Do you have a blog on your business website? If not, why not? Having a blog on your website is business basics 101.
A blog is the perfect platform to help attract and convert customers. Fill it with useful content that resonates with your audience and you’ll build a loyal customer following who will keep coming back for more.
So how do you start a business blog? What should you write about? And how often? Here are a few quick business blogging tips to help you create an effective business blog, whether you’re a newbie business blogger or want to refresh your business blog strategy.
Why blogging is important for your business
There are lots of advantages to starting or refreshing your small business blog:
Increased website visitors and leads: Data from Hubspot shows that companies that blog get around 55% more website visitors compared to those that don’t. Which means more customers and sales leads for you.
Positions you as a trusted expert in your sector: Blogs are the 5th most trusted source for accurate online information.
Improved customer relationships: Blogs are a way to make your brand much more personal and relatable to your customers. You’re not just another faceless company anymore – you’re a valued source of advice and help. 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.
Blogging is great for SEO: Regularly updated, customer-focused content is a big tick for Google rankings.
Small Business Blogging: Tips and Advice
small business blog ideas: What should I write about?
The number one rule to help you find the best small business blog topics is simply this: customer-first, not company-first. A blog isn’t about what you want to write about. It’s about what your customers want to read.
FOR GREAT SMALL BUSINESS BLOG IDEAS, just put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
The aim of your blog is to drive and attract customers who will buy from you.
To find this out, just put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What are they looking for? What are they interested in? And how can you help with that? Remember that Google is all about customer-relevant content.
For instance: Let’s say you’re a small recruitment agency. You want to be blogging about things like:
Job interview tips
The top 5 questions to ask at your job interview
How to dress for your job interview
What to write on your resume summary
And so on. Notice that these examples have ‘tips’, ‘top 5’, ‘how to’, and ‘what to’. Instantly telling readers via the title that here’s some useful info that you don’t want to miss.
You can also use free content idea tools such as Answer The Public. Just put in a couple of keywords relating to your business - a topic, brand or product (let’s go with ‘recruitment agency’ again) - and you’ll be given a ‘wheel’ of questions like this, which will give you an indication of what your potential customers are interested in and looking for:
BLOG POST SEO TIPS: How can I optimise my business blog post?
Once you have a list of topics, spend time researching your topics and keywords for your blogs. This will help you to understand how popular a topic is, and what people who would use your business are typically typing into Google. You can then optimise your blogs with these keywords and phrases to help drive customers to you.
As well as Answer the Public, Google’s auto-suggestions are a useful and quick start. Just type in a phrase related to your business and Google will helpfully come up with suggestions as you type.
You’ll also see there’s a handy ‘People Also Ask’ box, which is great for blog post ideas.
And a ‘searches related to’ list which appears at the bottom of the page.
You can also use specific keyword research tools – there are plenty of free ones out there like Semrush or Google Keyword Planner.
When using these phrases and keywords in your blog posts keep it natural and don’t be a keyword-stuffer. User experience and readability is what matters - you’re writing for people, not machines!
How often should I blog for my SMALL business?
When it comes to blogging, quality trumps quantity. Remember that Google is now very much focused on content that’s valuable to your customers and is written with their search intent in mind.
And by this I mean content that gives your customer the answer or ‘solution’ they’re looking for.
‘Be useful – people respond to brands that meet their needS.’
Think with Google search intent report
So instead of churning out lots of posts, concentrate on producing really useful, customer-focused content that’s published regularly, such as once a week or twice a month, whatever you can commit to. A good, well thought through blog will continue to drive potential customers to your site even years after it’s posted.
If you don’t have the time or resource to research and write your blogs, then consider hiring a freelance blog copywriter to do it for you. I write regular blog posts for many of my clients, creating a blog editorial calendar focused on different keywords and topics aligned with business goals.
How long should a business blog post be?
There’s no hard and fast rule for the perfect business blog post length. Your goal isn’t a huge word count, it’s user satisfaction of their search intent.
You could achieve this in a short-form post - around 300-600 words - or a long-form post of over 1,000 words. As long as it’s valuable and relatable to your reader. Remember that many people skim read online content, so keep things concise and clearly set out with relevant headings and images.
SHARING YOUR BLOG - SOCIAL media & EMAIL
Once you’ve published your blog, you need to tell people it’s there. You may well get traffic from Google if it ranks for your chosen topic - this is where your new customer reach will come from.
But don’t forget your existing customers too, who follow your social channels. And your email subscribers. A quick email blast to let them know they can look forward to regular, juicy content from you is all you need to do, with a link to your new blog post for them to enjoy and share.
WHAT ABOUT BLOG BACKLINKS?
Backlinks - when other sites link to yours - help to tell Google that you’re credible and worth paying attention to. Backlinks to your site can help to increase your visibility in Google search results.
Building quality backlinks is extremely challenging in today’s content-rich world. A recent study by Backlinko which analysed over 900 million blog posts showed that 94% get zero external links!
‘94% of ALL BLOG POSTS HAVE zero external links.’
BACKLINKO.COM CONTENT STUDY - ANALYSIS OF 912 MILLION BLOG POSTS
So don’t worry too much about backlinks when you’re just starting out with your small business blog.
As a simple starting point, you can try:
Leveraging your contacts and suppliers: As a business, you’ll have suppliers or stockists. Ask them to use you as a customer case study or provide them with a testimonial, with a link back to your own site. Link to theirs in return.
Outreach: Found a blog or website you love that’s relevant to your small business? You could always ask them to link to your content too, if you’ve got a great blog post that’s relevant to their readers. Here’s some useful info from SEO link builder expert Julian Goldie about how to identify the very best sites and blogs to target and how to ask for a backlink.
Creating share-worthy blog content: Create timely blog content that is super-shareable. Think ‘listicles’ - easy to digest, quick-read list articles. Such as ‘top 5 this’, ‘top 10 that’ and ‘10 ways to..’. And guides - such as ‘How To Do this…’ We also love real-life stories and examples as they’re much more relatable - so if you have a customer case study, use it and share it!
And lastly - small business blogging mistakes to avoid
To round off, here are a couple of things you definitely DON’T want to do on your new small business blog:
Don’t sell!
A blog isn’t the place for any hard selling. That’s what advertisements do. Your blog is a way to generate leads and sales, but indirectly. You’re providing useful information to your customers that can help to influence their decision to buy from you.
Don’t be corporate-heavy
Company news is all very interesting - to you. But is it interesting to your customer? If you’re going to feature company news, make it relevant to your customer.
What does it mean for them?
How does it improve their experience with you?
If you’re stuck on this point, try this out. Imagine you’re telling a mate about your company news. What would you say? I’m betting it wouldn’t be: ‘We’ve got a new piece of machinery, it’s the latest innovative blah blah blah’.
It would more likely be: ‘hey, we’ve got some new kit that does x y and z, it’s brilliant because…’
I hope you have fun creating a successful small business blog!
If you’re looking for a blog copywriter for your business, get in touch with me here.