livebooks blog

With search engine optimization (SEO) becoming more important for small business owners these days, it’s no surprise so many entrepreneurs are using a blog to find new customers.

That’s right: blogs are no longer only used for publishing content about personal stories or experiences. In fact, companies who blog often are more likely to generate leads than those that don’t blog at all!

If you already know how important it is to start a blog for your business, you’re on the right track. But in case you need a little extra help to get you started, here are a few key steps to kick-off your blogging strategy!

Define Your Buyer Personas

Before you begin generating content and publishing it on the web, your first step should be to narrow your strategy.

One of the best ways to begin strategically using a company blog to market to your ideal customers is through buyer personas.

Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal audience(s).  What makes them great for helping you with your blog content is that they allow you to better envision the types of people you’ll be writing to.

Personas can also assist you with coming up with ideas in the first place, because you’ll have a better grasp of who your ideal customers are, what they enjoy doing, and the top challenges or questions they have. And once you obtain that knowledge, you’ll be able to tailor your content to those problems and provide useful information to them!

Need help defining your buyer personas? Head on over to Hubspot’s free Buyer Persona Template!

Compile Blog Topics and Titles

Once you have a good idea of who you’re trying to reach, use a notepad or a new Google Doc file to keep all of your blog topics in one place.

Begin listing out some of the ones you discovered while creating your buyer personas. What questions might they have? What challenges do you hear from your current clients that you can provide solutions to?

Be sure to also write down some topics that may seem a little outside of the norm. Although you want to hit on all of the major talking points, it’s great for both SEO and user experience to write about topics your competitors might be overlooking.

For example, if you’re a wedding photographer, consider writing about other issues and topics in the wedding industry, rather than just in your niche. Many photographers miss out on the SEO opportunities out there and only publish content related to their previous client sessions and weddings. But the ones that publish content that provides the most useful information on the web will win out from an SEO standpoint.

Schedule Time to Write

Now for the biggest hurdle: actually spending time putting content together!

If you’re one of the many business owners out there who juggle 10 or 15 different roles every day, you may find it hard to write on a regular basis. While you could always outsource to a fantastic freelance writer, it’s important to remember that time management is key to success in business.

Aim to set aside a couple of hours a week, or one day a month, to write blog posts in advance. Then, once they’re done, you can rest assured until your next calendar reminder for blog writing comes up.

Final Blog Tips for Business Owners

Just a few last tidbits of advice as you venture into this new form of digital marketing:

• Don’t be afraid to delegate. If you don’t have time or the energy, it’s okay to hand the job to someone else you trust.
• Be yourself and utilize your personality. The last thing your clients will want to read is a post that sounds like a computer wrote it. Add in some flair! Write as if you were talking to your clients or friends out loud.
• Proofread! This one can’t be emphasized enough. Although mistakes do happen, if you have several typos throughout one post, you could do more harm than good by publishing it.

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