be so great you can just post them directly to your blog OR someone will say something that inspires your next post. Another topic checked off the list.

10. Post a Response to Another Blog Post in Agreement or Disagreement:

    There are likely several other business owners in your niche that are blogging, too. Read their blogs, participate on their blogs, etc. As you read those blogs, look for areas where you agree, disagree or just simply don’t understand their viewpoint. Write a response on your own blog that links back to the original article. Make sure that you extend the conversation with your own viewpoint – don’t merely re-publish. Be careful of disagreements, and remember to be respectful (unless you intend to burn bridges permanently): be prepared to back up your stance.

11. Make Lists: Best-Of, Who’s-Who, Favorite Products:

    I’ve added this as a bonus of sorts. If you get desperate and feel like maybe you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel, go for this type of topic. Create lists about the best blogs in your industry, the most notable people in your industry, the 5 biggest influences on your business or simply a list of your favorite products or services. Always remember that you should be adding value when writing a blog post. If you create a list, explain why those items are important to you so that your readers will find them important, too.

These 11 topics will get you and your small business out of the gate and running into the world of blogging. Let me reiterate, this will get you started. As you begin writing, you’ll find that topics will come to you – seemingly out of nowhere. This is the sign that you have officially caught the blogging bug. But if you resist the bug either out of a sincere lack of creativity or just plain stubbornness, have no fear. I would highly recommend that you check out the following resources to keep your creative juices flowing:

55 Post and Topic Ideas for Your Business Blog

50 Blog Post Ideas for Business Blogging

Where to Get Ideas From for Your Business Blog

How to Generate Post Ideas When You Are Stuck

With that, I’ll leave all of you to your writing. As you strike out on your new adventure, remember that blogging should be fun! Write as yourself, and be relatable. And a business blog can be a powerful marketing tool so long as you remain vigilant on writing blog posts that provide value to and engage your readers and potential customers. Good luck!

Photo courtesy of Kristina B at Flickr.

3.  Building Followers

As a business owner using Twitter to create brand awareness, buzz or website traffic (or all 3), growing the number of followers for your profile is crucial.  Crucial?  Yes.  Easy?  Some might say yes, but chances are they aren’t putting much effort or thought into the process.  Here are four ways to gain followers on Twitter:

• Be Popular: If you are a popular brand, then you have already got a huge advantage over the average business owner!  Celebrities, big brands (think Dell) and anybody/thing with a recognizable name will find that followers just gravitate to them.  We’re not all so lucky, so move on to the next actionable steps!
• Provide Useful Information: When you Tweet, think about how that message will resonate with your followers and potential followers.  If you are providing information that is useful and meaningful, people will not only read your Tweets, they’ll follow and possibly “retweet” that information to all of their followers.  Granted, this is a process that develops with time, but by merely providing value through your Twitter presence, you will attract followers.
• Proactively Follow Users: Another school of thought is that to get onto someone’s Twitter radar, you must first follow them.  This can be effective, but this tactic has it’s downsides (as I’ll discuss more in section #4).  If all you are seeking is an inflated ‘followers’ stat, than all you would have to do is start following Twitter users by the 100’s, 1000’s, and so-on.  However, you want to attract followers who are interested in your business and who could become a potential customer.  Only follow those who fit into this criteria – and yes, you will still increase your followers.
• Drive Traffic to Your Profile: I think that many people fall into the trap of thinking that growing a Twitter profile only happens within the microcosm of Twitter itself.  This just isn’t the case.  Part of your job when running a social media campaign is to get people to your profiles in many different ways.  Put a link to your Twitter profile on your website, blog, business cards – even cross link from other social networking profiles.  The point is – get people to that profile, let them see your fantastic Twitter presence and they too will start following!

4.  Know Who to Follow

A lot of folks who try to use Twitter (or any other social networking site) for their business have a one-track mind.  It’s all about getting followers and pushing products/services.  While those things are important, remember this is social media – it’s a two-way street.  You have to man up and follow people to make this gig work.

• Search Twitter Feeds: Keywords make the internet world go ’round.  And this is how you can find the best Twitter users to start following and building a community around.  Use tools like Twitter Search or Tweetscan to monitor Twitter discussions that use keywords related to your business.  These are the folks that you want to follow so that you can become a part of their discussion.
• The Twitter Elite: Just like in the “real world” – it can be beneficial to bump elbows with the movers and shakers of your industry on Twitter.  Following these Twitter Elite will not only put you on their radar, but you will effectively blend your network with theirs.  You can use Twitter Search and Tweetscan for this purpose, but there’s a more effective method of finding these individuals.  Head on over to Twitter Grader’s User Search tool.  Twitter Grader (powered by HubSpot) monitors Twitter profiles and ranks them by number of followers and other usage factors.  Just type in a keyword related to your business and see what brands and individuals pop up.

5.  Rules of Engagement

Just like any other marketing tactic, there are particular rules you must adhere to.  There aren’t any officially sanctioned rules for Twitter, but there are certainly accepted best practices that will keep your business from being labeled as SPAM by the masses.

