While many businesses use professional blog writers to prepare their blog posts, if you’re just starting out and don’t have the funds to outsource your blog writing, it might be better to do it yourself, if you have reasonable writing skills, rather than not do it at all. A good business blog can attract plenty of visitors to your new website, and as a new business you’ll want all the visitors you can muster. Here are a few tips to help you write your own business blog posts.
Choosing a Post Topic
Choose a topic that is likely to interest or be helpful to your site visitors. Include a keyword or keyword phrase in the title and post that will attract the right site visitors. This doesn’t always mean choosing keywords you’re targeting with your web pages. You have to think further afield or you’ll soon run out of material for your blog. For example, if you operate a store that sells gifts for small children you might choose to write a post about hosting toddler birthday parties, or toddler party games. Now while your site isn’t about toddler parties, the words in those posts can bring visitors to your site who are about to hold a toddler party. The chances are they have a toddler and friends who have toddlers and when they arrive at your blog post, your entire site might be of interest to them.
The Tone of Your Post
Adopt a friendly, personal and conversational tone when writing your blog posts. If you were operating a land based store you’d have prospective customers entering your store and browsing. You’d greet them and have a bit of a friendly chat. Consider your website visitors as walk in trade – upon their arrival, you want to engage them and make them feel welcome so they’ll stay a while and look around.
Your post should read a little like a conversation. Address your site visitors in a personal way, for example, “do you sometimes feel…” or “if you’ve been struggling to find the perfect…”
Spicing up Your Posts
Make your post visually interesting by including an image that relates to your topic. If you’re writing a ‘how to’ post, you might even find a relevant video on YouTube that you can display in your post.
Learn more about creating great visuals in our post Vital Ingredients to Create Visual Content With Wow Factor.
Humor is another tool that can help make your posts a great read. If a good sense of humor is part of your personality, let some of it out in your business blog posts occasionally. If you find something funny there’s a good chance many of your readers will too, and a shared laugh can make visitors feel as if you’re on the same page.
Structuring a Blog Post
Writing doesn’t come naturally to everyone and if you haven’t done a lot of writing, preparing a blog post that reads well isn’t easy. The good news is that it’s really not that hard. Regardless of the length of your blog post, the structure will be similar: you’ll have an opening paragraph, one or more paragraphs that form the body of the post, and a closing paragraph.
The opening paragraph should introduce your topic and contain the keyword phrase if you’ve chosen one. The body of your post is where you make your point, deliver your argument or provide the information you wish to impart. Use one paragraph for each point or different piece of information. The closing paragraph is where you sum up, round up, or tie up what you’ve written with closing comments that finish off the post.
The closing paragraph should not repeat what you’ve said in your post – you merely need to look for a comment or two that will nicely complete or round off what you have to say. If there’s a sales element to your post, the closing paragraph would be the place to position your ‘call to action’, for example, “If you’d like to know more, visit/call/email…”
Checking and Correcting Posts
It’s vital that your posts read well and do not contain spelling errors. Poorly written blog posts will defeat the purpose as they can give your readers the impression your business isn’t very professional. If your writing and spelling skills are poor and you can’t afford to use a writing service, write drafts of your posts and ask a friend or family member who has good writing skills to rewrite it or check and correct them for you.
Filling your business blog with informative and interesting posts can help you steadily increase the number of visitors to your website. If you’re in the early stages of building an online business, this is likely to be high on your priority list. Your budget might not currently allow for outsourcing your blog content to writing services, but if you make the effort to write your own business blog posts now, that situation may soon change!
Leonie Seysan is the Director of Article Writers Australia, and manages the team of professional writers and editors. She holds a Bachelor of Communications Degree (Media Studies).
