If you are here reading this today then you’ll know why blogs are so important.
Sharing information, tips, and thoughts via a blog is a great way of building a rapport with your clients, and showing yourself to be an authority in a particular subject.
However, even if you want to write blogs for your website the truth is it can be very challenging, and easy to put off.
The end result is the dreaded ‘Christmas Post’ which sits idly on your blog page from years ago, with nothing since having been written.
Clients who see this would understandably be a bit dubious about how much you care about your website.
Why should you write blogs
Well, the obvious reason is more content which is good for SEO.
Writing more content means new pages which can be linked (indexed) by search engines.
The more pages you have, the more keywords you can talk about, and the more opportunity for your page to show up in search results.
When you search for something online, the search engine will look for those keywords and try to return pages it thinks are most suitable.
There are many ranking factors which fall outside of the scope of this post, but creating new pages helps you write content specifically targeted at certain keywords.
The more keywords you cover, the better it is, because over time you will see traffic increase and more visitors to your site means more leads.
Writing blogs also shows your visitors that you care about informing them with what’s happening in the business.
An up to date and fresh blog page can share a lot of really useful info about your company which in turn is good for your marketing.
Blogs vs Social media
Of course, these days many companies and their marketing teams have to post something on social media.
So if you are still posting videos and content on social media, should you still care about what you are posting to your blog?
The answer is yes.
Social media is heavily geared to visual content, primarily video and images.
Although people do post articles or mini-posts on social media, these don’t really get indexed by search engines in the same way a blog post might.
Another important thing to note is that whatever you do on social media stays on that particular platform.
A blog post on the other hand will go directly onto your company website which helps bring people to your site.
The main problems with blog-writing
Many of our clients talk about not being able to find the time, and even when they do it’s hard to know what to write about.
If you do know what to write about then it can still be daunting to stare at a blank page and wonder how to begin.
If you’re not a writer, or you don’t have a nice office set up, then blog writing can be difficult.
Even if you have got experience writing, you might still struggle with writing blog posts for your company website.
We’ve seen lots of examples where even when people have got a background in writing struggle to write engaging blogs.
The biggest problem most people have when writing blogs is time.
Many people have good intentions to write on their site, but the reality is that more pressing things occur and it drops down the list of priorities.
This is why you often will need an agency like StudioRav to manage your website.
Finding the time
Just like most things in life, if you want to get something done you have to make the time to do it.
Writing blog posts is the type of activity which can easily take up a few hours of your day.
From doing research, to deciding what to write about, to editing, you should really aim to do it on a day where you have less distractions.
We often find Friday afternoons are best for us – it’s the end of the week and we usually have lots of ideas still in our minds.
For your business try to think about when you have downtime, and then allocate a few hours for your blog writing.
Another thing to think about is the frequency of posts.
Are you going to write once per week, or once per month?
The answer really depends on what you hope to gain from your blog writing, but we would expect most companies to post something at least once per month.
So just find that quiet time in your month where you will be able to write something, and be able to post it online for when you want.
What to write about
We often find that the best inspiration for your blogs is what you’ve been working on that week or month.
It could be something a client has asked, or something you’ve learnt during the month, or something you’ve come across during your research.
Another important consideration is the purpose of your blog posts.
If you are writing specifically for SEO (to rank better for a certain keyword or phrase) then your blog post needs to be solely about that topic obviously.
If it’s more about information then writing about recent activities and events helps to show people what you are up to.
There are many writing resources out there which can give you ideas on what to write about, here are a few ideas:
- What you’ve been doing recently
- Something relevant in the news
- A new offer or discount you are offering
- An event or workshop you’ve attended
- Something interesting about your team
- Share some technical know-how to show how clever you are
- A case study or analysis of your work
- A problem you’ve come across and solved
Blog-writing guidelines
In order to get the most out of your blog post here are a few simple things to remember:
Word count – think about how long your blog post will be. If you are trying to rank for SEO then write 1000+ words, otherwise you can write as many or as little as you want.
Images – have a good image, but you don’t need many pics in your posts. It really depends on the subject, but there is no harm in adding more images.
Tone – try and have the same tone as the rest of your website. Is it going to be authoritative, or informal, or corporate?
Format – are you going to write huge chunks of text like an essay, or would it be better to split everything into short paragraphs and bullet points?
Your reader – who is actually going to read your post? Company directors or their PAs? Match the content to your reader.
Links – make sure to link to other blogs or pages on your website, and also sprinkle a few links to third party websites too.
Headings – break up your post into a series of headings or topics, then write a few hundred words for each one. This way you can easily get to good word count.
Edit – any writer who knows their stuff will tell you this. Always re-read and edit your posts accordingly.
Using AI for blog writing
You may already have tried this and in all honesty it’s still a bit hit and miss isn’t it?
AI can certainly help speed up writing by giving you ideas, padding out sentences and doing your research for you.
Using AI properly, by putting in good quality prompts, can really help write up hundreds of words very quickly.
In many cases, the content written by the AI model can be very good, and if you compare it with what your competitors have, you’d be surprised by how concise it is.
We would say you should definitely use AI if you need help because it’s a tool at the end of the day.
However the main drawbacks it seems are that you still have to carefully read and edit your post.
You may find inaccurate info, Americanizations, things repeated in different ways, or even just a different tone of writing compared to your other posts.
It should also be noted that these days readers are becoming somewhat attuned to spotting posts written by AI, so make of that what you will.
Get help with blog writing
If you still feel that you don’t have the time, and you just want a professional company to keep an eye on it all then you may be better off going for website management by StudioRav.
Our website management service is designed to help busy entrepreneurs and teams concentrate on other parts of their business.
We focus on things like content, keeping your site up to date, fixing bugs and issues, so you don’t have to.
Our blog writing service is entirely flexible and comes in various forms such as writing the posts for you, providing tips and inspiration, tidying up posts which you provide to us, or working with your existing SEO/copywriting teams.
Get in touch today if you want to discuss the options available to you and let’s get writing!