How to Write Effective Blogs for Your Business

Today, successful businesses have a content marketing strategy that includes blog posts, case studies, research, email newsletters, and photo or videos along with digital transcription services. Of these, blogging is a great way for digital marketers to showcase their knowledge on a topic and demonstrate their authority on that subject. Blogging helps businesses reach out to their audience and promote their brand. An effective blog post is one that clearly communicates your message, engages readers, and generates strong leads. Here are some tips to improve your writing skills and produce successful blog posts:

• Plan your content: Think about what you want to say. This will help you write informatively and avoid rambling. To come up with hard-hitting, engaging content, you need to define your goals, do market research to identify keywords to target, and identify topics to write about. For instance, if you are a car dealer, one topic you could write about is what to look for when buying a car. Value your readers time and provide useful content. To write for the greatest impact, your blog needs to address your audience’s interests, needs, preferences and concern. You should also write content around keywords to optimize your blog content for search.
• Write in a conversational tone: Writing conversationally will make it easier to get your message across and engage the reader. For instance, instead of saying, “You can expect your business to grow phenomenally with our support” you could say “We can help you take your business to the next level”. You can even begin sentences with “and,” “but,” and “yet.” To make your words count, use descriptive words and active voice rather than passive voice-as far as possible. Keep sentences short, crisp and clear. Style your content for your target audience. For instance, if you know that your readers are specialized in a certain area, tailor your language and content to suit them.Be direct: Convey your message at the start. In academic writing, it’s generally the other way round and the main point could come at the end. In business communication, it’s necessary to start with your conclusion first. Author of The HBR Guide to Better Business Writing Bryan Garner says, “One of the great diseases of business writing is postponing the message to the middle part of the writing.” For instance, if you are writing about For instance, if you’re writing a blog on “How to Make a Great Presentation Video”, a good introduction would be: “Here are five simple steps that can help you create great-looking videos whenever you want to”.
• Do some research: Doing proper research is necessary to create valuable content for your blog. For instance, if you are writing a blog about social media and search engine optimization, consult valid resources such as Moz, Search Engine World, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Roundtable, and so on. You need to understand your audience and produce content that adds to their knowledge about the topic in question. Doing research is important to support your arguments with facts, stats and real-world examples. Search online for relevant information and learn to use it effectively to present your ideas. Citing sources will give your content credibility.
• Ensure quality, error-free content: Content with grammatical errors and typos will have a negative impact. The secret to successful business blogging is providing valuable, error-free content. According to a BBC report, an entrepreneur pointed out that poor spelling costs the UK millions of pounds in lost revenue for internet businesses. Many businesses that lack the time to produce good content, outsource content/blog writing. On the other hand, if you handle the writing yourself, always use spell check and look out for homophones. Read your blog and put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Reading aloud can help you find flaws you would have otherwise missed. You can also ask a reliable person to proofread and edit your blog as another set of eyes could spot mistakes you overlooked.
• Frequency: How often should we blog? That’s a question most businesses ask. For your business blog to work, you need to publish fresh content, make changes as and when necessary and promote that content. To build brand loyalty, you may need to provide readers with regular posts on topics that interest them. Frequency matters for search engine optimization. If your industry is a fast-moving one where new developments unfold every day, you would probably need to post on a daily basis. Consider your competition and try to do better than them. Finally, blogging frequency would also depend on the resources you have to produce good content consistently to keep your readers happy.
• Make your blog posts shareable: This is important for your marketing campaign. Well written blog posts shared on popular social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram can drive more traffic to your website, help build brand awareness, and boost your reputation. Using Google Analytics to measure your blog’s performance will help you understand which posts engaged your readers the most and focus on giving them the content they want.

If you find it difficult to put down your ideas in writing, you can record yourself or a subject expert and get an online transcription company to convert the audio into text. An accurately transcribed Word document will make it easier for you to develop your blog post and polish it for publication. Finally, a word of caution about writing a blog – remember that it’s not about promoting and selling your product or service, but about giving your readers useful and valuable information.