How to write a blog for your business
Cotswold Web • 14 April 2020
Whether you are an established business or a start-up, a blog is a great addition to your website. The right content will bring you more visitors than your product/ service pages alone.
But how do you write a blog for your business?
The most important thing to remember is that you are writing for your customers (or potential customers). What topics are they interested in? What questions do they need answering? What tone of voice do they want to hear?
If you’re not sure what to write about, take time to brainstorm some topics – either relating directly to your products/ services or to issues in the wider industry.
The more niche or timely you can make your blog posts, the better.
Then write a plan and stick to it! Aim to mix your topics up, so you don’t have 10 consecutive weeks on your products before addressing an issue in the industry.
If your customers contact you with a question – either on your website, over the phone or in your physical store, think about writing a full answer as a blog post. Also take a look at Google’s search suggestions and related searches yourself to see if you can find inspiration for blog posts to drive more traffic to your website.
Every blog post should have a title that makes people want to read and which will also be picked up by search engines. The title should use keywords that people might type into a search engine to find out more information – just like the title of this post.
Create Valuable Readable Content
Your business blog needs to provide valuable content to your readers.
A good blog can help make you a leading authority in your business sector. So write about the answers to visitors’ questions, solutions to their problems and issues in the wider industry or the news.
If you run a gardening business for example, you could write about how to deal with dry weather, what to plant in spring, which plants are good for attracting bees and the best way of dealing with weeds.
Your readers don’t want to read an essay when they visit your blog.
They just want the information they are looking for. So keep your posts short – between 400 and 700 words is good.
If you occasionally need to write 1000 words, that’s OK, but make sure you keep it interesting! It may be that if you need to write that many words, you could split it into two posts.
Keep it Consistent
If you’re reading this and feel inspired to start your blog NOW, don’t write a post today, one tomorrow and one on Friday, then run out of ideas. Blog regularly and consistently
– once a week is good, as is twice a week or once every two weeks. If your readers know you always post on a Tuesday, they will start to look out for your posts then (or maybe even subscribe to them).
Blogging shouldn’t just be informative, it should be fun.
If it starts to feel like a chore, share the work around. Every team member will bring a slightly different perspective and will have different areas of expertise, so get them on board with writing posts. The different tones of voice will be interesting to your readers too (just make sure someone checks the spelling and grammar of all posts before they go live!).
Many blogs have a space for reader comments at the end. If you decide to go down this route, it is useful customer feedback and can potentially give you inspiration for future posts. Don’t forget to always politely respond to the comments, as it makes your business look caring and professional.
By following these tips, you should be able to write and sustain a successful blog for your business.
Remember that your blog isn’t about selling directly, it is more subtle than that.
Blogging for business is all about giving visitors extra value from your site, which should ultimately lead to more sales.
You can read more about the reasons for starting a blog for your business here.
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