Attention span - 10 seconds.
Time yourself - how long will you give me to capture your attention with this blog? 5 seconds? 1 Minute? Most likely, I have about 10 seconds to either interest you or watch you leave my website. As a busines blogger, you can greatly impact key website metrics like “time on site” and “average page views” that will improve your website conversion rate, improve your Google rank, and lead to more return visitors. Your blog can make believers out of customers, but you better be interesting in the first 10 seconds. 
I’ve mentioned titles before in (blog marketing), so I’d like to talk about a different aspect of business blogging - content strategies. I spend ample time reading other blogs, and I consistently see the same mistakes.
1. Companies forget to include the blog in their PR strategy.
2. Content works great for SEO, but isn’t interesting.
3. It’s hard-selling readers.
Elastic Path seems to understand business blogging as more than a sales pitch. Getelastic.com does a great job of being a resource for businesses, extending the firm’s PR strategy, and creates an approachable voice for the company. I spoke with Jason at Elastic Path at Internet Retailer about the blog, and he said the firm has had tremendous success with it.
Approva.net also uses their blog to do a nice job of extending the brand, providing some personality to an otherwise drab topic, and leverages the blog for ongoing PR “stimulation”.
What I’ve learned about most small businesses is that they usually have people who are passionate about their product or industry, and full of knowledge. Work with your marketing team, resident company evangelist and/or PR firm to get their input on ways to improve the “attention grabbing” capability of your business blog.
Tags: business-blogger, business-blogging, corporate-blogging, PR