10 Ideas for Your Company Blog

You know you should be blogging for your business, but maybe you just don’t know where to start, or you are fearful of how to sustain the momentum once you begin. Join the club. Most entrepreneurs I speak with have more fears about blogging than they have about their taxes. The first step in conquering these worries is to understand why you should blog.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engines ascribe high value to fresh and relevant content in their ranking algorithms. With ranking in organic search becoming more difficult, you really should be doing all that you can in this area, and that includes blogging.

New content, in the form of blog posts, gives the public a reason to come back to your website. The more visits and return visits, and the longer visitors stay on your website (reading your blog) the more search engines make the deduction that yours is a relevant and reputable site to bring up in the search rankings.

Building Public Trust

Prospects and clients feel safer doing business with people they know, andyour blog is the perfect opportunity to give your company a voice and let its personality shine through.

The New Referral

If you publish good content, people will share it. If one reader shares your blog with another person, it may set them on the path to becoming a customer. Now for the real challenge: what to write about. For starters, think in categories, such as some of the services your company provides or topics on specific product lines or service models you offer.

Create four or five categories to write about where you can share information that will be interesting and helpful. Try brainstorming with your team, putting a publishing schedule together, and building up some posts, so that you can deploy a blog post once a week. You can also have more than one blogger in the company. Just make everyone who is writing for your blog is on the same page regarding content strategy, keywords, and tone. The following are some content generating ideas.

Customer Service

Your service teams have a wealth of knowledge and advice. They have seen it all, done it all, and responded to it all. Service members of the staff have some great insights that prospects and customers would find useful and sharable. Review incoming emails and look for questions asked, then share the question, and provide an answer. Chances are, there are others out there who were wondering the same thing.

Expertise

Caution: do not let the blog become a sales pitch. Think about the products and services you offer and how they fit into your customer’s life or work. For example, if your company sells wine, write articles sharing recipes that call for wine, talk about food and wine pairing, offer tips on how to choose a bottle at dinner—you get the idea. You can create great content around your area of expertise. I love an old tag line from Syms: “an educated consumer is our best customer,” and I do believe blogs are a wonderful way to educate your audience and motivate them to become great customers.

Empathy

Knowing your audience is important, and understanding their challenges is critical. Write about their points of pain. If you can demonstrate an understanding of their challenges, then you have shown empathy. Empathy and understanding are powerful emotional triggers and can help you gain readers’ interest and trust.

Let’s say you are an accounting firm; a business owner’s point of pain might be cash flow. A good series of articles might be centered on cost-savings ideas, howto articles on reading a P&L statement, or instructions on how to create a dashboard for monitoring cash flow to make better decisions.

Ah-Ha Moments

We all have them. Did you learn something, discover something, or read something that is worth sharing? Share the name of a book you just read and how it got you thinking or will help you with a challenge.

Don’t worry about being off topic once in a while. These are great opportunities for your audience to get a sense of you and your values—become a personality they feel aligned with and can trust.

In the News

Is there pending legislation that will directly affect you and therefore affect your customers? Maybe the legislation will affect them directly, as well. Offer your opinion, and remain open-minded and willing to hear other points of view. Current events can generate stimulating dialogue.

Decision Process

Are you considering new equipment or new services? How did you find suitable options, and how did you evaluate them? This would make a great series of blog posts that will invite recommendations from readers. It will also let your customers know that change is on the horizon, and why, giving you the opportunity to enlist support before you roll out the change or add to your service and product offerings.

Your audience may be deciding whether or not to do business with you. Sharing your decision process can help align you with your audience as they go through their own decision process, and can go a long way toward making them feel good about their decision to work with you.

Experiences

You go places, do things, see things, and get involved in things. Share your experiences. Give your readers an opportunity to virtually join you on your journey and learn as you learn. The more that your audience learns about you, the more they feel that they know you. People like to do business with people they know, not just a company— it is important to help the customers and prospects build a relationship with you and your organization.

Pondering