Tag Archives: Blog Writing

Your content strategy requires a blogging schedule

Do you have a blogging calendar or a blogging schedule?

You cannot have a content strategy without publishing a blog. Of course, you can publish content on social media platforms, but if you want your website to remain the focus of the buzz that is created around your content, instead of generating content on third party websites, your time and money are better spent publishing content on your own blog.

Recently I published a blog post Why do most blogs fail and what you can do to avoid that?

One of the reasons why most blogs fail is that the blog publishers don’t have a schedule. They don’t have a calendar.

Why do you need a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar?

To give you a direction and also to help you prepare and write quality blog posts.

Without a blogging schedule you are last. Think of a blog like any other enterprise. To run your business or to run your office, you need a schedule. There is a time for all the employees to come to office. You know that by Wednesday you need to submit a report to the higher-ups. You know that your computers need to be upgraded by the 15^th of the next month.

When you have a calendar, you plan accordingly.

The same goes for your blog. If you don’t have a schedule, if you don’t have a publishing calendar, things go haywire.

A publishing calendar also helps your content writer. He or she can prepare content writing or blog writing according to the priority of your topics. By checking your calendar, you can immediately know that certain blog posts have been published or not.

A content calendar also gives you consistency. Every blog post has a unique purpose to solve. You want to target certain customers with certain blog posts. At the same time, you don’t just want to focus on a single niche.

There are some customers who need to be convinced. There are some customers who need to be educated. There are some customers who need to be informed.

You need different blog posts for these purposes. In your calendar you can assign days that on Mondays, your blog posts will cater to a certain audience, then on Wednesdays, they will target another set of audience, and so on.

The benefits of creating a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar

You can assign different topics to different days of the week.
You can collate all the related information at a single place such as the title, the target audience, the KPIs, the keywords, the images to be used and the people responsible for successful publication.
You can track the topics that have already been published to prevent duplication.
You can track the performance of individual topics in terms of engagement, KPIs and search engine traffic.

How can you prepare a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar?

Creating a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar can be easy or complex depending on what all you want to include in the schedule.

I use Google Calendar. Since I don’t run a multi-author blog, my schedule is quite simple. Sometimes I don’t even schedule – I simply publish whatever comes to my mind.

I use a combination of Google Calendar and Todoist. In the calendar I make entries such as the topic and some research links that I may have come across. This entry automatically appears in my Todoist schedule.

Some blog posts are short, and some blog posts are quite long. Shorter blog post can be completed in an hour and longer ones can take a couple of days. Hence, I schedule drafting and publishing over the stretch of two days, if need be.

I don’t want to mislead you or anything. I don’t have a complex blogging schedule or calendar for myself because, as mentioned above, I go with the flow simply because I write my blog posts by myself. Sometimes I suddenly pick up my phone, write a short blog post on it, and publish it from the phone itself.

But if you’re managing multiple content writers and you are an organization with an elaborate content marketing strategy, then you cannot hope to succeed without having a documented blogging schedule.

How to be courageous when writing content for your business

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How to be courageous when writing for your business.

When you are writing for your business (or when your content writer is writing), you want to play safe for obvious reasons. As it is you want to attract clients. If you piss off even those clients who are interested in doing business with you, this is not a good content writing and content marketing strategy.

In his latest update, Brian Clark asks, Are you a courageous content creator?

By being courageous what he means is having the courage to go against the tide. It means doing your own thing whether people agree with you or not. It means not giving in to pressure and sticking to your ground provided you are sure of what you’re doing.

How do you apply this attitude when writing content for your business? How do you become “courageous”?

When you are writing for your business, don’t always try to please your customers and clients. The purpose of writing for your blog or your website is to inform and engage. Give them the right information even if it means, at least at that moment, they decide not to do business with you.

For example, there are some clients who don’t need my content writing services.

A few months ago, a client sent me a “rough draft” to improve. The draft was so well written that I thought it would be a travesty if I meddled with it. I told the client that she shouldn’t get the draft written by me as she herself had written it so beautifully. She just needed to make a few changes here and there and it was perfect to be published.

Initially the client disagreed simply because she thought that she is not a trained content writer and she mostly deals with software. A good thing was, she trusted me as a writer and when I told her that her initial draft was quite well-written, she acquiesced and decided to publish it on her website. I lost an assignment and as a result, some money, but I had the satisfaction that I had been honest with the client.

