You may have heard how important it is to create a business blog for the success of your marketing.
Yes?
Ah, but blogging is only for the big guys, you say.
Not so!
In many ways, when it comes to marketing your business, blogging is one of the best tactics for levelling the playing field with the big brands, because it gives small businesses an almost unprecedented opportunity to stand out and be noticed, and compete with the big guys.
In today’s digital world, it’s extremely important to maintain an active presence on social media. However, without access to unique, high-quality content, it’s difficult to do so. Success on social media is all about being ‘social’ and little, if anything, can hold a candle to a good blog post when it comes to showing the personal, social side of your business, and engaging with a social audience.
Having a blog gives you a way to touch on issues and concerns of interest to your prospects, while also sharing what you and your brand are passionate about. It’s one of the best ways to send a very clear message that your business is alive and well, raising your profile and establishing yourself or your brand as someone who is knowledgeable, perhaps even expert, in your industry.
Writing a business blog is like going fishing – for leads
Think of blogging as if you’re out fishing – the more hooks you have in the water, the more likely you are to catch a fish. Each blog you post is like putting another hook in the water. When others begin to see your blogs as a valuable resource, they will link to them and you will begin to accumulate inbound links, which is one of the most important factors in search engine optimisation (SEO tips).
In other words, the more high-quality blog posts you can share on social media, the more you’ll grow the search traffic to your business website, develop a following, build trust and, ultimately, increase conversion rates and sales.
On the other hand, without a quality blog, your SEO will tank, you’ll have nothing to promote in social media, you won’t be able to build a relationships with prospects and customers, and you’ll have fewer pages on which to publish your calls-to-action that are ultimately aimed at generating inbound leads and sales.
Your 5-step formula for writing a business blog
OK, so you know you need to start blogging to grow your business, but you don’t feel you’re accomplished at writing compelling, engaging content that your audience wants. Not a problem – practice makes perfect, remember. Just give it a go and soon you’ll become quite adept at it. Here are some basic principles of writing great blog content that you might want to keep in mind.
1. Understand your audience:
Before you write about anything, you need to have a clear understanding of your target audience. What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them?
To come up with a topic for your blog post think about what you know about your customers and potential customers. Avoid blogging about generic stuff in your industry – focus instead on the stuff your audience really wants and needs to hear about.
2. Come up with a topic and working title, and create an outline:
Before you even write anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general to start with. For example, if you’re a radiator repair specialist, you might want to talk about a vehicle’s radiator. That’s a topic.
But what specifically might people want or need to know about their vehicle radiators? Maybe you could write about how radiators keep the engine cool or why they can cause a vehicle to overheat or how to get a vehicle with an overheating engine safely to a radiator repair specialist. That’s a working title.
Settling on a topic and a working title helps to guide your thoughts so you can focus your blog on a specific aspect rather than a generic, too-wide topic.
Having a topic and working title will also help you to draft a brief outline of how you intend to unlock the topic. You create an outline by writing down what points you plan to cover, the best order in which to do it, and some bare-bones details of what you’ll discuss under each point.
3. Organise your content:
Don’t overwhelm your reader (and yourself) with information. The trick is to organise the content so that your reader isn’t intimidated by the length or amount of information. Having the outline of your blog post that we mentioned above will help you to organise your content into sections, bullet points or whatever format is appropriate for the type of information.
4. Write your blog:
The next step is to write the actual content. Think of it as filling in the blanks of your outline and expanding on the points. Here are 7 tips on how to tighten up your writing so that it packs a punch and keeps your audience reading.
- Come up with an attention-gripping introduction: If you don’t hook your audience in the first paragraph or two, they will stop reading and leave. You can do this in various ways – start with an appropriate joke, recount a short story, highlight an interesting fact or statistic. Then describe the purpose of your blog post and explain how it will help your reader solve a problem they’re having or could have in future. This will cover off the all-important “What’s in it for me” aspect of any good blog, giving them a connection to what you’re writing and providing them with the reason to keep reading.
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short: Nothing will frustrate a reader more than huge walls of text. Keep sentences as short as possible. They’re easier to read, making your audience’s job easier. Also, keep paragraphs short and sweet. Try to keep individual ideas isolated to their own little paragraph.
- Avoid repetition: Few things are more jarring to read than the repetition of certain words or phrases. Once you’re done with the first draft of your blog post, read through it and check for words that can be replaced to avoid repeating yourself.
- Make every word and sentence count: Attention spans are shrinking by the day, so you have to work to hold your readers’ attention from the beginning until the end of your post. To do that, every word, phrase, sentence, and even punctuation mark must add something of value (for the reader) to what you’re saying.
- Check topic flow: A handy trick is to read your draft out loud. If it feels like you’re explaining things too slowly you’ll need to edit out the extraneous bits. Or, if a piece reads awkwardly out loud, it will probably read awkwardly in your reader’s mind. If you find yourself struggling with the flow of a sentence, rework it until it rolls off your tongue.
- Ensure your blog is visually appealing:
– Use images. In the world of digital media, people often simply don’t have the time or desire to read blog posts without some visual stimulation. Make sure you choose a visually appealing and relevant image for your post as the social networks treat content with images more prominently. Images, diagrams, charts and tables make your blog post more visually appealing by breaking up the text, making it seem less intimidating and helping it flow more effectively. They can be particularly effective if you’re writing about a complex topic, helping your readers to grasp the points you’re trying to make.
– Organise and format consistently. It’s not just images that make a post visually appealing. The organisation and formatting of the blog also play an important role. In a properly formatted, visually appealing blog post, consistently styled headers and sub-headers break up large blocks of text. Consistent formatting will make your blog more appealing to the eye of your reader and will also make your content, your message, your brand and your business look more professional.
Insert a call-to-action: You should conclude your blog with a call to action (CTA) that indicates what you want the reader to do next, e.g. subscribe to your blog, download an ebook, read a related article. Not only is the CTA beneficial for you, by hopefully ultimately resulting in a lead you can nurture into a possible new customer, but the CTA should also prove to be a valuable resource for your reader, by offering them further useful content similar to what they’ve just read. - Pick an eye-catching title: Finally, spruce up your working title. Make sure to keep your title clear and accurate – it needs to be catchy while at the same time being informative and setting appropriate expectations. It needs to include enough description of what your blog is about, otherwise, it could be classed as ‘click-bait’ and that’s a no-no on social media. If you can, optimise it for SEO by including some of your topic keywords. Once you’ve got that far, see if you can shorten it so it’s not overwhelming. Bear in mind that Google prefers 65 characters or fewer before it truncates it on its search engine results pages.
5. Edit and proofread your blog
The editing process is an important part of writing a successful blog. Asking a grammar-conscious friend or colleague to check your work will help make it as strong as it possibly can be. Ideally, ask someone with editing experience to focus on checking the following questions:
• Do your points come across well?
• Is there a logical progression to your argument?
• Is the piece thought-provoking?
• Is the advice you’re offering worth following?
Would you like some support with SEO Content Writing, Please call our Digital Marketing and SEO Experts for a no-obligation chat.
Remember to optimise for mobile
With mobile devices now accounting for nearly 2 out of every 3 minutes spent online, having a website that is responsive or designed for mobile is critical. Remember, Google’s algorithm penalises websites that aren’t optimised for mobile. So, in addition to making sure that visitors to your website and your blog have the best experience possible, optimising for mobile will also score your website some SEO points.
Ask the experts
Would you like some help to develop a social media strategy for your business, including getting a blog started that will create more leads and, ultimately, generate increased sales? Talk to the team at digital marketing agency Net Branding. We understand business and how to develop a digital strategy that will drive business performance.
