We are so excited to bring you a guest post this week from Beth Wand of BW Concepts. Beth specializes in planning and creating blogging content along with social media strategy and management for her clients. In this post, she will share with us some ideas about how to structure our own business blogs and why a business blog is important.
Hello! My name is Beth and I am the BW of BW Concepts. I create unique and creative content for my clients that helps build their online presence through a distinctive visual and written strategy. Is starting a business blog on your to do list but you’re just not sure where to start? It can feel like an overwhelming process! I have some ideas that can help you get your blog off the ground.
First, Why Blog?
As Hammersmith Support has shared a few times in a few ways, blogging has a huge return on investment. Not only does fresh content boost your SEO, but free content is a huge value add for clients. In addition, macro content from blogs can be diced up in to bite-sized micro content for social media posts, creating a cohesive look and sound to your business.
Where to Start?
When it comes to your business blog, creating a calendar of topics is the perfect place to start. Things to map out:
- What are your busy times of year? When is it slow?
- Do you offer any promotions, specials, or deals at any time? If so, when?
- Are there any holidays that directly affect your business? Or are there any holidays that tie in nicely with your business?
Use these answers as topics, or as places to fill in topics. If your product is a big hit at Christmas, you’ll want to post more often in the weeks leading up to Christmas. If you have vacation time planned in the summer, then plan your posts accordingly. This is also a great time to identify when your slow times are and plug in topics that might entice new customers at a normally down time.
Brainstorming Topics
Once you have the topics that correspond to the calendar, brainstorm a list of topics that are more tailored to your business. If you’re stumped, answer these questions:
- What question do your potential clients or clients always ask you?
- What do you wish people knew about your business?
- How did you get started? What is your business’ story?
- What is your “why”?
- What problem does your product solve?
- Who are your employees and what are their stories?
Once you have answers to these questions, start looking for topics. Answer the questions your clients always ask. Tell them why you started your business and what your favorite part is about it. Take those same topics and plug them into your calendar from above.
Get Writing
Not sure where to start on a topic? Who cares! Just start writing. So many times I have a topic, but I’m not 100% sure how all of the information is going to lay out. So I start with whatever section makes sense to me. Then I build from there. Sometimes I have to pivot and rework what I’ve already written, but often I end up leaving it as is and being able to create the rest of the post from that one section.
Things to remember:
- Break it up. Use headers to visually break up the words on the page and give context to your post.
- Know your audience. Be sure to write your posts for the person who is reading them. If you’re explaining your product to potential clients, be sure and start from the beginning and write like no one knows what your business is. Details details details.
- Keep posts to about 350 words. If it’s longer, you’ll likely lose readers. Too short leaves them feeling ripped off.
- Use images and name them appropriately. Readers love a good image and using the right naming system will help with SEO.
- Edit your work. Read, reread, and ask a friend to take a quick look for grammatical errors too.
Want to know more? Click and follow Beth on social media and on her business blog as well:
@bw_concepts1