Coming back to the original topic, how to be courageous when you are writing for your business? Since I don’t mean to write a lengthy post, here are a few things you can keep in mind:

Believe in your abilities to deliver and write with that mentality – it will show through your writing.
Don’t avoid disagreeing with popular belief. For example, I don’t believe that you necessarily have to publish very lengthy blog posts for better search engine rankings. Just focus on quality and regularity and your organic search engine rankings begin to improve.
Always come up with something new, not just for the heck of it, but because you have some good ideas to share.
Be yourself.

Some good thoughts to ponder when you are writing content for your business website or business blog.

5 qualities to look for when you need a blog writer for your business blog

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Qualities to look for when you need a blog writer for your business blog

In this blog post you are going to learn about the qualities to look for if you need to hire a dependable blog writer for your business.

What is a blog?

A blog is different from a website.

Initially blogs were like journals. People would create random entries and then publish them.

On the homepage there appears a chronological list of all the posts that have been recently published, most probably in datewise descending order, with the latest blog post appearing at the top.

In the early days the Internet hadn’t yet been commercialized. It was mostly run by volunteers or hobbyists. There were a few business websites, but most of the content published on the Internet came from people who simply liked spending time and sharing their thoughts.

Seeing the opportunity to provide a platform that would allow people to publish their thoughts easily, many companies introduced blogging platforms.

I remember in the early days, there was Blogger.com and even MovableType.

Old blogging platforms

Many more services were started, and then came WordPress in 2003. It completely changed the way the world blogged.

WordPress is a complete blogging software that you can install under your own domain. This way, you don’t have to blog for another platform.

After the launch of WordPress, blogging took a new turn.

It became so popular that right now almost 35% of self hosted websites use WordPress as the platform. As a CMS, WordPress has captured 62% of the market share.

Why have a business blog?

Do you know that business websites that also have a blog have 434% more indexed webpages and links? Websites that have blogs get 97% more incoming links compared to those websites that don’t have a blog.

Initially, when businesses got interested in blogging, it was mainly for SEO. The structure of a blog is such that it is good for your search engine rankings provided you can publish content on regular basis.

This still remains one of the primary reasons why businesses publish blogs, but now, there are many more reasons why they do so. Some of the reasons I am describing below:

Business blogging improves SEO/search engine rankings

Business blogging improves SEO

I must say that merely having a business blog doesn’t improve your SEO. What actually improves your SEO is the way you cover your topics.

For example, if I want to improve my search engine rankings with my business blog, I shouldn’t publish whatever comes to my mind.

I should stick to content writing, online copywriting, SEO, blogging and content marketing, because they are related to my field.

Your business blog helps you because the way it arranges content.

Google likes fresh content and on your blog, you publish content regularly, and hence, give Google fresh content to crawl, index and rank.

Google prefers topic density – how much you have covered your topic – and since you are continuously talking about your business field, it increases your topic density.

How much your business blog improves your SEO rests on how often you publish content, what is the frequency, and how well you cover your core topics.

Your business blog increases your brand visibility

What is brand visibility on the Internet? It means how easily people come across the name of your business or conversations around your business.

Since you give Google more content to index from your domain, more content about your domain is found on search engines and hence, you increase your brand visibility on Google.

When you publish more content and then share it on your social media profiles it gives people a reason to reach out to you, express themselves, and even repost your content on their own timelines.

Brand visibility on social media.

The more you express yourself, the more people talk about you and the more they talk about you, the greater is your brand visibility.

Your business blog gives people something to share on social media

This is an extension of what I have written above. People are not going to simply talk about your business on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter just because your business exists.

Why would they bother unless they are getting something out of it?

Publishing your business blog doesn’t mean you continuously harp about how great your business is.

You publish content that helps people.

You publish content people will be interested in.

Hence, when you publish content people can make use of, content they are looking for and content that helps them, they share that content on social media.

Your business blog establishes your authority

A business blog establishes your authority

As I have written above, you cannot continuously talk about how great your business is unless there is some context.

I use my business blog to talk about various content writing and blogging issues.

In this blog post I’m talking about how to hire a blog content writer if your business needs one.

What qualities to look for when you need a blog writer?

It means I know what qualities a blog writer must have to help you publish a successful business blog, and I’m sharing this knowledge with you.

This helped me establish my authority on the topic.

What’s the benefit?

Would you rather work with a novice or someone who knows what are the best qualities of a blog writer?

Your business blog brings more inbound traffic

Your business blog brings inbound traffic

Content marketing is all about encouraging people to come to your website or blog rather than tricking them into coming to you through advertising, which is intrusive and annoying.

Since business blogging increases your brand presence on various channels, it becomes easier for people to find you.

