4 Business Blogging Basics for Beginners

If you’re overwhelmed at the thought of starting a blog for your small business, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll discuss many of the benefits you can expect from blogging and give you some practical tips to help you get started!

Get In on All the Benefits of Blogging!

Why blog? After all, business is steady, your plate is full, and you don’t consider yourself a writer to begin with. We get it. We really do. But if you don’t blog, you will miss out on some powerful opportunities to connect with your audience. 

Blogging allows you to…

Establish Your Authority as an Industry Leader

You’re an expert in your field. The challenge is communicating that to your audience so they choose to work with you instead of one of your competitors. 

When you create consistent, valuable content, your audience will see you as dependable and trustworthy. When you share your hard-earned knowledge, you’ll earn their respect.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “thought leadership.” There’s no better way to paint yourself as a thought leader than by using your blog to share in-depth insights and expertise and discuss current industry trends. You can even feature discussions or interviews with other industry leaders and talk about emerging technologies that will impact your readers both now and down the road. 

Educate Your Audience

Your readers click on your posts either to be entertained (we’ll come back to this in a minute) or because they hope to glean some helpful information. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. What are some of their biggest pain points? What keeps them up at night? Don’t shy away from these issues. 

Address your readers’ struggles head-on with solutions to common problems. Take time to demystify confusing scenarios or consider writing an occasional FAQ post that is easily scannable and helpful.

Highlight Your Products and Services

An effective way to do this is by addressing common concerns your products or services solve.

Here are some examples of what this might look like:

• If you’re an IT specialist, you know that both business owners and homeowners share data privacy concerns. Write a blog post (or a series of blog posts) around this common concern. Title it something along the lines of, What Steps Can I Take To Keep My Data Safe?
• If you’re a plumber, you know your audience is concerned about rising utility costs. Address the question, How Can I Reduce My Water Bill? Discuss how homeowners can detect water leaks, upgrade outdated fixtures with water-saving alternatives, assess the efficiency of their water heater, deal with toilets that are always running, etc.
• If you own a brand that sells athletic apparel, you know that many people are self-conscious when they wear it. Create a post addressing this issue. A catchy title might be, Choosing Athletic Wear You Can Feel Confident Wearing at the Gym. 

In all of these articles, it’s easy to offer your product or service as the solution, but you don’t have to hit your reader over the head with it. Your knowledge and empathy are already hard at work, building your prospect’s trust. Simply include a link for people to schedule a complimentary consultation with you or a member of your sales team to learn more about how you can help! 

Share Your Company Values

A blog is a great place to share what motivates you or the “why” behind your work. It helps humanize your brand and create an emotional connection with your audience. 

Write about charitable causes your company supports and highlight any volunteer events your team participates in. Discuss issues that impact your industry and invite your readers to engage with you, fostering a like-minded community. Build employee spotlights and behind-the-scenes glimpses of your staff hard at work into your content strategy as a way to showcase your values and invite your readers along on the journey. 

Business Blogging Basics #1: Create a Content Plan 

Begin by brainstorming a list of topics. These topics can range from creating awareness around/promoting your products and services to addressing your audience’s pain points and offering tips, from FAQs and thoughts on industry trends to highlights of your company culture and occasional funny one-offs. 

You’ve probably heard reference to the 80/20 rule, and business blogging is no exception. You don’t have to limit your content to promoting your products or services. In fact, the bulk of your content (80%) should be educational and entertaining! Only 20% of your content—or 1 out of every 5 blog posts—should revolve around your business offerings. The vast majority of your content will educate and woo your audience, building that bridge of trust and entertaining them along the way. 

Now, determine your posting cadence. Aim for at least one or two high-quality blog posts each month. Quality and consistency are more important than frequency! 

Create a content calendar where you can outline your topics, your publishing dates, and what verbiage you’ll post on each of your social media platforms to inform your followers about your latest blog article. (On these social posts, be sure to include a link back to your blog article to increase website traffic and engagement!) If someone other than yourself will be creating blog content, include a column with the author’s name and share this content calendar with them so they can plan accordingly.

