Blogging Basics To Give Your Business A Boost

The thought of writing blog posts can be a daunting one. But follow a few simple tips and you can be well on your way to drafting posts that improve your credibility, increase sales enquiries and boost your websites google ranking.

Keep a look out for blog topic ideas in your business and you’ll start to find inspiration everywhere, plus there are plenty of tools you can use to help you along the way.

Firstly set up Google Alerts with keywords you’re interested in. Whenever new content appears on the internet containing these words, you’ll be notified by email. You could also set up an account in Hootsuite and follow industry leaders and companies in your industry. This will lead you to relevant and quality content that you can share or re-write to put your slant on it. Reading other blogs will always give you some good ideas. To efficiently keep tabs on a number of blogs, subscribe and manage via Feedly.

Also, have a look through your FAQ’s or think of queries your customers ask and turn these into a blog post. You can look through your social media posts and old newsletters and choose a story to expand into a blog post. Reading forums in your niche is perfect for finding topics and using the same language prospects use to describe your product or service

Know Who You’re Writing For

Your blog post may not appeal to your ideal prospect or reader unless you have a clear picture in your mind of who that is. Before you begin writing any blog posts, write yourself a customer persona. Give your fictitious person an occupation, demographics, interests and keep that person in mind every time you write a post.

What to Write

Keep your blog interesting by including a mix of educational and entertaining posts. Add some personality to your posts so readers get to know you. Don’t write sales copy; remember you’re providing valuable information to your reader. Keep copy easy to read with short paragraphs, sub-headings and an interesting headline to hook them in.

Images

Remember a picture tells a thousand words and a great blog post image can grab a reader’s attention. You don’t need to be a budding graphic designer to create them as there are plenty of free and low-cost graphics tools such as Canva available to you. Alternatively use low cost stock images sites to find your hero image.

By investing some time up-front you’ll never run out of blog topic ideas and you’ll soon be crafting some valuable posts that gain a strong readership and boost your online profile.