For many years I haven’t used advertising. All my traffic comes from either Google or other websites where my links are present. A big chunk also comes from my newsletter.

That’s all inbound traffic.

I’m not catching people off guard with my pushy advertisements.

I put up lots of content out there. People find that content. Then they come to my website.

More businesses these days are aiming for that.

Why should you hire a blog writer instead of writing for your own blog?

Why hire a blog writer?

I’m covering this topic just for the sake of covering it otherwise, I never convince people into doing something they haven’t thought of or they don’t want to do.

If you want to write for your own blog then go ahead.

There is nothing to stop you.

After all, it is your own blog.

You want to hire a blog writer because you want to hire him or her. You know your need.

Clients who approach me to write for them do so for the following reasons:

They are looking for a better writer.
They are looking for a content writer or a blog writer who can write convincingly for their audience.
They need a blog writer who can maintain a balance between SEO writing and conversion-rich writing.
They need to publish content regularly and consistently.
They need a blog writer who can write for their industry as an expert does.
They need someone with a fresh perspective.

You may have your own reasons why you need to hire a writer for your business blog.

Anyway, if you plan on hiring a blog writer, listed below are some qualities you may like to look for.

5 qualities in a blog writer you may like to look for, for your business blog

5 good qualities of a blog writer

Frankly, there are thousands of content writers and blog writers you can find on the Internet. This is good as well as bad.

Good in the sense that there is no dearth of writers you can find.

Bad in the sense that since it is so easy to find a blog writer, it is very difficult to find a good, reliable blog writer (because pretty much everyone can offer his or her services to you).

Whenever I’m pitching my own blog writing services as a content writer, what makes my clients hire me is the fact that I have a business website.

This means my stakes are higher. It makes me dependable.

I haven’t just randomly created my profile on one of the freelancing websites. I have stuck my neck out.

This doesn’t mean I am trying to put down people who get writing assignments from freelancing directories. They have their own reason. I have my own reason.

Anyway, aside from the fact that you should hire a blog writer who is really serious about his or her services, listed below are some qualities you must look for.

1. Your blog writer must have the ability to write for your audience

Your blog writer should be able to write for your audience

What does that mean?

Maybe someone is a good writer but he or she can only write in a style he or she is comfortable with.

Remember that when content is published on your business blog, people assume that you or someone representing your business, is writing for the blog.

So, your blog writer must be able to write the way the people in your industry like to read.

He or she should be able to seamlessly use and incorporate industry jargon.

It goes without saying that the writing must be error free in terms of spelling, typos and grammar.

He or she should be able to mix conversational style as well as your official “voice”.

People in your industry must be able to read your content easily but at the same time feel reassured that they are reading someone highly educated and well-versed with your industry.

The writer must also be able to understand the business side of writing because only then he or she will be empathetic towards your needs as well as the needs of your customers and clients.

2. Your blog writer must be passionate about his or her writing abilities

Your blog writer must be passionate

Why is it necessary?

First of all, as a writer I know that when one has passion, it shows through between the lines.

What you write is important, but what you don’t write but still convey is even more important, and that comes only with passion.

Second, a passionate writer does not plagiarize. Of course exceptions are always there, but a writer who is passionate about his or her writing ability will be very uncomfortable at the thought of having to depend on someone else’s writing.

3. Knowledge of SEO

Your blog writer must have working knowledge of SEO

Writing search engine optimized content isn’t as simple as it seems.

No matter how good a writer you are, there are thousands of factors that have a direct or indirect bearing on the SEO of your writing.

Although there is no scientific way of proving whether your writing is going to fare well on search engines, there are certain formats, certain ways of using your keywords or search terms, that can definitely improve your search engine rankings.

Your blog writer must know how to

Write content around your keywords.
Organize content in various chunks for better SEO.
Write Internet friendly and mobile friendly content.

One needs to maintain a balance.

Though, many SEO experts these days are saying that you shouldn’t focus much on your keywords, in the same breath they also say that the keywords matter.

Not just the keywords, but also the related words.

Your blog writer must be able to weave an interesting and engaging narrative using your keywords.

4. Your blog writer must be able to research independently

Your blog writer should be able to research independently

Research is very important when writing quality content. Research gives you validity.

It helps you link to authoritative sources.

For example, what are the best strategies to improve your blog’s search engine rankings? It helps you if you can link to some useful insights from an authoritative blogs such as Search Engine Land.

5. You need a blog writer who is going to be consistent

Your blog writer should be consistent

Consistency is hard to get and frankly, unless you have worked with your blog writer for a few weeks or a few months, it is impossible to know whether he or she is going to be consistent in terms of quality and deliverability or not.

