Do you blog? I know that content creation can be very time consuming and adding blogging into the mix, even more so. But adding a regular blog post to your website is highly valuable. You should think of having a blog as an essential part of your website.
In this post I’m going to go through the benefits of blogging, ideas of things you can blog about, how you blog (and add it to your website) and finally and very importantly how to repurpose your blog content.
What are the benefits of blogging for a small business?
- It’s great for SEO purposes, boosting your ranking on search engines and driving traffic to your website.
- It showcases your expertise and personality.
- Blogging helps build the all important know, like and trust with your audience.
- It attracts new people to your website who will get to know you and in turn you will build a rapport with them.
- You get recognised for providing a helpful service to others by sharing your knowledge and support for free.
- It provides an abundance of content for social media and email marketing (see repurposing section below).
Examples of things to blog about
There are so many things you can blog about so don’t feel you need to be creating the same type of material all the time. Mix it up.
Some examples include:
- evergreen content (not time sensitive) that can be built on and continually updated.
- FAQs
- case studies
- googled suggestions or frequent searches (see How to Blog)
- guest posts
- addressing pain points or misconceptions and provide a solution to the problem
- behind the scenes
- piggyback on a news piece relevant to your industry
- a survey or market research summary.
How to blog & add it to your website
There are a couple of things you need to get in place before you start blogging.
- Set up a blog on your website.
- Have a strategy so you know the purpose or goal of blogging, what you will blog about and how often.
Set up a blog on your website
I’m not going to go into detail about how to set up a blog on your website. If you aren’t sure speak to your website developer or look onto the help pages of the website provider. Generally there is a blog option included on your website theme that can be switched on/off. You will also have some customisable options to change the look of the blog.
Create a blogging strategy
To decide what to blog about you’ll need to spend some time brainstorming all the different topics and content you could write about. So you could pull together a collection of all the questions you frequently get asked or your audience’s pain points. If you’re not sure, ask your audience.
Another couple of methods to brainstorm ideas include: using the google suggestions which you’ll see when you start typing into the search field or scroll to the bottom for related searches and Answer the Public which collects information on questions and phrases used in online searches.
Next I recommend you create an editorial or content calendar. If you already use a content calendar for your social media creation, you could adapt that.
- You need to put in the dates you will post your blogs – only commit to what you know you can do consistently. Aim for at least once a month.
- You need to put in what you post will be about (think about how that fits into your overall content plan).
- You need to put in when you will share the blog post on other platforms. This is an important step. Don’t just write and forget about it!
The next part is the writing and uploading the blog post to your website before you get sharing it with your audience.
Writing a blog post
Before you start writing, draft out your post with subheadings and bullet points so that you can first decide on a logic order. You want an introduction that outlines what the post will be about, then several sections that go into detail and then bring the post to a conclusion which includes a call to action. You also want to think about keywords you want the post to rank for.
Now you can start fleshing out those points and get writing! As you write you should try to use words or phrases that you audience would type into a search engine. These would be your keywords.
Uploading it to your website
It’s time to get your post added to your website. And the next things I’m going to talk about are tasks that you could easily outsource to a Virtual Assistant to do for you.
- Before uploading your post make sure you proofread and edit your text. I find reading it aloud helps me pick up any mistakes and to make sure it reads properly.
- You can copy and paste your text straight into a new blog post on your website. You will need to add the title and format any subtitles.
- Add a couple of relevant images just to break up the text.
- Add any tags or categories.
- Complete any SEO meta description fields
*TIP* If you are using WordPress install Yoast which will help you complete any SEO. - Preview the post, have a final read through and make sure it is formatted correctly. Then you are ready to hit post!
Blogging process
If you’ve read any of my other blog posts, you#ll know I’m a huge fan of processes and workflows! So of course I’m going to recommend that you create a blogging process, which will be particularly useful if you plan to outsource all or part of it to a content writer or Virtual Assistant.
Your process will include things like how (and when) you brainstorm your post ideas, how you decide upon titles, what the content structure is, as well as a checklist for the actual writing and adding the post to your website for example, creating images to use within the post, selecting the right categories and tags.
Repurposing blog content
After spending the time to create an awesome blog post you want to make the most of it! I wrote a post about how I repurpose my blog content to use it in my social media and email marketing, so take a read for more details. For now, here are a few ways you can repurpose your blog post content:
If you have a number of points in a blog post you can break them up into separate social media posts. Extract attention grabbing snippets and turn them into quote posts. Or summarise the key points of a blog post and share it in your next marketing email, linking back to the blog post.
Outsourcing the blogging process
If you would like to start blogging but don’t have the time to do it or do it all, this is an activity which you could consider outsourcing. You could find a copywriter to write the blog post for you or you could write the content yourself and then have a Virtual Assistant proof read it, edit it and add it to your website. If you’d like some more advice around outsourcing and how to do it, I’d recommend you download my free guide: How to effectively outsource hassle free.
Now you know why blogging is great for your small business and how you plan and write awesome blog posts. If you aren’t currently blogging I recommend you think about how it could fit into your content strategy and start brainstorming some ideas of topics you could write about.
