As we continue to discuss the writing of a blog, let’s take a look at the writing of a blog to support a business.
In a blog intended to drive traffic to your business there are a few elements to remember:
- Give useful information, don’t sound like an advertisement.
Remember that people are not searching for advertising they are searching for information, and you are blogging to offer useful information. Don’t just write about the fact that you are at expert but really say nothing, don’t be a politician. Let’s say you are a plumber and you have a blog about your plumbing business and plumbing in general. It would be a good idea to have a few posts on clogged pipes and leaking faucets. What you want to do is give some directions on how to remove a clog from the pipes or secrets about how to quickly repair leaking faucets. If all you talk about is clogged pipes but you don’t give any course of action you will not build trust from your readers; the reader will simply find this information elsewhere and you may have lost a potential customer. - Understand and use the terminology of your field as well as layman terms.
Hopefully you already know the terms associated within your field as well as the phrases that your clients use to describe your services/products; if you don’t, perform a Google search for “keyword research” and use some of the free tools available. By using these terms and phrases in your posts, you will more likely be found by a visitor looking for your services. Don’t overuse them, that will make the blog post sound spammy. Try using 2% of keyword phrases in an entire post, so if you have a 200 word post 4-6 words should have some terms or phrases to help a visitor find it. Doing this will help the search engines credit your blog with information associated with your business type. A more advanced version of this is to also try to incorporate that phrase in the title of the post, but still try to make it sound natural. - Show personality in your posts.
Make your blog readable. You are not writing a high school essay, so don’t write your blog post that way. When you write you are not only delivering information you are also representing yourself. Put a little bit of your personality in your delivery. Typically the internet can be a very cold place, you can try to change this be showing who you really are and what you really think about your field. It can often be a good idea to write like you speak. It may take a few posts to understand how to be yourself, but you will be much better off letting your personality shine through.