A great and cost effective way of marketing your business is through content marketing – a branch of marketing that Oxford Languages describes as involving “the creation and sharing of online material that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”. Customers don’t necessarily want your products and services force-fed to them in everything they read online about you (Buy Now! Special Offer! BOGOF!), but providing useful and interesting content can be a great way of keeping your business and products top of mind in a gentler, less obvious way.
If you’re not a writer, don’t fret – I really believe that anyone can write a blog. The only issue is if it takes hours and hours of your valuable time (time that could be spent carrying out valuable customer work) or if you feel incredibly stressed doing it, in which case I would strongly recommend outsourcing your blogs to an experienced blog writer!
Here are my top tips for blog writing:
Find a topic that is relevant to people – just because you can write about something easily, or because you find it interesting, doesn’t mean that it should necessarily be a blog. You want to create content that other people (ideally, your existing and potential customers) want to read, so it’s worth thinking about what they would find interesting or useful. A tool like Answer The Public can prove really helpful into determining what people are searching for online about specific topics – you simply type in a phrase (i.e. productivity or bookkeeping, for example), and it will bring up a range of questions that people have searched for online about that specific topic, giving you plenty of inspiration for your blog.
Make it useful – if you can, add something that is of value to your customers: some practical advice based on your experience, or recommendations of tried-and-trusted tools (particularly free ones!) that could help them. By giving your readers a valuable nugget of information, you are building the positive relationship between your business and that individual, which is a great first step towards a successful business-client relationship!
Don’t be afraid to add a bit of you! – It’s YOU that makes your business, so don’t be afraid to add a bit of you to your blog, whether that’s a little bit of appropriate humour or an anecdote that brings the story to life. This can really help to convey you not just as a knowledge leader in your industry, but as the real and approachable person behind the business.
Repurpose this content in as many ways as you can! Once you have written a blog and published it on your website or LinkedIn (or any other platform that is relevant to you!), make sure you re-use it as much as possible to make the most of the time and effort you invested into its creation. You can easily make it into an engaging video with a free tool like this which allows you to ‘drag and drop’ your entire blog into a video with free graphics and music. You could also turn your blog into a series of social media posts, leading back to your website for more information – for example, if you’ve written a blog on bookkeeping tips, you could say something like: “Bookkeeping doesn’t have to be a headache – read my simple tips to get on top of your business finances here (link to blog)”. You could create dozens of these for every blog you write, giving you plenty of content for your social media pages to make the most of your articles.
So why not set aside an hour of your time this week for a little bit of blog writing? It could be a great way of promoting your business effectively online, so give it a try!