Having a blog is like having a welcoming garden – you need to invest time in growing the blog posts over time, nurture the relationship with people that follow you and generally add value as to why your followers are spending their time reading your blog posts.
It is also an “inferred contract” that you will keep posting every so often – if you do want to give it up (and many do) then let people know the reasons and leave it at that. Try not to just fade away…
Everything that you say on your blog reflects on your professionalism – just as in a real life conversation.
You need to sound positive, engaging and authoritative to really make a good impression – anything less and people will build a negative idea of you and your brand.
Having a great blog is one of the ways to keep top of mind of your audience and position yourself as the expert they turn to when they want a paid service or to purchase a product that you may supply.
Getting better results for your business is the reason to do this social media stuff such as blogs.
Every so often you’ll feel drained of ideas for blog content – so here’s a great list of things that you could blog about:
- Your views on current affairs – within your region or within your industry – answer this question - what is happening that is important to you…?
- Summarise the latest research within your own organisation or within your industry – what changes are on the horizon that your customers may need to know…?
- Share stories from your life – how did you get where you are today – who helped you or inspired you…?
- Rant – what upsets you – and why…!
- Review a great book / article / web site that you just read – why was it good…?
- Announce something new – every business changes – what’s new with you this week…?
- Profile a client – who is your number one fan…? Who can you help…?
- Answer a frequently asked question about your products or services – what is the number one misunderstood element to making the best of your company products or services…?
- Recommend a web site that you follow regularly and let people know why you think it’s good
And lastly – and only every so often – review a product or service of your companies…
So – make a list of potential topics and when you feel in the mood create as many as you can to create a library of articles to draw from.
There’s a couple of great ways to actually write an article on a topics from the above list – this is what I follow when I create a newsletter article – and the same format works very well for blog posts.
(Thanks to Gihan Perera (http://bit.ly/djVfpl) for sharing this with me in one of his excellent marketing courses…!)
All you need to do is answer the following questions under your chosen topic:
What Problem do people have in their life to do with the chosen topic:-
What are the Negative Implications for them:-
What are the Positives if they didn’t have the problem:-
What is the Explanation of the process to solve it:-
What Product or Service do you offer to solve it for them:-
This works very well for me – but here’s some other ideas:
Tell a story by:
- Tell the story
- Note the key point(s)
- Give the benefit(s)
- Suggest the Action(s) for people to take
Or Solve a problem:
- Identify the Problem
- What causes the problem
- What’s the solution to the problem
- What action can people take
Or Give people Tips:
- Tip # 1
- Tip # 2
- Tip #3
- Etc
Which one you use is up to you – but do it…!
Plan and create new blog posts when you next feel in the creative mood…!
Posted: Thu 02 Jan 2020
