Creating a blog is one of the best ways to generate organic traffic to your website. It’s also useful for branding, becoming a thought leader, and being trusted by consumers. Many people get scared by the idea of having to write consistently, and think that they don’t have enough time or experience to do so. That is just ridiculous! As long as you don’t have a tenuous grasp on English, you can blog! Check out these tips on how to get started:

Figure out whether you need to use a third party blogging site or can implement a blog on your existing website.

This bit is extremely important. Does your existing business website have blogging functionality? If it does, great! You can start writing immediately. If it doesn’t you may need to choose a third party solution like WordPress and link to it from your site. Using a service like WordPress means you will have to set up a smaller second website, but this is fairly easy. They have a ton of templates, and are very affordable. Just make sure your branding matches up and you are good to go!

Create a manageable schedule.                                       

This varies from business to business. You need to figure out what works for YOU. If you can only blog once a week, than do that! Do whatever is comfortable for you. Once you start getting used to blogging you will be able to write more efficiently and produce content at a faster pace.

Make all your content shareable!

The point of blogging is to generate engagement with your customers. Make sure all your content is easily shareable via ‘Share This’ buttons. That way, users can share anything they like with various social media networks.

Share EVERYTHING on social media.

If you don’t have a business social media account yet, get one. Having a social media presence is pretty much mandatory for practically any industry at this point. People won’t know about all this great content you are creating if you don’t share it with your networks! Also, be sure to use a service like bit.ly so you can track click throughs on your articles. It will help a ton with regards to seeing which articles resonate with your target audience, and which don’t.

There are a bunch of things that comprise a great website. Intuitive navigation, a good color scheme, and clean design are staples of design right now. But there are other must-haves that some businesses sometimes ignore like:

Responsive Design

With the growing popularity of using mobile devices to access the web, responsive design is becoming much more of a necessity. Responsive design basically means designing your website in a way that adapts to the screen of the device accessing it. A modern business website should be able to ensure that anyone can access and view it properly from any device. Responsive design will become a staple in the upcoming year, so get on the bandwagon while there’s still room. Otherwise people will view your site as backwards and you may lose out on valuable traffic.

Dynamic Content

Long gone are the days where websites were just images and text. Now every business website needs a variety of content that is consistently updated. Try to include media like videos, showcases, and blogs to keep visitors engaged when they visit your site. The longer a user is on your website, the more likely they are to turn into a sale.

Social Media Integration

Social media is essentially a must for any organization. Place social media badges at the header and footer of every page to ensure that users can connect with you quickly. Also, call to actions are great if you have enough room for them. ‘Like us on Facebook’ generates more engagement than a simple Facebook icon. Many users take to social media to find information on products and ask for purchasing advice. That’s why it’s important to make it easy for them to interact with you on a more personal level on social media.

A social media presence is pretty much mandatory for most businesses at this stage. A lot of businesses still haven’t quite figured out how to use social media just yet though. They stumble into common pitfalls that are easily avoided. So what should you not do on social media? Read on!

Spam their followers

Businesses occasionally fail to realize that spam doesn’t just mean what you get in your junk email or mail. It can occur in other channels like social media. It’s good to consistently post on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. It’s not good to constantly post without giving you followers a little bit of a breather. Try to space out your posts and not barrage users with your content. Otherwise you may find that they will soon begin to ignore you.

Focus on selling themselves and ignoring engagement

No one likes a person who only cares about themselves. Likewise, businesses should not only focus on sharing their content, but also on actively engaging their community. Reach out to individual followers and share their content as long as it’s relevant to your business. People love it when someone shares what they have to say. A happy user is an engaged one. No one likes to feel like they don’t matter. Especially on SOCIAL media.

Forget to acknowledge people who interact with them

If a user interacts with one of your accounts don’t ignore them! Make sure to acknowledge what they have to say. Answer questions people have, and respond to comments. Don’t make followers feel like they are talking to a brick wall. It’s nice to know there’s a person on the other side and not just an automated account.

Integrating social media with your business website is critical for increasing online exposure and engagement with your target segment. Check out these tips on how to connect your website with different social media platforms:

Add social media buttons on every page

Including buttons that link to your social media accounts is great for making it easier for users to connect with you. Social media is becoming a very popular way of asking for product advice or reviews. By including links you are streamlining the information search section of the buying process. This will also help to boost traffic and followers of your various accounts.  The best place to include these buttons is in the header and footer of every page. Make sure they are clearly visible or they may never be used by visitors. Including call to actions such as ‘Like us on Facebook’ are also better than simply using a basic badge. Everyone has badges these days, and calls to actions are much more effective.

Allow users to login using social media

Letting users use their social media accounts to log in to your website is great for increasing conversions. Long gone are the days where users had to fill out lengthy registration forms. Now all they need is a Facebook or Twitter account. Using social media logins can also help to share specialized  content and connect with their users on a much more personal level.

Make your website social media friendly

Users are starting to want a website viewing experience more akin to social media platforms these days. They desire to see dynamic content, category focused areas, news feeds, and social media feeds. Some websites are switching to more modular panel home page designs to cater to this. These panels can be used to show any type of feed or content they want. A great example of this is Google Ventures.

Make content shareable

Having great content is worthless if it’s hard for users to share it easily. Making content shareable is a great way to boost online exposure, traffic, and engagement with your customers. Including social sharing buttons next to all content like blog articles, videos, and images is a great way of doing this.

Embed dynamic content like YouTube videos when appropriate

Dynamic content is absolutely mandatory for websites that want to be more engaging. Including videos from YouYube or infographics are great for increasing visit times and conversion rates. The longer a user is on your website, the more likely they are to become a quality lead, and eventually a customer.

Integrating social media with your business website is critical for increasing online exposure and engagement with your target segment. Check out these tips on how to connect your website with different social media platforms:

Pinterest has been gaining popularity among designers for its innovative visual features. This platform allows its users to pin images from other websites onto a board. This can help to increase traffic to these sites, as well as serve as a virtual portfolio for designers. So how can you use Pinterest for your design business?

Building your brand

Pinterest is just as useful as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn at building your own unique online brand. There are some great ‘About Me’ sections to communicate just who you are and what you do. You can also link to your Twitter, Facebook, and website.

Finding design inspiration

Inspiration is critical for designers. You can get design block just like writers do. Pinterest is great because you can pin any cool websites to your board that you come across. When you need inspiration all you need to do is come back to your board. Make sure to use keywords like ‘web design’ in each pin board’s name so that people looking for web design can view your profile.

Creating a unique portfolio

Pinterest is awesome for showcasing your portfolio. You can create separate boards for different market segments, or different skills you have. Another thing you can do is post images from projects to your website, and then pin these images to your board. If anyone shares your images on Pinterest they will still link back to your website. This is a great way of turning Pinterest into a traffic source for your business. You can also just upload screenshots of your work, but this won’t link back to your portfolio.