Blogging for business: how to get started

When it comes to digital marketing, there are A LOT of platforms to choose from but there’s one that continues to stand the test of time for small business owners – blogging. Blogs offer a unique opportunity for businesses to connect with their clients on a more personal level.

In this post, we’ll dive into some of the reasons why blogs are still relevant to your business in 2024, including their ability to drive engagement, boost SEO, and establish authority in your industry.

We’ll uncover the secrets to brainstorming ideas that people genuinely want to read. I’ll share my top tips for getting people to read the blogs you’ve spent so much time and energy writing. And I’ll show you how you can maximise the value of your blog content by repurposing it.

Are blogs still relevant in 2024?

Writing blog posts once a month or so can be really time consuming so I know it might be tempting to drop this content altogether. Here’s a few reasons why I think blogging for business is worthwhile…

The SEO benefits

Search engines favour content that’s fresh and relevant. By regularly updating your blog with valuable information, you can improve your website’s search engine ranking, making it more likely to be discovered by potential customers.

It helps establish your authority

Through your blog posts, you’re able to showcase your expertise and knowledge in your industry. By sharing insightful and informative content, a business can establish itself as an authority in its field, building trust with potential clients.

The long-term value is unmatched

Unlike some other forms of content (I’m looking at you Instagram posts!) blog posts can hold their value for a really long time. Evergreen content, which remains relevant over time, can continue to drive traffic and engagement even months or years after it was published.

Get started with blogging for business

How to come up with ideas that people actually want to read?

Okay so we’ve established that blogging can be super beneficial for your business. Now the next step is to actually do the damn thing! So let’s talk about how to brainstorm ideas that people will actually *want* to read, especially if your industry is a little dry.

Respond to questions from your audience and clients: What common questions come up from your social media followers? What things do your clients struggle with? What information would make it easier to work with your clients?

Research common questions/keywords: If people aren’t directly asking you questions, you might need to do a little digging to find them.
- Start by looking in relevant Facebook groups. If you use the search bar to type in keywords related to your business, posts from group members will pop up which can be a great source of content ideas.
- Take a look at the suggested search terms on Google and Pinterest.

Tell stories: These can be personal stories of how you overcame a struggle, achieved a long term goal or tested something out in your business. Or these could be client stories of how you worked together to overcome one of their struggles.

Be helpful: How-to guides and step-by-step tutorials are always popular!

Guest posts and collaborations: Partner up with other businesses or industry experts to bring a unique perspective, extra value and expert knowledge.

Note: audience and keyword research is HUGE! What you’re saying is less important than HOW you’re saying it. People will be more likely to read a well-structured blog post that’s written in language they understand.

How to get your blog post written?

Set aside time

To craft a blog post worth reading, you need time to brainstorm ideas, create a draft, write the blog, publish it on your website and promote it. I recommend plugging each of those individual tasks into your calendar so that you give enough time to them. Don’t worry – we’ll talk about ways you can maximise this time investment by repurposing blog posts in a second!

Follow a structure

Your blog posts will have a beginning, middle and end. For the beginning, you’ll want to introduce the topic and touch on why it’s important (i.e. worth reading!) In the middle, you’ll provide the value. This will be the meat of the post: your tips, story or tutorial. For the end, you’ll want to share the takeaway, final thoughts, and a call to action with next steps for people to take.

Get help from AI

An excellent starting point is to hop onto ChatGPT and get some help with your headings and the main points you want to cover in your post.

Note: I wouldn’t recommend getting ChatGPT to write your blog for you because most people will be able to smell that from a mile away! Rather, use it as a starting point that you can then flesh out with greater detail and more personality.

How to get people reading your blog posts?

Tell your email list about it: direct them to your website to read your latest blog post.

Share it on social media: as a post and also on your stories. See below for some repurposing ideas!

Promote it in Facebook groups: this is an excellent way to provide free value which helps you get visible and build trust with potential customers.

Add it to Pinterest: create multiple pins for your blog post and share each of these across several boards.

Recommend Reading: Get more organic traffic with a Pinterest Marketing Strategy

Boost your visibility with SEO: before writing your blog post, research keywords and follow best practices to help improve your Google ranking. Click here to learn more about how to optimise your blog for search engines.

How to repurpose blog content

Okay, let’s talk about how to truly maximise the value of your blog post by repurposing it.

Step 1) Follow the steps and recommendations above to write a must-read blog post.

Step 2) Share your latest blog post as an email newsletter. This could look like pulling from the introduction and simply talking about WHY the topic is so important and valuable for your audience, then encouraging them to click over to your website to read more. Or you could take the tips, tutorial or story shared in your blog post and share them with your email subscribers as well.

Step 3) Turn your blog post into social media posts. Because a blog post is content heavy, I like to break it down into as many social media posts as possible. For example, with this blog post I’d turn each section into a post, reel or stories training.

What’s the best way to find out what blog posts are getting traffic?

My favourite way to measure anything related to website performance is Google Analytics. To specifically see which blog posts are getting traffic/not getting the traffic you’d like, you’ll want to look under the ‘Engagement’ tab in the ‘Reports’ section.

If you scroll down to ‘Landing page,’ you’ll see a list of all of your website pages, including your blog post URLs. From there you can see how many people viewed your blogs, how long it held their attention for and which posts performed the best.