Susan Solovic
Are you and your blog having relationship problems?
I’ve seen it so many times. Here are the common troubles I’ve witnessed:
- You know you should have a blog, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet,
- You started a blog, but have lost your motivation and are letting it slip, and
- You want to love your blog, but you’re running out of things to say.
Do any of those sound like you? If so, stick with me for a couple of minutes while I try to give you a little motivation as well as make your life a little easier.
Motivation
A blog is one of the least expensive tools you have to boost your small business sales and marketing. Here are the basic things it accomplishes (and sometimes all at once):
- Boosts your Search Engine Optimization,
- Develops deeper relationships with your small business customers,
- Establishes your authority, and
- Provides you with a platform for selling.
All of the above elements are critical to small business success. If you are naturally discussing your industry or business in your blog, you will be doing all the good stuff Google wants you to do to rank more highly within its search results.
At the same time you’ll be entertaining and informing your prospects and existing customers. They’ll think you’re pretty cool and begin to see you and your small business as the go-to authority in your area.
And hey, when you have all the authority behind you, you can even use your blog to point people directly to your products and services and people will be ready to press an “Add to Cart” button or contact you via phone or an online form.
These points alone should motivate you to start your blog or resurrect a blog that has fallen by the wayside in recent months…or years.
How to keep it going
If you don’t want to write anymore and don’t have anyone nearby who can pen your posts for you, consider a service like BlogMutt where you can affordably have a third party do your writing. Connecting with a freelancer via one of the online services is also an option.
However, if you want to save the money and do it yourself, here are some tips to help you break through your writer’s block:
- Use Evernote to capture ideas during all your waking hours. It allows you to clip inspirational articles, jot down random thoughts, make voice memos and more.
- Allow yourself the luxury of posting some short fun items. Not every post has to solve the problems of the world — as every cat video ever posted has proved.
- Invite guest posts.
- Ask permission to run posts from others or trade posts.
- Brainstorm with your team and come up with an editorial calendar. Pencil in at least one solid blog per week.
- Review things: books, products, services.
- You know that e-book or white paper you’ve been putting off writing or having written for you? Get it done and use sections within it for individual blog posts.
- Next time you find some interesting statistics published about your industry or a topic your customers would find interesting, use them to make an infographic. Connect with someone on Fiverr or try Piktochart.
Take any of the tips shared here and soon you’ll be saying to yourself, “Now that wasn’t so hard was it!”
Have any blogging questions or advice we didn’t cover? Let us know in the comments. And visit our Blogging 101 for more advice.
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