blog

So you’re sold on the fact that blogs are a fantastic way to build traffic to your site and convert visitors to customers. You’ve written two or three posts, but now…well, let’s say you’re lacking inspiration for creating blog content.

It can be daunting, having to continually come up with engaging topics that will attract readers to your blog. But take it from me, someone who has written hundreds of blog posts (seriously), it is entirely possible, with a little help. Here are some tips that will inspire you to come up with more blog post ideas than you know what to do with.

Idea 1: Read Your Competitors’ Blogs

There’s nothing wrong with seeing what your competition is blogging about. In fact, it can help you come up with even better content. Just don’t copy their posts. Instead, use them for inspiration.

Pay attention to the popular posts on their blogs, and consider how you might write an even more engaging post on a related topic to drive traffic to your blog.

No matter where you are in your blogging journey, whether you’re only now considering whether you should blog or you’ve been blogging for a while and need fresh ideas, this post will serve as your guide to business blogging to help you move forward.

First, Why Blogging Rocks

If you’re not blogging yet, why is that? Do you think it’s more trouble than it’s worth? Not so. In fact, 46% of people read blogs, most reading 5-10 blogs. One of those blogs could be yours, and could help potential customers find you. Blogging helps you show off your industry expertise, which can help people begin to trust you. And that’s the first step in getting them to buy from you!

It’s important to find the right voice for your blog so that you appeal to the audience you are trying to reach.

The Tools of the Trade

I use (and recommend) WordPress for blogging because it’s simple to use, and can grow with you as your technical understanding of things like widgets and plugins increases. But there are alternatives to WordPress if you’re looking for something else.

SEO is a necessary component to help your blog be found in search results. Here are some great SEO tools to incorporate.

Business blog writing should be an integral part of every business’s content marketing strategy. A good blog may seem like a lot of effort, and truth be told, it is. A ‘good’ blog requires time and dedication. Between creating quality content, building a following of readers, driving traffic, monitoring, promoting, and engaging… It can feel like a full-time job. But, you could argue that running your own business also requires a lot of effort and hard work, so why do so many entrepreneurs do it? There’s a simple reason why:

The reward you get from running a small business should be equal to or greater than the effort put in. That reward can be in terms of financial benefit, the flexibility of being your own boss, or whatever it may be that you get out of being a business owner. If the reward was not greater, then there would be no point in doing it – it would be easier to go back to working for someone else.

You started your blog, you’re faithful to your posting schedule, your copy is free of grammatical errors, your content is strong and no one is reading your blog. Waaaaaaaaaaah. Don’t cry. Look at what you can do to ensure your blog is getting the eyeballs it deserves.

Are you promoting it effectively?

Take the time to promote your blog by sharing your posts on social media. Remember to use a powerful pull quote or a “gripping, but relevant title” to engage readers. Use sites like BizSugar to share your tips and tricks and see how your content fares against other writing. The important thing is to keep sharing your URL in an appropriate and resourceful way, seeking out new opportunities without fail.

Now that you’ve started your business blog, it’s time for some advanced tactics to attract more readers, beef up your content, and become known as an expert in your industry.

Goal 1: Attract More Readers

You want your blog to ultimately drive traffic to the rest of your site so people will buy your products or services. That means you need to amp up the number of readers your business blog gets so that you’ll convert a decent number of them into customers. 

One of the best places to find new blog readers is through social media. You should be sharing every post you publish through your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google + page. Here are a few strategies to improve the clicks you get:

• Customize your update. Simply relying on links to your posts being autopublished isn’t enough. Also craft updates that will really make people curious to click on the link to your post.
• Schedule updates consistently. Use tools like HootSuite to schedule updates to publish for days after a new post goes live. Make each update different, and entice people in different ways.
• Use Social Buzz Club. This social sharing community  gets people posting your content to social in exchange for you doing the same.

If you want to make a blog into a success then it will need to meet at least some basic criteria. For one it will need to look good and work well on the majority of machines for instance. At the same time it will also be important that it provides useful information to ensure that it is worth the time spent reading it.

One of the most basic requirements of all though is that your blog reads well. In other words, it must be enjoyable and easy to read, and it must have a distinct tone and voice’ that suits the subject matter. If you don’t accomplish at least this much, then people will think your blog is unprofessional and may not trust the information they get from it. Alternatively, they may simply not enjoy reading it and feel as though the information isn’t worth the effort taken to extract it. Finding the right voice for your blog may take some effort.