When you plan out your content instead of winging it, it will be a whole lot less stressful and more consistent and engaging. 

Business Blogging Basics #2: Incorporate an SEO Strategy

If you’re taking the time to create great content and want to reap all the benefits, you want to make sure people can find your blog posts through a simple internet search. This means researching which keywords people search for to find businesses like yours. 

But just because search words are popular, that doesn’t mean you should use them. Some popular search words are difficult to rank for because so many other businesses are going after them. The challenge in your keyword research phase is to identify keywords that are popular and easy to rank for. Then, make sure you strategically place these keywords throughout your blog posts and in your meta descriptions. Over time and with consistency, your website will appear higher on the search engine results page (SERP), increasing the chances your audience will find you when they search online for the products or services you offer. 

An SEO strategy might sound overwhelming, but don’t get lost in the weeds. Beginning with even a simple keyword research strategy is an investment in your business! Learn some SEO basics to get you started in one of our latest blog posts!

Business Blogging Basics #3: Write With an Authentic Voice

A business that tries to elevate itself with stuffy insider language and a we’ve-had-it-together-from-day-one attitude will seem far less approachable to their audience. Ultimately, it will decrease engagement. What a waste of effort!

Instead, be authentic. Authenticity helps humanize your brand and makes it more attractive to potential customers. Don’t shy away from discussing your humble roots and the obstacles you’ve overcome to get to where you are today.

Business Blogging Basics #4: Leverage Free Tools

If you’ve hesitated to start a blog because you’re “not much of a writer,” we’ve got some great news for you. There are a host of free tools at your disposal that make it easy to craft content you can feel confident putting in front of your audience. 

Grammarly

Even the most seasoned writers make spelling and grammar mistakes and utilize editing tools to catch and correct them. Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that’s easy to use. 

Draft your blog post and copy and paste it into the app. Then, Grammarly will highlight any grammatical errors and offer suggestions for correcting them. It will also score your post on correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery. If you pay for the premium version, you can fine-tune your post even more, but the free version is still helpful and quite robust. 

Moz Keyword Explorer

There are many great SEO research tools, but Moz Keyword Explorer is a great place to start! 

Moz is user-friendly, with easy-to-interpret data that will help you get a handle on which keywords to incorporate into your blogging strategy. By implementing these keywords, you can increase your search engine ranking and be discovered by more people who need your product or service!

Duplicate Word Finder

If your post is shorter, you might be confident that you’ll catch all the duplicate words. However, if it’s a longer post, it’s easy to lose the proverbial forest for the trees. 

That’s where Duplicate Word Finder comes in! This tool will highlight any words that appear more than once in your writing, tell you how many times these words appear, and color-code them so they’re easy to spot. While some conjunctions like and, but, or if may not be concerning, if you’re using the same adjective over and over in your writing (interesting, beautiful, insightful, etc.), you will probably want to swap some of them out for synonyms. Merriam-Webster.com and ChatGPT are two great resources for generating synonyms!

Title Case Converter

If you’re unsure which words to capitalize in your title or heading, select which format you’re using (APA, AP, AMA, Chicago, MLA, Bluebook, NY Times, or Wikipedia). Then, cut and paste it into the Title Case Converter and click, “convert.” Your properly formatted title will populate below. Next, click the handy “copy” button and repaste it into your document. Easy peasy!

Tip: Ask a family member or trusted employee to read through your blog post before you publish it. As the creator, you spend a lot of time meditating on and organizing your insights and getting them down in writing. Consequently, it can be easy to overlook missing letters or words or read over redundant words or ideas that others might pick up on!

If your business doesn’t have a blog (or your last post was written in 2017, and your blog was left for dead), we hope these business blogging basics boost your confidence and inspire you to create valuable content that engages your audience and drives business growth. 

Remember—you don’t have to be a pro! Check out our infographic for more great blog writing tips!

Looking for more help writing blogs for your business? Wild Fig has you covered! Schedule an exploratory call to learn how we can help boost your business with blogs!