If you have a business website, chances are you’ve been told that you also need a business blog. What these helpful advisors may not have told you, however, is how to make your blog interesting and helpful to customers. These tips will help you get started.
Have Fun with It
Let’s face it, if you’re bored by the material you put on your blog, your customers will be bored with it, too. Pick a topic you find stimulating and interesting, and your customers will be eager to read what you’ve written.
Blogging allows you to be a little more informal in your writing tone. Proper punctuation and grammar are obviously still important, but don’t use the same tone in your blog posts as you would in a business proposal. Add your personality, opinions, and sense of humor to your blog posts. Your readers will connect more with your business when they realize that you’re an actual person sitting behind the computer writing these posts, not a money-obsessed robot.
Broaden Your Scope
If your topic is too narrow, you may run out of things to write about. So if, for instance, you write about auto body parts, consider including information about famous cars (e.g., the death car of Bonnie and Clyde) or how to deal with insurance companies after an accident.
Another tip: unless you’re a local business, don’t localize yourself. Even if you market yourself as a Baltimore SEO company, that doesn’t mean your blog should be limited to news and events in Baltimore. SEO is an international-wide industry. You want your readers to see that you’re one of the most knowledgably SEO companies in the country, not just in the city of Baltimore.
Network with Other Bloggers
Poke around the Internet to see who else is blogging about your topic. Read their posts and leave comments and questions. If you think their blog provides good information, link to the blog so your readers can find it, too. The more you network with other blogs, the higher your search engine ranking will be. A high search engine ranking makes it easy for readers to find your blog.
Publish on a Regular Schedule
You don’t have to publish every single day, but make sure your posts are predictable so that readers know when to look for them. For instance, you might want to publish posts three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, or you might want to publish a single time each month on the 15th. Don’t go for long periods without publishing a post, because it makes your blog look deserted.
Change It Up
Try doing something different with your blog. Record an interview with an expert in your field and post a link to the podcast so your customers can listen instead of read. Another idea is to provide lists, like the 25 best auto repair blogs or the 50 best places to get used car parts. If you’re having trouble thinking of a topic for your blog, ask someone who knows your field to write a guest post. All of these ideas are fun ways to engage your customers.
Invite Interaction with Readers
Try to end each blog post with a question for your readers. Invite them to leave their answers in the comments section of the blog. If a reader does leave a comment, respond politely and promptly. Reader feedback and questions can also be a terrific source of ideas for blog posts.
Remember to Share
Adding social share buttons on your blog is essential. Anyone who enjoys your post will be more than happy to share it via Twitter or LinkedIn, so make sure it’s easy for them to do so. The more share options, the better. Don’t limit your share buttons to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Reddit are also great share buttons, so make sure all the options available.
So now that you’ve got the basics for a captivating blog, go ahead and start writing. Your customers are just waiting to get to know you better.
photo credit: Will Lion via photopin cc
These are all so helpful tips. Success in blogging business cannot be achieved overnight. It is a long process in which the outcome are all worth the effort.
I’m glad you found them helpful, Jeremy! Successful blogging is a long process, slow and steady wins the race!
Thanks for your feedback!
If you want to be successful in blogging you must focus on your content. Make sure that you’re always posting amazing content. The better your content and the more interesting your blog, the more people will link to it. There is nothing better than getting free links just because people liked what you have to say! Keep your mind on the SEO side of things, but also remember that you are ultimately catering to the needs of the people in your niche. If they like you, the search engines will like you.
You’re absolutely right, Anika! If you’ve written something you put a lot of work into and really love, other people will love it to! Constantly thinking about link building hinders the creative process.
Thanks for your feedback!
Enjoying your wok is really an important aspect in blogging. What you feel will be translated into your writing, so it makes sense that you should be having fun as you do it. Anyway, you can’t really call work that you love as work, right? You can easily give your all, especially if lead generation is your target.
Those are very useful tips. I agree with everything. To make your blog successful, you have to make sure you are updating it regularry and don’t forget to ask readers to comment