Why is Blogging important?
- It gives the company a personality and voice It increases the traffic to your website
- It connects you to your clients
- It fosters trust in your company
- It allows you to become an ‘authority’ in your field
The first article is often the hardest to write but in time and with a bit of perseverance Blogging for business becomes easier and your blogs will improve.
Your goal is to teach your readers and give them something of value that they can use.
What do you blog about?
Aim to become the authority in your industry – this doesn’t mean you have to write a dissertation, keep it short but informative.
Listen to your audience and find out what they are interested in and want to read more about. Don’t be afraid to give away some of your secrets and great ideas as this will draw readers to you and ideas are worth sharing.
Add some flavour by being yourself when writing – this is your voice after all so have an opinion!
What should your blog look like?
First impressions are important so a nice visual (specific to the blog topic if you have one) goes a long way to setting the scene.
Good starting point – In the first paragraph starts with a current problem, solves the problem in the body of your blog, and summarises in the last paragraph.
The blog must look engaging and easy to read so use a catchy title for your article and break up the body text into bite-sized chunks with useful sub-headings.
Finish with a flourish/conclusion
Remember to guide your readers towards the next step – reading a related article, contacting you, signing up for the newsletter, following you on social media – something to keep them on the line and in touch. This is called a call to action.
What to avoid in your blog
Having a keyword-rich SEO-geared title and then no related content in the article – it is better to write for your audience than try to ‘fudge’ some extra traffic to your site by pandering to the search engines.
Don’t ramble or veer off topic – one subject is enough per blog article so make use of or write related articles if you need to cover more ground.
Don’t write thin and generic articles – this should be obvious but can be a very attractive solution to “just getting something up there”. If there is no meat to your writing then don’t expect people to bite!
Don’t write in convoluted descriptive sentences – this makes it difficult for readers to follow your logic.
Don’t give up! Keep trying, writing and learning!