Why Business Blogs Matter and How to Start Yours
For many small business owners, blogging is just another “should” on a very long to-do list. ‘Do I really need to start a blog?’, a recent client asked. My answer… Yes. Here’s why.
Three reasons you should start a business blog.
1. To establish your expertise and demonstrate your value to potential clients.
It’s the old adage that ‘People buy from People’ but it’s true. By freely sharing your expertise online, you’re providing others with valuable information and demonstrating in real-time how you and by extension, your business can be helpful to them now and in the future.
Done repeatedly, readers will get a sense of who you are as a person and what your business stands for - making potential clients more confident about working with you. Good content can help you differentiate your business and build your brand.
Research conducted by Demand Metric backs this up. They found that 80% of customers like learning about a company through its custom content and 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading their bespoke content.
2. To drive traffic and leads.
Hubspot found that companies that blog receive 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t. And Demand Metrics found that companies that blog generate more leads - an average of 67% more, per month than companies, that don’t blog.
It’s pretty simple… the more new content you have, the more opportunities you have to rank higher on search engine results.
That being said, it is not all about quantity… quality matters and search engines will be tracking bounce rates and time spent on a page to gauge this.
But the true test of quality is how your readers feel about it. Readers are looking for content that is informative, relevant and original. Good content will get people signing up to your newsletter, sharing on social media, requesting a quote and best of all purchasing your products.
3. To increase your SEO
As mentioned, search engines love websites that regularly update their content and provide readers with valuable information so blogging checks this box.
Blogging also allows you to rank for your important business keywords by providing a longer format to naturally weave them into your post.
One more reason… this one is personal - I find that the act of researching and writing a blog helps me synthesise my thoughts and organise my arguments on a topic, making me better prepared when a client asks a question or needs a detailed explanation on a certain subject. And I’m also creating a great future resource for my clients.
What to blog about?
If you’re not sure where to start - create a mind map - it's an easy way to get lots of ideas down on paper quickly.
Start with a broad subject area. If you are a service business write down your key areas of business expertise – for me this might include small business growth, strategic web design, online customer engagement and Squarespace websites. If you’re a product-based business start with product categories.
As an example, we’ll use Brightstarz, a client of Ascender Creative. Brightstarz offers workshops for teens covering topics such as Anxiety, Beauty and Relationships.
So Brightstarz might decide that one subject area they would like to be known for is “Teens and Anxiety”. They would then create a list of related topics (blog posts) around Teens and Anxiety. It might look something like this… Things like:
Brightstarz would do a similar exercise with ‘Beauty’ and ‘Relationships’.
This approach is known as the Pillar and Cluster model and is used to build authority on a specific topic and ideally outrank your competitors. To better understand the intricacies of a Pillar and Cluster Model, I recommend this article by Hubspot.
More ways to generate blog ideas…
Keep track of questions your customers ask you or problems they struggle with and build posts around these. After noticing that a client was not completing all of the settings on their blog posts, I wrote an article about metadata and the importance of completing all the blog settings along with a step by step ‘how to’ guide for readers to follow.
Also, think about what information your ideal client needs to be persuaded that you’re the right business for them. More specifically, what information do you need to provide to remove any doubts or hesitations and get them to say ‘Yes’ quicker.
Here are some ideas that relate to my business:
Why should I hire a web designer when I can build a website myself using Squarespace?
The pros and cons of WordPress, Squarespace and Wix.
The five most important elements of a great small business website
Notice that I’ve written the topic titles as simple questions or statements in everyday language.
Some other categories to consider blogging about include:
Breaking news - for example, if you are a boutique accountancy firm with several small business clients and the government announces a new initiative to support SMEs you might want to comment on this and tell clients how they can benefit from the new policy.
How To’s - again another huge search term - some examples might be How to Write a Content Marketing Brief? How to Hire a Web Designer, How to add code to my Squarespace site?
Lists - everyone loves a list! Quicksprout recommends changing the position of the number within the title of your list ensures your content doesn’t appear samie and varying the numbers used - not every list has to be a top 10.
Five ways to drive more traffic to your site
The top 7 business reasons we added video to our site.
How to get your business ranking on Google with these 12 tips
What is…? Explain a topic e.g. What is content marketing?
Mistakes and how to avoid them
Favourite hacks - I don’t know about you but I love reading about how people get things done. Share your favourite productivity hacks.
Curated posts are also popular - so for example 5 most popular website designs today and why they work
Research and studies - Comment on relevant industry research and studies or if you’ve conducted proprietary research share key findings.
