Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you will have heard about blogging, but you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. Is it necessary or even relevant for your business? You may be surprised to hear that blogs have become an essential part of the marketing mix for many businesses. So, it could be time to reconsider your position. In this post, I explain the basics of business blogging.
A blog is simply a collection of articles published on a website. It’s different from a standard web page where most products/services pages are relatively static. A blog should be updated regularly with new articles – which is great for website search engine optimisation (SEO).
The good news is that if you’re currently doing a newsletter, you’re already half way there. To create a blog, all you need to do is write an article of about something you think your customers would like to hear about – or if you are already writing a newsletter, repurpose your content (edited to ensure that it’s written in a way that is engaging and useful) and post it online. Remember to add a relevant, keyword rich title to encourage search engines to select your blog and off you go.
Not a lot of extra work but oh so many benefits.
The Benefits of Business Blogging
A blog enables you to:
- Showcase your knowledge and expertise
- Define your business offering to your ideal clients
It becomes:
- A source of content for your newsletter, making producing it easy
- A resource to be used for other marketing collateral such as adverts
- A source of content to use on social media
In addition to all these benefits, regular blog posts also help to keep your website fresh, which is vital for search engine optimisation (SEO).
What Makes a Good Blog?
Of course, not all blogs are created equal; some are good and others … not so good.
Your blog should be helpful and informative. If it isn’t, don’t bother. The days of writing any old thing for SEO purposes are long gone.
Also, stay on topic but try to write in an engaging way, ideally reading your blog should be both informative and entertaining for your target audience. Do a sense check – in the planning stage, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask yourself – would I find this topic compelling/informative/interesting? And remember, don’t write about the rugby unless it’s relevant to your business!
So, in summary, a good blog is:
- Informative
- Relevant
- Conversational
- Talks directly to your reader (write in first or second person)
- Easy to scan read (use short sentences, plenty of headings and bullet points)
- Attractive (use good-quality images and smart formatting)
- Professional (it helps to get someone else to proofread it before you publish)
What to write about
When it comes to blogging, one of the biggest questions is: What do I write about?
It’s not that hard. Remember to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask yourself: what do they want to know? Social media is a good place to find out what are people in your industry are talking about? What are the common issues that customers face?
Seven types of blog posts/articles:
1. How to’s (eg. The Do’s and Don’ts of Writing a Successful Blog)
2. Case studies (describe some of your successful projects) include comments from real customers
3. Profiles of new products or services
4. Easy-to-understand explanations to support technical products or services
5. Explain some of your website’s FAQs
6. Customer feedback on topics related to your industry
7. Profiles of charities or organisations that your business supports or events/expos that you attend.
Be consistent
If you start a weekly or monthly blogging schedule, stick to it. Being consistent tells your customers (and search engines) that you’re active.
Plan ahead. This makes sure that you’re not left scratching your head for content when a post is due. You can do this by creating a content calendar that maps out topics and allocate responsibility for each post ahead of time.
If you need help to get your blog up and running, Signpost Consulting is here to help. Feel free to get in touch.
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