What not to do on your small business blog
- Plagiarise
- Copying and pasting other articles
- Not crediting sources
- Not using quotes
- Not researching trends
We’ve previously written about why small business websites need a blog. Not only does it help with your SEO ranking, it also provides good information for your customers (if you do it right). It’s a lot of hassle, we know. It can also be quite daunting especially if you’re new at this. In this post, we will give you some tips on what NOT to do on your blog. You really need to read this because we’ve seen these mistakes in some of our clients. And they can get you in trouble.
Plagiarise
This is the most serious one of the lot. What is plagiarism? It’s when you copy all or part of an article published somewhere else, written by someone else, and then passing it of as your own. You and your small business can get in serious trouble with this. No matter how ‘small’ the website is, or how unknown, you shouldn’t just copy and paste the content and put it on your site. We’ve met clients where their previous ‘website guy’ just copied and pasted entire articles from another website. Then they just placed a tiny accreditation of the website at the bottom of the page. That’s still plagiarism.
Not crediting sources
If you are using a part of the content from another website or source, you need to make sure you credit them. How do you do this? Add their name on the post you’re writing, with link to their website and their position. You always give credit to the website/writer and use quotations marks when you lift a blurb from a certain article. Also, linking out to the original article is also good for your SEO. Not giving credit where credit is due is just bad form. And also, it makes your small business blog look dodgy.
Not researching trends
There are hot topics in your small business industry all the time. You want your content to stay current so you need to do some research as to what everyone is talking about right now. If you don’t do your research you are going to get left behind. Also, it will be good for your small business to stay on top of things if you figure out what’s hot and what’s not. Pick a hot topic, find your angle, and write a post on your blog about it. Your spin to the latest trend will make your content original and relevant.
Kristyn is the Creative Director of 3C Digital. She is a freelance writer/journalist with over 13 years of experience in the industry both locally and internationally. She has previous experience as TV and radio broadcast journalist as well as print and online writer. Her novels, The Girl Between Two Worlds and The Girl Between Light and Dark, are out now.