Finally, you want to think about creating some ‘Evergreen’ posts - these are articles that will remain relevant over time and require little or no upkeep. High-quality evergreen posts will, over time build up your authority and your ranking.
Action Item:
Open a new spreadsheet, name it ‘Blog Content Ideas’ and start adding potential topic titles today.
Still, worried that you have nothing original to say?
Trust me, you do.
Do you know there are 4,870,000,000 posts on ‘Why Small Businesses Should Blog’ and yet here you are reading mine?
Is it because my blog is completely original - unfortunately not.
What is original is my take on the subject and my voice. I’m sharing with you my learnings and the tricks I use to grow my web design business through blogging and you can do the same in your area of expertise.
Who to blog for?
This should be very clear - you’re blogging for existing customers and potential ones. Visualise your ideal client and write for them.
What is their level of understanding on the topic - are they new to the topic or do they come with a high level of expertise already. Be sure to pitch it the right. You need to understand their motivation for reading the blog and what they want to achieve.
Also, be clear about what you want them to think and feel while reading the blog and what actions you want them to take once they have read the blog.
When to blog and how often to blog?
Blog consistently - decide if it will be weekly or monthly and then create a schedule and stick to it. This is the best way to build up your audience.
Create something manageable for you - don’t commit to a daily blog if that is going to be impossible to achieve.
How long does a blog take to write?
According to Content Powered, the average blog post takes three hours and 57 minutes to write. This doesn't take into consideration image creation, formatting, SEO optimization, promotion, or other aspects of publishing content.
For a 1500-2000 word post, I probably spend 7 or 8 hours - half of that is spent researching the topic, brainstorming ideas and creating an outline.
Once that is done it takes me 2 hours to write, another hour to review, edit and improve and the final hour to upload onto the site and style. I am hoping to try and reduce this time.
One way to make it manageable is to keep several blog posts on the go. If I find that I have a free hour I might do some research and add that to my google document and write the actual blog post later.
A good brief can keep me focused.
Finally, I try and write the first draft quickly to get something on paper. I find editing is easier than writing.
Do I have to write the blog myself?
I think as a small business - the most important thing is to establish your voice. Once that is defined then it is easier to find someone to write the blogs for you.
You can also consider adding guest bloggers from time to time to ease the load and using interviews to round out your content and add some variety.
The anatomy of a blog post.
Title - you want something short and snappy that grabs people’s attention and gets them to read on.
Introduction - tell people why you are writing about this, how it will help them. Be relatable, persuasive and importantly make it about your reader not about you. If they think they are going to read a sales pitch, you’re wrong.
Body - this is where the meat is. You need to provide your reader with valuable content and things they can take away - pro-tips, checklists, step by step guides.
Make it readable and better yet skimmable, use lots of headlines, keep paragraphs bitesize, add visuals that support and bring the narrative to life.
Conclusion and Call to Action - Wrap it up neatly by restating the key points and then tell people what you want them to do next with a compelling ‘Call to Action’. This might be to sign up for a newsletter for more pro-tips or download a free template to help them create a blog content calendar.
Checklist before publishing your blog
Review your brief and make sure you’ve achieved your objectives
Get someone to proofread - for spelling and grammar but also general comprehension - e.g. did you explain key terms in a way that is understandable, is it pitched at the right level, does it flow.
Verify that you’ve properly credited your sources and added backlinks to their work
Make sure your post is visually inviting to the reader - e.g. good use of headlines, bite-sized paragraphs, lots of white space, appealing visuals to support text, use of bullet points and lists, highlight important information or quotes etc
Include a compelling call to action
How to promote your blog?
If you have a newsletter that is your number one method. Be sure to shout it out on social media. You might want to also ask others in your industry and related industries to give it a mention in their newsletter or social platforms.
And don’t think one and done - find other ways to naturally promote it by cross-referencing (internal linking) it in other posts.
Finally, repurpose your content - turn a blog post into a presentation, a YouTube video or even a podcast. Your blog could also form the basis of a guest post blog - slightly tweaked so it appeals to the host site’s audience.
Conclusion:
Blogging consistently is one of the best long-term marketing investments you can make in your business. Notice, I say long-term… so don’t get frustrated if you don’t see results immediately. The effects of blogging are cumulative and build over time, like compound interest. And like compound interest the growth potential, once it takes hold, can be exponential so start investing in your business blog today.
