Blogging Ideas

Written by: Gary Horsman

Keep your Business Blog Relevant and Fresh

Blogging Ideas and Why

It is vital to keep your blog up-to-date and to have it present fresh and interesting content.

You need have to keep your blog updated regularly to keep visitors interested.

Here are a few other reasons to keep your blog fresh . . .

Search engines love to provide their customers with relevant, helpful, and up-to-date content and blogs are well known for providing a source of fresh content for the search engines. Blogs are also less formal and more conversational than static web content and this conversational tone is often is closely aligned with the way people query search engines and connect with the content they find. An updated blog is great for your search performance.

An up-to-date and informative blog is also great for your readers. The flip side – an out of date blog – can be an annoyance to your readers. I once visited a hotel blog for a town in my area and the blog explained the upcoming weekend events. One of the events that was noted was a football game that had occurred 3 months before – now that’s annoying.

How to Keep Your Blog Fresh and Relevant – Here are Some Blogging Ideas

As a business blogger you don’t need to post five blogs a week; you just need consistency, relevance and a little inspiration.

Here are some tips for keeping your business blog current and fresh!

1. Write Within Your Means – You don’t need to write a long blog post (over 500 words) every time. Keep your posts brief if you need to. A great way of doing this is to use “fillers” (posting links to other blogs, event pages, YouTube videos, and so on) and frame them with an intro. Don’t do it all the time but it’s certainly a way to keep content fresh and valuable without having to create all the content yourself.

2. Listen to and Get Blog Ideas from your Customers –Your customers, and potential customers, are your target audience and a great source for blog topic ideas. Listen to them. What are their challenges? How can your skills and expertise help them solve their problems? You don’t have to make a sales pitch even if you have the perfect solution Instead, focus on your area of expertise and write about what is relevant to your customers. Provide a link to you product page at the end of the post.

For example, if you run a law business and get hundreds of questions about “How do I write a will?” you could write about “5 Things You Need to Know about Writing your First Will”

So lend an ear to your customers and help them to solve their problems. A problem solver is a great label to have in any economy – good or bad.

3. Look to What Others are Writing About – Inspiration can come from a variety of sources, and don’t feel that you have to reinvent the wheel with your blogs. Take the time to follow and read other blogs that relate to your field. What’s going on in the news? Is there a new industry development that’s worth writing about? Do not copy but rather form the article or blog post to exactly what your readers need and desire. Frame the article precisely for your readers.

4. Showcase People – Why not feature willing customers? What they do, why they use you, real simple stuff. What about your team? Do you have any some interesting characters that your customers love – showcase them so that your readers can get to know the people behind the business! Who’s the person in the back room that does all the nitty-gritty work to make sure your customers are happy. Let your audience know.

5. Invite Guest Bloggers – Take the burden off yourself every now and again while also opening the door to a new voice. Guest bloggers often cover ground that you can’t provide or they provide a useful insight into another aspect of your industry.

Guest bloggers could include a business partner, a vendor, someone you collaborate with or an industry expert. Be sure to give them plenty of advance notice to write the blog, and be prepared to discuss how you want their post to appeal to your audience.

Insist upon high-quality content as their writing is a reflection of you if you post it in your blog. In fact, don’t be afraid to edit the guest post. Be sure to share the edits with the blogger as a courtesy – most guest bloggers I know welcome a second pair of eyes to review and polish up their work.

6. Develop an Editorial Calendar – This is a powerful idea and can really make the process of writing much easier because you do all the planning in advance. Planning is an important component of content marketing and your blog can be (should be) an important component of your content marketing.

I recommend planning out a month in advance and to leave some flexibility in case something newsworthy develops in the middle of the month. Many bloggers that I know plan out 3 months or their calendar is formed around important time frames for their industry.

7. Stay Focused on Business –The number one golden rule of business blogging: never veer into personal things such as how great your lunch was, your kids or what your dog did at the park. Please add your personal wit and humor to the tone of your blog, but do keep it focused on your business interests and not your personal life.

A blog can be an important part of your content marketing. Content marketing is all about ideas for content that benefit your audience. To have a wealth of blogging ideas is good content marketing and great for your clients and potential clients. I have created a set of informative tutorials on content marketing. You may want to take a look. Here is a link to the introduction page for these tutorials.