Business Blogging Tips - How to get started
When you first start blogging / producing content for your business it can be quite a painful exercise. Even more painful if you are trying to get other subject matter experts in your organisation to help contribute. More often than not they will come up with any excuse not to blog.
Below you will find some business blogging tips that's helped me over come many questions posed by co-workers.
How to get started:
- ###1 TIP### Schedule it. Block out a few hours in your calendar to focus on writing. If you don’t it will never happen…
- Write about what matters to you.
- Don’t be too formal. Blogs should be a bit more casual
- Keep it short and sweet. Aim for 500 – 800 words max
- Spell check!!!! Write in Word (auto spell check)
- Use bullet point lists
- Use descriptive headlines so your readers know what your posts are about.
- Match your blog to a whitepaper download. This will help you generate leads.
- Don’t worry about it! Just start writing. What I usually do is dump everything down into a word doc, and then go back and tidy it up later… or get someone else to take a look at it and make a few suggestions.
Other sites to blog on:
- Other sites: Fantastic if you can produce Guest blogs for other websites if you know someone who runs their own blog. Make sure you include links back to your website. These links gives you extra authority in Google’s eyes which means higher rankings
- Push your posts out to your social media friends so they can read and share your brilliance. LinkedIn, Facebook (if you feel comfortable doing so), Twitter are great places to do so.
What topics/content to blog on:
- Check your comment section on other blogs / websites
Some of the best ideas come from readers. Read through comments and check for interesting questions, provoking thoughts, or anything that could become a good post topic. Focus particularly on any comment threads that contain a spirited discussion among readers. If it's hot, run with it.
- Turn on the news.
Have you noticed a hot topic in newspapers or other media? Why not write your own take on it.
- Create a list.
Whatever you blog about, there is likely an exciting list that you can uncover. Write the “5 Secrets to...” or the “Top 10 Ways...” or “8 Reasons Why...” or “3 Ways to Find Out...” They're quick and painless, and even better: they're fun to read.
- Review our greatest hits.
Read back through our old posts or whitepapers, particularly the ones that generated a good amount of feedback, and consider writing a fresh angle on the topic. If a subject was compelling once, it might be worthwhile to explore another variation on it. Izzy was great at this she would re-write a popular whitepaper to make it relevant to the Pharma Industry.
- Keep an idea log.
Buy a cheap notebook and jot down ideas whenever they come to you, or make some notes on your smart phone. Do it when you you're on the bus or sitting at the airport. Next time you can't think of anything to post about, all you'll have to do is turn to your own treasure trove of brilliance.
How often should you blog?
As much as possible! The more you produce the better.
Benefits:
- You establish yourself as an expert.
- It’s a good reason to email existing leads. If you produce a blog article on a certain topic we can email it out to that segment of our database. EG. This post was about marketing so we emailed it out to the Marketing segment in SFDC.
- Generate leads in Area’s/Industries you want to target
- Izzy’s Pharma activities generated just under 1000 Pharma leads over 12 months.
- It will continue to generate leads for years to come! These are not 1 off marketing pushes, the content remains on the website forever. Your articles will be indexed by Google under different key phrases for when people are searching for a solution.
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