How do I start a Blog and what should I blog about?

This is a question I get asked a lot as a lot of people don’t know what to do. Thankfully the answer is a simple one but I do think a lot of people are afraid of blogs. It might be that Blogs remind them of school essays hence they don’t know where to start. But Blogs don’t have to be tiresome. They can really benefit your business online in more ways than you can think.

Over the years I have worked with large multinational businesses as well as local businesses on their blogging strategy. And what I tell them all is to get the basics right and everything else will fall into place.

Where to start?

WordPress Blogs are a great platform to use. Blogs can easily be integrated into your WordPress website as well. Once installed you can start blogging. But before you do make sure you have a strategy.

Blogging strategy

I can’t stress enough how important a strategy is. Without one you can find yourself blogging about complete rubbish and not benefitting your website. Start by working out what you want to talk about and what you are looking to achieve.

Do you want to provide hints and tips? Do you want to sell more online? Looking to generate more local business? Do you want to pass on your knowledge? Or just practice your writing skills?

Blog contents and keyword

For business blogs always get a strategy about the keywords you want to benefit your website. For example if you are a plumber in Taunton make sure you those words are correctly in your blog. If the keywords aren’t there search engines don’t have a crystal ball to know what your business is.

Make sure your keywords are in the Blog heading, title and description as well as tags on images throughout the blog posting. All of these small points will help the blog being relevant for your target keyword.

Look at your competition

Always take a look at your competitors and see what they are blogging about. They might spark some ideas that would help you with a new blog. Or they may have said something that you think you could write about or explain better yourself.

Break down your topics

Don’t try and write about everything in your first blog. Its’s best to try and break down the topics you want to talk about and go into detail about each one of them. In my case rather than do a blog on website marketing I’d talk about individual topics like Google Adwords Marketing, Blog Writing, The importance of good content rich copy, Search Engine Optimisation, Business Place Listings on Google, Bing and Yahoo, SEO for startups, Keyword analysis, Link building etc.

It’s easy to write in a bit more depth about a topic than a scattergun approach. This will also benefit your reader as well as a search engine. The more specific your topic is the better it will be found by the search engines for that topic.

Think about problems you or your clients have had

Think back to before you started your business or problems you have encountered along the way. These problems may be faced by others and they may benefit from learning more from your experiences.

A good example for me is Local Business Places Listings. A listing on Google, Bing and Yahoo can benefit your business to be found locally on the Maps listings. So many businesses either don’t have them or haven’t set them up correctly. Map listings are so important as you could generate leads from them for free.

Ask your customers what they want to know more about

Your customers can fuel ideas for blog posts. Simply ask around as to what they would like to know more about. The great thing with this is the content will be relevant to what you know the most about so it should be easy to write about. Also the topic is what your customers are keen to learn more about.

Get your blog shared

Encourage people to share your blog. If you are a small local business then try and get your blogs in front of more local people. The more your blog is read the better.

Enjoy blog writing

Last but not least always enjoy writing a blog post. Try and write it as naturally as you can so the reader can buy into you and your business.

Professional Blog Writing Service

If you don’t think blog writing is for you but you still want your website to benefit from regular blog posts let us know.  We can create regular posts that will enhance your website and user experience. Our plans start from only £35 per month. Contact us to find out more about our professional Blog writing services.