• Be a Part of the Conversation: If you hope to ever sell anything to one of your Twitter followers, they need to have a reason to care about you and your business.  If you are somehow able to find 1000 followers, but you never Tweet – people will forget you exist.  Additionally, a Twitter feed that has no history of quality Tweets will instill zero trust in your brand.  Participating in the conversation ensures that you remain top-of-mind and show everyone your true colors.
• Respond When Spoken To: When a follower takes the time to send a message to you (whether direct or via a reply), the worst thing you can do is ignore them.  Take the time to reply – even it’s just a simple “Thanks.”  Another place where this becomes a factor is when discussing “retweets.”  If a follower retweets your message, link, what-have-you – thank them.  They’ll be more likely to do it again in the future!
• Monitor Mentions of Your Business: Once you engage in the social media space, including Twitter, you must monitor the conversation that is taking place about your business.  This enables you to quickly respond to negative mentions (online reputation management, anyone?), find new potential customers to follow and also to simply join a conversation – instilling a deeper trust in your business.  Use Twitter Search or Google Alerts to set up RSS feeds around keywords important to your business.  Monitor these feeds and respond appropriately.

That about sums it up.  Utilizing social media for marketing is a delicate art and Twitter is no exception.  I hope that these 5 points will help you to ramp up your Twitter presence and leverage the social media power for your business.

I want to know what you think about Twitter followers/following and the rules of engagement – leave me a comment!

Before I get to the meat and potatoes, I’m going to give you the “why you should care” speech.  Here goes:  Twitter is a powerful social media tool.  Period.  It is simple to use and there is incredible potential for reaching customers in a meaningful way.  For perspective, an eMarketer report projected 12.1 million US Twitter users for 2009 and an increase to 18.1 million for 2010.  If you were holding out for fear that Twitter was just a fad, think again because the bandwagon is still on the move!

1.  The Account

A huge part of finding success with Twitter rests on what I call the “structural components” of your account.  Such things as your username (gasp!), profile information (wh-what?), user image/avatar (oh no he didn’t!) and that pesky background (it’s on like Donkey Kong!).  Let me explain…

• Username: Think common sense.  Think branding.  Your business name would be a good [obvious] 1st choice.  If your Twitter campaign is only for a specific product line or branch of your company – be specific.  You want your username to be easily remembered and recognized.  And if you have a lot of products and branches of your business – go ahead and snag those profiles, too, while you’re at it.  The caveat to this is that if your business name is less popular than your own (yeah, that’s me) – it may make sense to leverage the brand equity in your own name.  You can change your Twitter username as needed and all of your replies, DMs, etc. will be redirected to your new username automatically.
• Profile Information: You don’t get a great deal of space to describe your business, so be specific.  The ‘Name’ field gives you the chance to restate your business name separate from your Twitter username.  So if you are Acme Computer Widget Suppliers International – chances are your username is lacking something.  Use the ‘Name’ field to spell it all out.  Include your ‘Location’ – especially if you aspire to attract local customers.  Don’t forget (I repeat, don’t forget) your website!  And your ‘Bio’ should be descriptive of not only your business but of your overall intentions for participating on Twitter.
• User Image / Avatar: Once again, think branding.  Don’t stick with Twitter’s default brown face.  So the question becomes – do you use your business/product logo or do you use a picture of the individual behind the account?  In a recent survey conducted by Kristy Bolsinger, the majority feel that a logo is more appropriate and effective.  Whatever you choose, the image you stick with should be professional and reflective of your brand.
• Background: I’ll step right up and say that I’m guilty of misuse of a Twitter background.  Twitter provides a handful of stock background images that can help spice up your profile, but that’s just the tip of the iceburg.  You can upload custom backgrounds into your profile.  This gives you a huge opportunity to provide your followers with more information about your business, images reflecting your brand and/or products and even to include more detailed contact information.  Not to mention you can show your or your marketing team’s creative prowess.

2.  Productivity

When I first began using Twitter, I strictly used the web interface.  At the point I began updating multiple Twitter accounts, this became impossibly difficult.  Log in, log out, am I in the right account, I don’t know, crap I need a desktop app!  This wasn’t the only issue.  There was also the issue of time and how Twitter was prioritized into my routine.  If you’re not careful, Twitter (like much of the internet) can become a massive time-suck.

• Desktop Apps:  Take yourself out of your web browser and into the life of social media leisure.  OK, maybe it isn’t that swell.  Desktop applications are programs that have been designed to speed up and enhance the Twitter user experience as well as simplify basic functionality.  These desktop apps let you manage multiple profiles simultaneously, they integrate reply, retweet and direct message tasks simply and in general speed up the process of using Twitter.  I personally use Twhirl, but am planning a future switch to Seesmic Desktop.  Check out this Mashable article that compares the top 19 desktop apps.
• Time Management: As I mentioned above, it is easy to get lost in Twitter.  When you let this happen you lose time you could be spending on other tasks – thus devaluing the ROI of your social media campaign.  Use basic time management skills to make Tweeting a routine.  Give yourself time to review updates from those that you follow.  Give yourself time to send replies, direct messages and retweets as appropriate.  And most importantly, give yourself time for your own Tweets.  I would recommend 10 minute blocks spread throughout the day.  This way you get in, get out and get on with running the rest of your business!

Well, thus endeth part one.  For more Twitter-goodness, check back in tomorrow when I’ll wrap things up with Building Followers, Knowing Who to Follow and Rules of Engagement.

**UPDATE** Visit part 2!

I want to know what you think about Twitter accounts and productivity, so don’t be shy – leave me a comment!