3 Steps to Starting a Blog as a Small Business Owner
(If you missed our last blog post on why blogging is beneficial to your small business, check it out here first!)
You are a small business owner, you have a million things on your to do list, and blogging sounds like another huge task. Where in the world should you begin?!
Well my friend, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that difficult. In fact, if you set things up properly at the front end, then the rest is easy.
Here are the three first steps in starting a blog for your business.
Understand the back end of posting a blog
Your first step may seem obvious, but you must understand the actual technicalities of posting a blog. This will depend on what web hosting platform you are using. For example, if you are using Squarespace, using the “Blog” tab provides you with everything you will need. Squarespace gives you options to schedule posts for a specific date and time, add specific keywords to your posts and design your posts however you would like.
My suggestion would be to set up your first blog, exactly how you want it to look, and then when you go in to write or schedule more blogs, all you need to do is simply “duplicate” that post, and fill in the new, appropriate info. This way, your blogs will all have consistency, and this will also save you time.
Wordpress and other web hosting platforms work in a similar ways, you just need to go in and make sure you understand the process, depending on what template you are using.
This may take a bit of work upfront, but in the end, as you continue adding content to your site, this step will save you time.
Decide how often you will post a blog
As beneficial as blogging can be to a business, I often tell my clients, if you don’t think you can remain consistent with posting content, do not do it. Posting content only every now and then can be worse than posting no content at all. Why? If a client goes to your website and sees a post from two years ago, and nothing has been posted since, you may risk losing credibility with your clients or customers. It gives the appearance of being unprofessional and unengaged.
In order to avoid this, decide on how many times you want to post consistently, and stick to it. Maybe you decide to post once or twice a week, or you can even choose to post once every other week. This is all fine, as long as you do your best to remain consistent. As you build your audience, your followers will begin to actually look forward to that new blog coming out every Tuesday.
I must say, I’m not always the best at this either, I fall behind sometimes too. That’s okay, don’t beat yourself up about it. Simply pick up where you left off and continue to post.
Pro tip: Batch writing is a great way to avoid this. Set aside a few hours or even an entire day, and batch write 8-10 posts, scheduling them out for the coming weeks and months. This will help you from falling behind in getting posts up.
Decide on your blog topics
Your final step is the fun part. You get to actually decide what you want to write about. Be creative. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience, asking yourself what they might want to know. They are not the expert on your topic and therefore lack a lot of the understanding you may take for granted.
A key to this is to keep it simple. A basic “how to” or “3 simple tips,” or “Top recommendations,” can go a long way. People are looking for quick reads that they can easily skim, to get the most value. Packing your posts full of quick tips, suggestions, recommendations and how-to’s is a great way to do that.
Also, keep your blogs relatively short (between 500-1000 words), and stay away from long paragraphs of text. We aren’t writing 20 page essays.
My suggestion would be to open up a blank document, and to sit and brainstorm every topic you can possibly think of, related to your product or service. From that list, you can create multiple blog post topics. Once you have your topics, create a spreadsheet or calendar and decide what topic you are going to post about when. Making use of special holidays or sales can also be beneficial.
Once you have this done, you don’t have to think much more about it for awhile. When you go to sit and batch write, or write your posts for the week, half the work is already done as you already know what you will be writing about.