Nonetheless, initial communications and a few assignments can give you at least some idea of how consistent the blog writer is going to be.

I have had personal experience with people who are very consistent when seeking work and then suddenly they vanish when I give them some work.

This is a good indication to stay away from them.

It is better if your blog writer has a stake in the work

This is something that I have mentioned above.

When you work with me, I have a stake in my business.

I have a website.

My full business depends on how I deliver.

This is my livelihood.

This is not a random profile existing on some random freelancing website.

Hence, having my own content writing business website, having my own blog writing website, makes me responsible.

Similarly, look for a blog writer who has a higher stake in the work he or she does.

Of course, these rules and qualities are not written in stone. Some blog writer may have them all and some may have just a few of them.

It is going to be your own calling.

How to write meaningful blog posts for your business blog

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The image shows a games court with a goal post encouraging you to write meaningful blog posts

Writing meaningful blog posts for your business blog

A business blog isn’t always about promoting your business. Of course, you want to cover every possible topic not just to improve your SEO but also to give a reason to people to visit your website repeatedly so that you can engage them and establish a lasting relationship with them.

But the success of your business blog depends on writing meaningful blog posts.

When I’m writing blog posts for my business blog, for example this particular blog post, my intentions are

To help you learn something about content writing and content marketing.
To showcase my knowledge and experience.
To give you as much information as possible so that you can make up your mind about hiring me as your content writer.
Making it easier for you to find my website on search engines.
Giving people a reason to share my content on social media.

If I can achieve the above five or at least a few points, the blog post becomes meaningful for me.

Multiple times on my blog I have written about “searcher’s intent”: why someone is searching and trying to find the content that you have. If your blog post satisfies the intent of the searcher, it is a meaningful blog post.

Find out what is the searcher’s intent and then write.

Remember that substance is very important. People can easily make out fluff. Whatever you publish, it must solve the purpose of its existence.

Listed below are a few steps you can take to write meaningful blog posts for your business blog.

Understand what your readers are looking for and then provide the information in their language

To be able to write meaningful blog posts for your business blog it is very important to know for whom you’re writing. The more you know, the better you write.

Remember that blogging is a conversation. This is why it is different from your main website content. Your blog is informal. It is formatted in a friendly, convenient manner. When people read your blog, they must feel that someone is sitting right in front of them and talking to them. Someone who understands them. Someone who knows what they’re going through and accordingly, is offering a solution.

Also, write in a language your target audience is comfortable in. Industry jargon is good if you are writing B2B content and in fact, sometimes if you don’t use technical knowledge, it can be counterproductive. Hence, again, it is very important to understand your audience and then write your blog posts accordingly.

Write to share knowledge and know-how

I’m perpetually writing on content writing. Sometimes content marketing and copywriting. But my primary motive is to explain to my readers why quality content is important for their business. The more knowledgeable my readers are, the more comfortable they get with the idea of hiring a professional content writer for their website and for business blogging.

Take for example this blog post. In this blog post you are learning how to write meaningful blog posts for your business blog. After reading this blog post, you may decide to write on your own, you may decide to hire another content writer, or you may decide to contact me. But the basic purpose is, to make you knowledgeable enough so that you decide that you need meaningful content to maintain a successful business blog.

The good thing about sharing knowledge is that it makes people feel good about themselves. After going through my business blog, you end up knowing more about not just content writing and content marketing, but also the benefits of having high quality content. I don’t force you to hire me. I just share the knowledge and then leave it up to you.

Showcase your skills and experience

For specialized fields, it is very important that you share your skills and experience through your business blog. I write for a mobile app development company and they often publish blog posts on various technology stacks, programming languages and interface design tools that they use with their projects. They also discuss the pros and cons of using certain programming languages and interface design tools. This tells their clients that they haven’t just used different technology stacks, but have also used them in such a manner that they can share their skills and experiences with these technology stacks. This is a reassuring to prospective clients.

Don’t let search engine rankings dominate your thought process

Higher search engine rankings are important. If you want people to be able to find your content, you shouldn’t ignore SEO. But the problem is, many businesses want to publish blog posts on their business blogs solely for the purpose of SEO.

The entire purpose of writing blog posts for your business blog is to deliver value. When people go back after reading your blog post, they must feel enraged. You blog post must solve the purpose of its title. When you close the tab after reading this blog post, you must know at least something about writing meaningful blog posts rather than simply filling your blog with SEO-friendly content.

