Some quick blogging tips…
If you are a small business that is starting to consider blogging, hopefully these quick tips will help point you in the right direction how to get started.
Assuming you already know what blogging is, a good place to start is to start regularly talking about events or news within your industry or area of expertise. You might want to avoid a strict blogging schedule to start with, for example, a typical ‘once a week’ approach purely because you might not always have something valuable to share or talk about. This can sometimes make blogs seem uninteresting and forced so you should always try to discuss topics you think your readers would benefit from when that information or news becomes available.
You can also combine your blogs with other social media sites such as Pinterest. A common idea that works well is to live blog events that participate in and upload the images to Pinterest, share them on Twitter and save them for a more in depth blog. You can go even further with this and record video that gets uploaded to YouTube which you can also later integrate into your blog.
People are also often interested to see what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ in any company. This helps develop a sense of trust between you and any potential clients once they can put a face to the company name.
How long should my posts be? When should I post?
I personally think a lot of social media specialists will tell you optimal times and post length or when you should post blogs or social media updates and although there is definitely some benefit in posting at the right times and having your blog the right length, first and foremost starting out you should just focus on the basics – generating ideas and getting useful content written. Write them as long as you feel it is appropriate, when you feel it’s appropriate to create and share one.
If you have a backlog of information you would like to share, you can write the content all at once and schedule the blog posts to be sent out over the coming weeks, that will give you time to find new topics and news that you can share once the backlog has finished being scheduled out.
You can also switch between different members of staff writing content for your blog to keep it ‘fresh’ and create a more varied tone for reading on a weekly or monthly basis. Some basic starting ideas for your first blogs/news could be:
- Changes to a product or service
- Industry related opinion pieces
- New member(s) of staff, welcomes and introductions
- General company announcements
- Polls to find out what your customers like or dislike
For inspiration and to get a ‘feel’ for how to blog, you could look at the innocent drinks blog. They always post unique and quirky content that is filled with personality and isn’t your typical pushy sales filled blog. They interact with their follows and customers a lot too. Being quirky is a great way to hold your readers attention. Nobody wants to read through 500 words of sales drivel.
If you are struggling for ideas, you can always share some content from Reddit and add your opinion to the shared news relating to your industry. Reddit will have a section for whatever industry you work within where users post new information and news to regularly.
For help and support with blogging please see www.opace.co.uk/blog-writing-and-marketing.
Image credit – Christian Schnettelker. Image source
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