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.
You may like to read How to write content for the Google RankBrain System.
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.