I hear it so often, the reason many of my small business friends don’t blog, content ideas. They literally have no idea what to write about. Which to me sounds INSANE! I am able to list off loads of topics for all my friends and they look at me dumbfounded. What is their problem? I think the main issue is overthinking. That overthinking of what essentially is an easy task “write something about my business” into a complex equation in their heads. X + Y = Twenty billion. My advice (are you ready it’s mighty profound) the best way to overcome this overthinking is to write. Yup, that’s it just get on with some writing!
I find it best to start off with a notebook for writing in all my big ideas and have a mind-mapping session (basically a brain dump of ideas) of content ideas, topical, and promotions. This clears my head but also gets my creative juices flowing.
Why Your Small Business Needs A Blog:
A blog helps your small business to:
Engage with your audience/potential customers. Share valuable information. Keeps your content consistent. Position yourself as an expert in your genre. Makes your website more visible through SEO. Helps populate your social media content. Work smarter – not harder.9 Content Ideas To Get You Blogging:
- Pain-points: Think about your customer/clients potential pain-points and how your small business can rectify/alleviate them.
- Topical: What is happening currently in your industry or nationwide/worldwide that everyone is talking about and you have an opinion on or your business offers services for.
- Seasonal: I have several Christmas blog posts which I update every year to make sure they are still relevant, no broken links, up to date offers etc… Seasonal content is a great way to develop evergreen content (content that is always relevant, if you use the Yoast plugin it’s called cornerstone content so make sure you tick the box) as seasons happen every year and any tips and/or activities will always be useful.
- Skills: Write about what you can do, it’s not always obvious to potential customers what you can do for them. Sometimes you have to spell it out. In industries such as virtual assistants (VA’s), you may know you need a VA but you may have no idea what jobs you can delegate to a VA. Not all VA’s will offer the same skills. Use your blog content as a FAQ section where you can show off your skills and services.
- Interview Someone in Your Niche: Working with other people whether that be interviews or guest posts, opens you up to a whole new audience. You also get to work with someone new, develop relationships and grow your network. It’s a win-win.
- Case Studies: Use your current client workload to develop a case study, that shows off your skills and is great PR for your client too.
- Guest Posts: Ask others to write content for you and do the same for them. This not only populates your own blog, like interviews it opens you up to a new audience but guest posts also increase your “expert” standing within your genre.
- Share Your Successes: Turn your latest success into a blog post, if you have written a press release use this as a blog too. Award wins, publications in magazines, a significant sales target. People buy from people, don’t forget to use your blog to add personality and real-life to your small business.
- Create Listicles: A listicle (it’s a real word I swear!) is an article in the form of a list that are incredibly popular due to the bitesize nature of the information shared. Hey, this blog post is a perfect listicle example.
Bonus Blogging Tips :
- Ensure your posts are over 500 words.
- Spend time adding meta tags, meta descriptions, and alt tags to help with SEO.
- Use headers and bullet points to break up the text, make it easy to read and using keywords in headers is also good for SEO.
- Reshare content. You don’t have to keep writing something new, reshare and remind your audience or repurpose content on LinkedIn.
Hopefully, this post has left you feeling inspired to get on a write a blog post! If not and you are still unsure of how to go about planning your blog content or even what to write about? Then check out my Blogging Content Planner to get you started.
What’s Included:
This digital download is 11 pages long.
9 Blog Content Ideas Planner – ideas, examples, and space to write your own (over 5 pages)Blog Content Ideas – Titles & KeywordsBlog Post PlannerTo Do List(use the code WWUC7N8SCO to save 25%)
