What Should You Write About in Your Business Blog?

Thanks for joining us again! As we continue our new series, Building Your Blog 101, we’re going to get into the meat of a blog and figure out how it is actually written. More to the point, this post will shed some light on WHAT you should be writing about, so that you can build an exciting blog that people genuinely look forward to reading.

That is what draws traffic to your website; it’s a lot more than just mashing a bunch of highly-searched keywords into your headlines (which will only take you so far).

Read on to learn what kind of content your blog posts should have, to gain more interest and increase conversions with a few simple strategies.

Your Field of Business is a Big Factor

It’s a good idea to take some time to consider how you can create content that is related to your line of work in some way. That is not to suggest that everything you post needs to be directly correlated to your product.

The point is that, when someone is reading your blog, they should unconsciously think, “Oh, it makes sense that this post came from that company.” Your post shouldn’t be way out of left field, with no apparent link at all to your type of business. At the same time, how you approach the blog, as well as the style of the content, may vary depending on what type of business you have.

A good example is a business that sells a variety of products. If that’s the case, a good way to draw customers in would be to write posts which focus on product reviews or even more technical posts that go into all the specs. of those products. Whether you actually sell those products or not, the idea is to grab the attention of people who will potentially be your customers.

On the flip-side, your business may provide a service, which means your blog may be more successful if you post about topics related to providing great customer service, or otherwise, posts that describe various ways people can use your service. That would fall into the category of an educational-style blog, which brings us to our next key point.

The Holy Trinity of Content: Educational, Entertaining, or Personal

If you take nothing else away from this article, this is the one thing that you should remember, and this applies to your social media content, as well. When people read your blog, they want to either learn something new, laugh or be generally entertained, or get a glimpse into something personal from your life.

To pique your customers’ interest, everything you publish should fall into one of these 3 categories:

Educational / Informative

The first thing you can do with your business blog is to dedicate your posts to exposing readers to new information about interesting subjects. This is one of the easiest ways you can approach your blog because, since you already know your business intimately, you should have no problem writing posts that give your readers an inside look into what you do.

The content, however, does not have to be all about what your company does; it can really be anything about which you’re very knowledgeable, as long as it’s interesting.

Entertaining

In reality, no matter what kind of content you’re creating, it should be entertaining on some level. The golden rule of any published work for the general public, in any medium, is that is has to be enjoyable to those for whom you created it.

Even if you’re writing articles that are meant to educate people, no one is going to read it if it isn’t somewhat entertaining. There is a separate category, though, for content that really makes people laugh, or makes them excited, or is even dramatic material that is completely engrossing.

Personal

This is a blogging style that harkens back to the old days, when individual people published their own blogs documenting their lives, or some aspect of it. There is definitely still a lot of appeal to this blog style, possibly more than ever before, and you can utilize it to make your business blog more interesting, as well.

It’s the whole reason why reality shows and “biopics” sell so well. They capitalize on our innate, voyeuristic tendencies that attract us to content which depict stories from other people’s lives.

What makes these stories so interesting is that they are real, very personal, and a view into something that we would never normally see. To make this approach work for your business blog, you can take it a few different directions.

You might try writing a regular blog that documents your experience as a business owner in your field; or keep a journal of daily goings-on at your business; or possibly get your employees to write something about their background and the story of how they ended up working at the company. There are a number of different ways to utilize this style, and most of them will be thoroughly enjoyable for your readers, if executed well.

Find Out What Your Customers Are Interested In

While you’re planning the organization of your blog and writing the content, it’s easy to forget who you are writing it for, and why. Remember that your content should be centered around what your customers are interested in.

To figure out what they really want to see in your blog, the first thing you can try is to just ask. This is a widely neglected tactic by marketers and researchers which can sometimes be the most effective way to get direct feedback from your customers.

Once you have your blog up and running for a few weeks, just send out a message on Twitter or Facebook and ask people what they hate about your blog and what they would like to see. You’ll be surprised at how many people are happy to chime in.

Beyond asking people directly, there are also other ways to find out exactly what your customers like, which you’ll see in this next point.

Use Analytics to Learn About Your Customers

Outside of direct feedback from your customers, it’s also important to monitor your content’s performance using analytics tools so that you know exactly how people are reacting to and engaging with your blog content.

You can acquire a massive wealth of information about how people are interacting with your posts with the online tools available, including metrics like click-through rate, conversion rate, time spent on the page, and a lot more.

A few services that are great for these analytics are Semrush, Spyfu, and of course, Google Analytics. This is an invaluable way of finding out who your readers are, whether or not they are your potential customers, and what else they are engaging with.

For that matter, you can find out even more about how to reach your customers by looking up their social media pages and seeing what they are engaging with, outside of your own content.

What Are You Passionate About?

So, aside from everything you can possibly learn about what your customers like, it’s also essential that you incorporate your own passion in the content. If you’re not the least bit interested in what you’re putting in your blog, then the usual side effect is that nobody else will be interested in it, either.

Your own lack of interest will somehow tend to come through in the content because you’ll just be “going through the motions”, so to speak, when you’re creating it, which makes it kind of flavorless. Passion is always attractive, and it’s always better to read.

Try to remember what got you into this business, in the first place. Write about that. Write about your early experiences–the positive, scary, or challenging experiences. Any kind of story that illustrates your passion about what you do will be far more appealing to your blog readers than subject matter which you have no interest in, whatsoever.

There is much more we can discuss regarding what you can write about in your business blog to make it as effective as possible, but if we go any further with this post, it’s going to turn into a college class.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but if you would like to explore anything further regarding this topic, please feel free to reach out to us in the comments!

Summing up: As you’re putting together content for your blog, there are all kinds of different directions that you can take it, but most importantly, make sure it is interesting. Be genuine, listen to your readers, and don’t forget to put your own passion into it.