20 Tips for Better Business Blogging

Over recent years, there has a been a significant rise in the number of websites adding or re-adopting blogging as a part of their content marketing strategy. Sharing their thoughts on topics from company updates, industry news and business advice, business blogs have become a vital part of any digital marketing campaign and should be recognised for the potential they hold.

In today’s blog post, I’m going to be sharing my top 20 tips for better business blogging. Whether you’re starting your first business blog, or want to improve on your existing posts, these tips are a great place to start.

• Create a category cloud to choose topics and titles from. This category cloud can take the form of a list, a spreadsheet, a mindmap or an actual cloud, but should always contain all of the relevant topics and subjects that your blog posts will feature. Curating up to 20–25 topics is a great way to decide on new titles, or even blogging series, sparking inspiration efficiently and easily. This is also a useful way to integrate new marketers and writers into your blogging style, as they will always have a pool of potential topics to when it comes to writing their first posts.
• Answer the questions your readers will ask. Anticipating the questions most likely to be asked by your readers is an essential part of business blogging. For many businesses, simple web pages don’t have the capacity to hold all of the information we need them to, and so it can be useful to think of your blog as the overspill site. It needs to be the place readers can go to find more information, more news, more detailed examples of your business and services from a lengthier perspective. Make a list of all of the questions a layman might have about your business and set about answering them through your future posts.
• Have a dedicated tone of voice. Tone of voice and language choice is a key part of delivering intelligent and effective blog posts. Make sure to match the tone of voice delivered throughout the rest of your marketing, including your web pages and branding, and replicate that in every single post you share. Whilst blogging does offer a little bit of flexibility when it comes to casual language, if you feel like it doesn’t match the tone of your existing marketing, then it’s not the right approach to have. Keep everything neat, consistent and cohesive, and your readers will be much more receptive to your posts.
• Be consistent with your posting schedules. One of the easiest ways to build up a dedicated reader base for your business blog is to set yourself a regular posting schedule. This means researching the best times to post and share your content, and sticking to a strict routine. For example, posting on the same day every week, and sharing your posts on the same social media sites, can help readers to anticipate and look out for new posts from your accounts.
• Know where to promote your posts. When sharing a blog post from your business blog, it’s important to know exactly where your readers are going to find it. For many businesses, LinkedIn is going to be a fairly safe option for procuring traffic, however it’s be worth doing a little bit more research into the additional platforms your potential customers are likely to use. Pinterest, for example, is a great site for driving traffic to your blog posts, with niche audiences readily available in your industry and field. Facebook is a good space for local businesses to share their content, and Instagram can help you reach a larger, more diverse range of readers. Take the time and find out which sites are going to work for your blog and help you to create the best possible reader base for your business.

• Source the right imagery. To help keep a sense of cohesion throughout your blog, try to curate a specific collection of imagery to use in your posts. This could mean using a specific brand colour in all of your images, themed images based on the subject matter, or images with a particular edit or preset used on them. Not only does this help to increase your brand recognition, it also makes your post appear professional and intentional to your readers. Try to ensure you use pictures highlighting diversity, and that all images are relevant to the current climate of the digital media too. Pay close attention to anything that might appear insensitive or inappropriate to be shared on public social media, and always get a second opinion behind posting anything you feel might be controversial.
• Understand the fundamentals of your platform and utilise them. The platforms you use to host your blog have so many built-in and beneficial tools to help you boost your blog, however so many of them go unused. Take some time to learn and understand the elements at your disosal — letting them improve your writing style, formatting, SEO and promotional marketing. Educate yourself on how to use tags and categories, figure out the right alt text to use on your images and understand the difference between H2 and H3 titles, and your blog will be so much better for it.
• Write great SEO for each blog post. Whether you manually add your SEO to each post, or find a nifty plugin to help you out, SEO is a crucial part of delivering a solid content strategy. Helping your posts to climb the ranks of Google, and maintain a high profile position to all potential readers, getting to know SEO is really going to help develop and showcase the best of your blog posts.
• Research your rivals. Whilst every business should be aware of their rivals, when it comes to blogging, it’s neccessary to keep ahead of their posts at every step. Where you can, avoid copying their posts, or providing uncomfortably similar content through your blog. Don’t try to imitate them, or to better them — even if they might have 21 tips for blogging and you only have 20. Find out what their blog is missing, which questions they aren’t answering and what gaps their content has for your site to fill. Competitor research is always going to help drive your content forwards, so make you sure you give your rivals the attention they need.
• Don’t post and forget — keep sharing. It’s very easy to share a blog post on social media the day you publish it. It’s even easier to forget about it for every other day that follows. Ideally, your posts should be so interesting and informative that they could be shared on any given day, even weeks after their original publication date, and still be seen as valuable content. Keep sharing your old posts, write content that lasts the test of time and encourage your readers to keep exploring all of your content, rather than just your most recent work.

