Your BBB
Oh, you thought I meant the Better Business Bureau? No, I mean with your Better Business Blog.
You took the advice of the marketing experts and got a blog. You know it’s important for your search engine optimization (SEO). But you hadn’t realized it was important for building trust with your clients and getting them to choose you rather than your competitors. Or, maybe you had realized it, but your SEO company is posting article farm blogs, both repeated on multiple other sites, and often of poor quality and even poorer grammar.
Better Options for Your Blog
So now what? At this point you have a couple of choices. You can hire a content writer. Preferably one that does speak and write decent English. But this can be expensive. Alternatively, you can write it yourself. 5 to 7 articles per week are best, though if your main goal is to gain the trust of your potential clients’, you can reduce this number. While your SEO won’t be as quick, less will still help in this capacity as well. Another way to keep costs lower can be to do a mixture of the two. Have a content writer 10 articles a month and do your own 10 days a month.
Alternatively, you can write the blog yourself. Though many business owners do not feel they can make this kind of time commitment, or when faced with a blank page, get complete writer’s block.
Better Blog Content
Once you have decided on method, the question most business owners face is content. What makes for a good business blog? This question can seem especially overwhelming when thinking of posting to a daily blog, be it 5 or 7 days per week.
So, what does make for a better business blog? Information, certainly. Possible ideas include:
- The what’s and why’s of your business
- Frequently asked questions
- Tips and tricks
- What to look for when choosing a provider of your product or service
- Why buy your product or service at all?
- Why you?
- Company News
- Promotions and Giveaways
- Possibly, even interesting stories of things that have happened on the job.
On Personalization
Personalization can be great for building trust with your potential client. This is especially true if you run a smaller, local business. Considering the following types of blog posts:
- Employee of the month is a great way to connect your client with your business. (Plus, gives the additional benefit of being good for company morale.)
- Personal information of bigger life events can be good – births of babies, weddings, engagements, etc.
- Consider having employees contribute to blog stories
- Local events that you are either participating in or relate to your business. (Participating in local events is great marketing.)
- Charitable work or other community contributions that your company does
- If using a content writer, collaboration definitely makes for better overall content
More Things to Remember
Hopefully, I don’t need to tell you that spelling, and grammar should be good. But a couple of quick words on formatting might be in order. Bold and italics can be used, sparingly. In this age of information, you have only a few seconds to capture your reader’s attention. It’s best to remember that a good headline and the first few sentences should be especially engaging. Otherwise, your reader is not likely to read “below the fold.”
Lastly, how long should your post be? This is entirely up to you. There are advantages and disadvantages to both long and short posts. For daily use, a mixture can be used. With longer posts, formatting becomes important. Formatting should enhance your content, not detract from it. Today’s reader not only wants content, but wants it appealing to the eye, as well. Pictures, headings, and possibly bullets and such might help keep your reader’s attention. However, if your blog is more story like, headings can detract from your story.
Finally…
Your blog should be unique to you and your business. There is no substitute for great original content, but how you get there is entirely up to you.
