5 Steps To Creating Effective Blog Content For Your Business
On the face of it, writing blog content seems like it should be pretty easy: pick a topic, write something interesting about it, hit publish. But writing effective blog content takes more thought and strategy to make it work really hard for you and your business. This doesn’t mean that it’s more complicated, it just means taking an extra few minutes to think about it more intentionally to create a blog post that has an effect on your business.Today I’m giving you a sneak peek into some of the topics we cover in Campfire, my blogging for business course, about how to create blog content like a marketer. I use these tips every day in my own content creation and they have been really effective for my coaching clients too.
Know who you’re writing for
The key to writing effective blog content is writing content that’s valuable to your customer; the key to writing valuable content is really knowing your customer. Knowing them means more than knowing their demographic information, it’s about understanding their hopes and goals in life, the challenges they’re up against, and what’s holding them back.
When you can help them with these deep problems you are providing value and connecting with your customer on an emotional level. By providing value you are positioning yourself as an expert in your field and, crucially, building trust with your customer. It can feel scary or counter-productive to seemingly ‘give away’ knowledge on your blog, but I prefer to think of it as an exchange – I give away valuable advice in return for the trust of my audience. Think about your own buying habits; are you more likely to buy from someone who has proven their expertise to you, or someone asking you to take their word for it?
Front end the ideation
Coming up with blog ideas in the first place is one of the hardest parts of creating content. That’s why writer’s block is so embedded in our vernacular – having good ideas is hard! So in inspired moments, rather than have one idea and write it, use that inspiration and energy to come up with more and more ideas.I spend one morning a quarter coming up with a huge list of content ideas based on my audience knowledge. Not all of them will make the cut but even the duff ideas may inspire something great - maybe I can use it for an Instagram caption, or tie it in with another post. Having a big list of ideas to dig into means that even when you have writer’s block you can still create and publish effective blog content.
Sash window with white curtain in grey stone cottage
Create for where customers are in their journey
There is a tendency when blogging for business to write only about your products or your business, or topics you can relate back to either of those things. It is natural to think that this is an effective use of your blog, to go into more detail than maybe you can elsewhere on your site or on social media. But let’s get back into the mind of our customer again – is this valuable? If they find your site and your blog, is post after post of product-related content not going to feel pushy and sales-y? Will they get to know and trust you and your brand?
Think about where customers are in their journey discovering your brand when planning and creating your content. People landing on your site for the very first time just want to get to know you, what you’re interested in, whether you’re someone they want to support. It’s not until later that they will start to investigate your expertise and your products. So don’t think of content that is more general, or perhaps not about your products at all, as not being effective or as waste of blog space. It earns its place by keeping new visitors on the site and inspiring them to learn more about the brand. (This concept is a bit too complex to go into in a blog post, but we do spend a lot more time on it in Campfire).
Have an objective for the piece
Linked to this is giving each blog post an objective. Objectives for a post will naturally crossover, but wanting each post to do everything is a sure fire way to creating an unfocused piece. When you have one clear objective for the post you’re writing you can make sure it is really effective at achieving it.
So you may want a post that will help new customers find you on a Google search – you therefore ensure it is naturally full of your chosen keyword, stuffed with internal links and has a more introductory tone. On the other hand, you may want a post which helps people get to know your brand more, so you may talk about why ethical production is so important to you in a personal tone which gets under the skin of your business.
Repurpose your best ideas
We all think that when we’ve written about a topic once we can’t possibly cover it again. However, repurposing your most popular posts is vital to consistently sharing effective blog content. Why reinvent the wheel when you’ve done it perfectly before? If you have a particularly effective post, re-use a section of it as an Instagram caption, put it in your newsletter, discuss the topic on a podcast or in a Live social media broadcast, rework it from a different angle and post it in a few months time.
People worry that they will seem repetitive, but it’s important to remember that while you see everything you produce, no one else does. Your online audience is always changing, new people are joining all the time, and it’s likely that you’re existing audience doesn’t remember a post from two months ago because they’ve been reading so much else in between time. And even if someone does remember the first post, all you're doing is creating a consistency of message, rather than being repetitive.
