I frequently walk business authors, consultants, experts, and other business owners through the process of writing blog content to help them grow their business. This often occurs after they’ve written a few blog posts and are left wondering why they are not getting the traffic they thought they would.
Blog content can be an effective way to get people to notice you, but it’s not necessarily quick — especially if you are new to the blogging space. Blogging is definitely a long-term game.
Many of your favorite brands took years to develop a following through blogging. The most effective brands are the ones that have a real strategy for blog content creation and are consistent with production. Allow me to walk you through the thinking process that will help you create blog posts that are both effective and quick to generate.
What’s your goal for creating blog content?
Blog content can help you accomplish any number of goals in business. Do you want to:
- Obtain more customers
- Increase brand awareness
- Notify customers of a new product or service
- Share your expertise
- Book more speaking gigs
Knowing what you want as a result of other people reading your blog content will help you create content for a directed purpose.
What kind of blog topics can I generate that meet my goals?
I always say to start with what your audience asks for. What are the common questions that always come up when working with customers? Start by creating a list of frequently asked questions that you can point a potential customer to every time you get the same question.
Let’s look at an example…
Let’s say that you are a children’s mental health expert and your ultimate business goal is to book more speaking gigs. You will want to create blog posts that answer your client’s questions, but also center you as knowledgeable in the field of children’s mental health. Here are a few common questions that may come up as well as blog topics that meet your reader’s needs:
- Problem or question: My first grader is not reading like other kids and it’s affecting his self-esteem. What can I do to help?
- Blog Post: How to Develop a Love for Reading in Your Child Before They Start School
- Client Problem: My sons have become so difficult to manage after my divorce. What should I do to get order back in my house?
- Blog Post: How to Effectively Support Your Son’s Growth and Development as a Single Mom
- Client Problem: My daughter and I were so close when she was in elementary school. Now that she’s in middle school, all she does is shut the door to her room. How can I get her to open up?
- Blog Post: What to Do When Your Pre-Teen Won’t Talk to You
- Client Problem: My kids are looking at inappropriate websites online. I thought they were too young to know about sex. What should I do?
- Blog Post: When is the Best Age to Talk to Your Children About Sex?
- Client Problem: My mother is in and out of the hospital and my children are having anxiety about losing their grandmother. How do I ease their fears?
- Blog Post: How to Prepare Your Children for the Death of a Loved One
These are examples of evergreen content that will always be useful to your audience. These are questions parents will have today and ten years from now. Crafting your response to these questions is a great way to differentiate yourself from other child mental health experts.
Don’t have any clients yet to farm questions from? Do some online research and hang out where your audience hangs out. This can include Facebook and Linkedin groups, Reddit forums, parenting blogs, medical forums and more. You can also venture out into the real world and attend conferences, meet-ups, local and international events related to your area of interest, and more. Keep a notebook handy and write down the questions people ask again and again. What kind of blog content can you write to answer their questions?
How can you make the blog content easier to consume?
Now that you know what your audience wants to read, now is the time to figure out what kind of content will satisfy their needs. There are probably hundreds of ways to help your audience consume your blog content, however I will share five here.
- Tutorials: How-to lessons on how to do something
- Data-Driven Content: obtain and explain research from highly reputable sources in a way that helps your audience understand a problem
- Visual Content: Videos, infographics, slides, etc. that illustrate a point
- Interviews with Experts: Interview people who are highly esteemed in your field OR interview professionals who compliment what you do
- Newsjacking: Take stories from the news and make them relevant to your industry
These are just a few ways to make your blog content relevant to your readers. Take some time to determine what your audience needs and figure out what method will be most helpful.
What’s your plan for getting your blog content in front of the right readers?
Next is figuring out how to get your content in front of readers. Why? Because what’s the point of spending all this time and energy on planning out the right content and no one reads it?
There are literally thousands of ways to get your blog posts in front of more readers. However I want to share three that have made a difference for many of my clients.
Share your posts on social media and larger platforms.
Social media is a great place to start to share your work online. One thing you need to decide is what platforms make the best sense for you to distribute your content. Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook? Find out what platforms your audience is using and be sure to share your posts there. Increase your chances of being found by using hashtags.
Be a consistent blogger.
If you want to stay top of mind, then you need to ensure that you share content on a consistent basis — that could be daily or weekly. No matter what it is, make sure you stick to your schedule so that your audience will have a chance to get used to you being there. There is so much noise in the online space that people tend to forget who you are and what you do very easily. Make them remember you by offering helpful content on a consistent basis.
Utilize SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of utilizing internet search engines to help people find you, your service, or product. This is a fairly basic definition of it. However the “how-to” of SEO can be a bit complicated for those that are not familiar.
SEO, at its core, is about helping people find content that answers their questions. That’s why I begin the blog content creation process by figuring out what your clients or your audience needs first, THEN figuring out how you can meet those needs. Take note of keywords and phrases that read naturally to how your audience communicates.
Writing blog content that actually gets read is not always as easy as people may want to make it. To do it well means that you have a strong strategy in place that changes as your influence grows with it. The key here is to put in the work in the beginning, then the actual creation of the blog posts will seem much more effortless once you have a direction.
Halona Black
Latest posts by Halona Black (see all)
- 3 Ways Establishing a Writing Practice has Improved My Self Awareness - September 1, 2020
- How to Write Client Attracting Blog Posts — The Easy Way… - January 19, 2020
- Will Writing a Book Help Me Build My Credibility as an Expert? - January 19, 2020