• Ask for reader feedback & input on your blog. Stuck for ideas for your next blog post? Why not try asking your customers and readers what they would like to read on your platform? Perhaps they have questions about some of your services, or want to know more about how the company began? Using social media polls and surveys, you can gather information and inspiration from the voices of your readers, and help your business to deliver the content they actually want to read. It can also be useful to find out the kind of content they would typically avoid too, to save yourself from wasting time on flat or unappealing posts.
• Include useful & reliable links. Not just a great way to boost your SEO score, including external links in your post can add real value and credibility to your blog. Sourcing other information on a topic and sharing it with your readers is one of the easiest ways to keep your content fresh and intelligent, highlighting the reliability of your information and encourage your audience to keep reading. Adding links is also a good way to raise awareness of your blog to other businesses and websites, helping to increase your traffic overall.
• Keep fact checking & proofreading. No matter the topic, every single post you share must be fact checked and proofread before publication. By allowing misinformation or sloppy mistakes to be shared, the reputation of your brand is threatened, as well as the trust placed in it by readers. Make sure that every fact you deliver, and every site you link to, is in line with your company messaging — morally, ethically, factually. Make sure that you are delivering honest, correct content, and that every piece of information you promote is right.
• Make your posts accessible to all. Accessiblity is a big draw for new readers to a blog. By allowing a much broader and diverse audience to enjoy and consume your posts, you are opening up your reader-group and potential customer lists almost infinitely. Introduce small additions to your posts such as alt captions, text-to-speech features, colourblind-friendly palettes and adjustable font sizes. Include diverse language and pronouns in your writing, showcase diversity in your imagery and invite all possible customers to feel welcome on your site.
• Don’t get bogged down in jargon. Regardless of whether you’re a dentist, a builder, a lawyer or a make up artist, too much jargon in your posts is going to be a big turn off for potential readers. Whilst there is a little more wiggle-room when it comes to industry-specific terminology in B2B blogging, on the whole, complex languages and alienating phrases are going to put more readers off than draw them in. Try to stick to neutral, yet intelligent language — explaining or defining words when neccessary — but encouraging all readers to follow the post without feeling lost along the way.

• Give your blog branding and personality. A great way to establish or re-introduce your blog as a creative and inspirational space is to set it up as an individual platform, with its own branding and personal tone. This is a trend adopted by many technology agencies and companies, where their blog takes on a new form as a ‘journal’, ‘collective’ or ‘insight space’. They are given a new voice, and are typically allowed to be more controversial, more casual, more personified than the standard business blog — making them seem new and exciting. It’s a different way to approach your business blog, but it definitely has some great potential.
• Curate your best posts into a featured segment. To truly show off some of your most popular articles or posts, why not curate them into a featured segment that can be easily found within your site or on the front page of your blog. These posts, ideally, should be discussing varied and diverse topics, with visually appealing featured images and engaging titles to help readers notice them immediately.
• Monitor and analyse your post data often. It’s always useful to keep an eye on the analytics of your blog posts. Take some time each month, or even each week, to check in and see which posts are performing well, which could use a little bit more marketing, which sites or links readers used to find each post and how often they have been clicked on in the past. By setting up a record of each data set, it’s easy to compare between each month and utilise the information to create similar, popular posts in future.
• Try to connect your social marketing & your blogging. One useful way to align your social marketing and your content marketing is to set up themed weeks or series across the board. For example, spending one week discussing case studies — your social marketing can be sharing and delivering small chunks of information about each case study, whilst your blog posts can be dissecting them in detail. This helps to keep a cohesive and coherent marketing strategy between each platform, helping users to identify your content and recognise your brand, no matter which platform they discover it on.
• Put the effort in and research! It’s time to do your research. This list is just 20 tips long but there are so many great resources out there for you to utilise. The more research you do, the better business blog you’ll have. I’ve included links to some of my favourite resource sites listed below.

Links:

• https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/blogging-tips-from-the-pros/ — 21 Blogging Tips From The Pros
• https://upserve.com/restaurant-insider/small-business-blogging-tips-for-anyone/ — 10 Small Business Blogging Tips for Owners
• https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/b2b-business-blogging-tips-generate-leads-sales-opportunities/ — B2B Business Blogging Tips