One factor that prevents many business owners from starting or consistently posting to their blog is a lack of inspiration. Beyond introducing your business, what will you write about every week or month? How will you come up with topics that are interesting and speak to your audience? What can you do to keep your blog entertaining and informative, instead of boring and more of the same?
I’ve written before about how a blog can benefit your business – twice – but this blog post isn’t about that. Instead, I want to share the variety of ways that you can use your business blog to provide content that’s interesting, relevant to your audience, and will encourage engagement. Variety is the key factor here: variety in purpose and format. The first four methods centre on the purpose of your blog posts and ask that you think of the ‘why’ before you create the ‘what’. The final two are all about format and repurposing.
So here are six ways to keep your business blog content fresh and engaging.
Demonstrate your expertise
This is your chance to impress your audience with your knowledge and build your credibility as someone in the know. When you regularly share your expertise, you prove that you’re a reliable source of information in your field. For instance, you could:
- explain how you are qualified to talk about this topic. That might be actual qualifications or your years (decades?) of experience.
- provide practical tips, insights, and examples that demonstrate your know-how.
- draw from your portfolio to discuss projects you’ve worked on and the benefits that customers have experienced as a result.
You know your business inside and out. You know how you can help your customers. Don’t be shy. Tell the world.
Answer customer questions
Show that you’re listening to your audience by answering their questions. It might be:
- questions that you’ve been asked
- obstacles that get in the way of a customer using your service or buying your products, such as how much, where, and when
- questions that you’ve answered for yourself that are relevant to your audience
- questions you see being asked of other businesses in your industry
- common questions that appear in the Google ‘people also ask’ section
You could even ask your customers, blog audience, and mailing list members what they want to know.
Give your take on news and current events
Another way to engage your audience is to give your take on current events, the news, and industry developments that will interest and be useful to your readers. For instance, you could write about the impact of new developments on your business or how they may affect your customers. This could lead to tips on how customers can safeguard themselves or their businesses.
When discussing current events, try to stay objective and stick to the facts. For instance, when Twitter was initially purchased by Elon Musk and users were panicking over what that might mean, I wrote My thoughts on Twitter and 3 steps you can take to protect your online presence.
Share your news
Your blog offers the perfect opportunity to keep your customer and audience up to date with what’s happening in your business, especially if it’s a reason to celebrate. You might post about:
- moving to bigger premises
- new products or services
- how your business has helped your local community
- how your business is joining in with/celebrating special dates or holidays
- change of company name or rebranding
Host your videos
Video continues to be an incredibly popular way for people to gather information, be entertained, seek inspiration, and find out about businesses like you. Short videos and reels are especially popular.
Most people think of YouTube when it comes to video, but nearly all social media channels allow you to share videos. However, there’s no reason why you can’t host your videos on your business website, especially if you’re YouTube or TikTok shy.
Once hosted on your website and included in a blog post, you can share the link across your social media and with your mailing list too.
Provide content for your social media
Another area of content creation that business owners often worry about is social media. Whether you have an online presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, it can be a challenge to think up new or relevant posts on a consistent basis. Thankfully, your blog posts provide just one more thing to share. Take advantage of the preview image that most platforms will automatically provide when you include a link in your social media post or create separate images that are a fit for each platform.
What’s more, you can break your blog posts down into shareable chunks. For instance, my blog post 3 fears that get in the way of your business blog easily broke down into (not surprisingly) three social media posts for LinkedIn. You could turn your blog post into a video where you talk through what you’ve written or a number of slides or short videos to form a carousel post.
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Gone are the days when blogs were little more than online journals. Nowadays, your business blog is just one more way to inform, inspire, entertain, and talk to your audience.
If you adore the idea of a business blog but don’t have the time or confidence to write your own blog posts, I can help. I’m a freelance copywriter creating blog posts on a wide variety of topics for small and medium businesses. Drop me an email today.
