Writing for business is so much more than coming up with ideas.
Writing blogs is really good for business for all sorts of reasons (and not just for SEO), so being able to write them is one way of shining the spotlight on you and your business.
Get focused
The biggest challenge is coming up with ideas. Without somewhere to start you end up doing nothing. But help is at hand!
If you are stuck for ideas here a few resources that might be useful:
- AnswerthePublic.com is a really good website listing all the questions that people type into Google. There is a limit to the number of searches that you can do each day, but it’s a great place to start.
- Other blog posts: Reading what other people are writing will help you to develop ideas for your own blogs. But NEVER copy other people’s material.
- Amazon: Do a search on books that cover the topic you’d like to cover, and use the ‘Look Inside’ feature. The titles of the different chapters in the book will give you lots of different ideas.
- Ask your clients: Keep a list of questions that people ask and with each one, you can write a blog post that deals with the issues people have shown they want to know about.
Build content
Start with five good ideas to get your creative juices flowing. You won’t use them all straight away, but you can start banking ideas to use in the future. With a clear focus writing will get easier.
Research your ideas to flesh them out and get inspiration on the best way to approach your subject.
Create a structure
Here are some simple – and highly effective – tips on how to plan and structure your blog.
Start by writing the purpose of your blog at the top of the page. What is the lesson you want the reader to learn? What action do you want them to take? Read back each paragraph and ask yourself ‘is this helping me to get that message across?’
To get your blog fleshed out this is a useful strategy:
- Start with the three main points you want to make
- Add three bullet points under each of those main points.
- Create your summary and include any call to action (CTA) you want to include.
- Add your blog introduction. I suggest you do this at the end because once you’ve got the main part done, introducing it is easier.
- Finally add an interesting and eye-catching title – that shouts ‘read me’ at your potential reader!
Keep your paragraphs short and to the point and do the same with each sentence.
Start writing
Before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard – set an alarm to go off after 30 minutes. Now start writing as quickly as possible, don’t look back, don’t stop to correct mistakes, don’t start looking at sentences and trying to re-write them – just keep writing!
With your existing structure, expand each section one at a time.
Stop when the alarm goes off!
Have a cuppa to reward yourself and take a break. Then come back and read over your work. This is where you can start to edit, correct, rewrite sentences and tidy everything up.
Revisit your purpose as you do your editing and ensure your blog fulfils that purpose from end-to-end.
Top and tail
A really good eye-catching title is a great way of getting people to read your blog. There are psychological reasons why people read blogs. Different ways of titling your blog catch people’s attention in different ways so play around with them.
Numbers or lists:
- 3 easy ways to write a blog!
- 5 top tips to transform your articles into hot topics instead of rambling prose.
How to:
- How to write a blog in 30 minutes
- How to write fun, informative blogs in 3 easy ways
Promises, promises:
- Blog writing that will feed your bank account
- Unveiling the truth about how to attract more readers for your blog
Away-from motivation
- 7 biggest mistakes people make when writing a blog
- 3 things to avoid in blogs
It’s all about capturing the reader’s attention.
Finally, don’t forget to add a call to action at the end. If you want the reader to sign up for your lead magnet, add the instruction and link. If you want comments – ask people a direct question and invite them to answer in the comments. If you have other blogs around the subject tell your reader where to find these.
If you have great content on your website it will help you to position yourself as an expert as well as adding relevant content for the search engines.
Start writing today and see where you are in a month from now. Happy writing!
Sam Hogwood runs Escape from the City VA services – and has a passion for writing.