Even if initially you can improve your SEO without focusing much on meaningful content, you will lose your rankings once people negatively respond to your blog posts. Google uses artificial intelligence to figure out how people respond to your content and accordingly rearranges your rankings.

If you don’t want to neglect your SEO, carefully choose your topics. For example, I want people who want to write meaningful blog posts (or at least want to help their content writer achieve that) for their business blogs to be able to find this blog post. This is a focused topic. If I stick to this topic and if I include all the necessary information that makes this topic meaningful, search engine optimization will be automatically taken care of.

Focus on your writing style

Your writing style is very important to keep people hooked to your business blog. Sentence structure is important. Where you use what words is important. Therefore, even if they have complete knowledge of their field, many entrepreneurs prefer to hire a professional content writer so that they can have freely flowing writing on their business blog rather than something that sounds stiff and displays lack of writing practice.

Participate in ongoing discussion on other blogs

This can be very interesting, and it constantly gives something new to ponder to your visitors. There must be many niche blogs in your field and the publishers must be publishing thought-provoking and sometimes even controversial blog posts. Do you agree with what they have published? Do you disagree? You can publish counter blog posts on your own business blog, with your own facts and research.

Publish well researched blog posts on your business blog

People love statistics and data. Researching can be time-consuming and if you have hired a content writer then it may even cost more per blog post compared to non-researched blog posts, but it is worth the effort and expense.

Research doesn’t always have to be data crunching. It also means backing up your claims by linking to other well researched articles and blog posts. For example, I say that well researched blog posts do better, and if you don’t believe me, you can read this Buffer post How and why to write persuasive, research-backed content.

Business blogging is a commitment. It is a coming together of your business and your customers and clients on a common platform. Your blog must touch the lives of your current and prospective customers and clients through valuable content. Only then your business blog will be meaningful.

How to write a quick, in-depth blog post even when you don’t have time

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If you are publishing a business blog one of the greatest hurdles you’re going to come across is publishing blog posts regularly, on an ongoing basis. Otherwise your blog, no matter how well-written, well-maintained it is, is going to lose steam. People will lose interest. Since they will not be aware of your publishing schedule their visits to your blog will be erratic at the best. In order to draw people on a regular basis, you need to publish blog posts regularly and there needs to be a set pattern. But as a busy entrepreneur how do you manage that?

Of course, being a professional content writer my advice would be to hire yourself someone like yours truly, but if you don’t want to do that and you would rather write on your own, here is how you can manage to produce in-depth blog posts on a regular basis even if you are running short of time.

Maintain an ideas file: If you know what you want to write, you can write it quickly. A big problem is when you have time, you don’t know what to write. This problem can be solved if you have an ideas file or a section where you can store your ideas. I use Evernote for that. Whenever I get a new idea that will require lots of research, I create a new note and then as I come across various bits of information while surfing the net, I keep copy/pasting that information in that particular note so that by the time I get down to actually writing the blog post, I have everything ready.
Create an outline: You don’t necessarily have to complete a blog post in one go. Remember your purpose is not to complete and somehow publish the blog post in a couple of hours, your purpose is writing and publishing quality content on your business blog. Don’t compromise on that, so don’t be in a hurry. Even if you have time to jot down just a single line, do that and then stop worrying about the blog post. You may initially feel that you aren’t doing much, but when you are maintaining multiple blogging ideas you will very soon come across a situation when you have lots of material at hand on an ongoing basis.
Use a mind mapping tool:
These days I find myself using Free Mind quite often. It is a Java-based mind mapping tool. Mind mapping tools are a great way to organise complex ideas. If you’re not used to the interface you may find it off-putting initially but once you get used to it, it will be an invaluable productivity tool in your kitty.
Install a blogging app on your mobile phone:
You may get an idea while travelling and unless you have some system to quickly store it, it may be lost for ever. I have the WordPress app installed on my mobile phone and whenever I need to collect my thoughts on a blog I create the entry and save it as a draft. Then, as and when I come across ideas and information, I just use my phone to update the draft. Finally, when I sit in front of my computer I give the finishing touches to the draft and then publish the blog post.
Don’t get bogged down by the size of the blog post: Although here I’m talking about writing in-depth blog posts you don’t need to begin every blog post with the same purpose. Just focus on the single sentence and you will be amazed how the floodgates to new ideas are suddenly opened. Even if that doesn’t happen, there is no problem with posting just a single paragraph if you think you are running behind your blogging schedule. Later on you can always update a blog post that you have already published – there is no rule against that.
Crowd source your content:
You can create a simple blog post and then ask your visitors to drop in ideas in the comments section on how a particular blog post can be improved. You can also seek opinion on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.