I just read some amazing stats on HubSpot that “the average person spends around 109 minutes of their day reading media on the web. It means that every minute people process 4 million Google searches and post 1400 blog posts”. Eek that’s a lot of blog posts to get through!
So how does a small business compete especially when time is at a premium? Here are my top five tips for making the most out of your blogging time.
- Blog Editorial Calendar
Writing an editorial calendar really helps. Simply sit down with a yearly planner in front of you and mark in important dates for your business such as busy sale periods, key dates for sending out marketing material, new product launches or events and open days. Then plan to blog about these things at least a month before they are going to happen.
- How much do I write?
If you’re not a trained journalist then writing probably doesn’t come that easy. But let stuff flow from the heart and you’ll soon find you can tap away quite easily on the keys. Go back and refine what you have written afterwards. There is lots of debate about how long a blog post needs to be to gain better SEO but really it’s more important that you are saying something interesting. If you’ve made your point in 500 words then finish right there!
- How do I decide what to write?
Thinking of blog post ideas is a task that most business owners really struggle with. Once you learn a few easy tricks of the trade you’ll be able to think of subjects at the drop of a hat. See how to find a blog post subject post here.
- Interviews Or Guest Blog Posts
Interviewing an industry peer, a supplier or a customer will give you the bare bones of a blog post without lots of hard writing graft. Read magazines for inspiration for as sure as eggs are eggs there will be a celebrity interview in there that will give you an idea of what sort of questions you can ask.Asking industry peers or suppliers to write a guest post is always super helpful as not only do you gain insight about your business from them it also helps you with sharing the content later on.
- Do it in Pictures
If all else fails and you decide writing just isn’t for you try an infographic. They are super helpful when trying to get lots of information across without having to do lots of typing in-between!There are plenty of free tools out there for creating your own infographic. I tend to go to Canva as they have some great templates and it is fairly easy to navigate your way, even for non-design types. There are plenty of free images to choose from with the option of uploading your own and buying some from their library at $1 a pop.
As with anything practise makes perfect so keep trying and don’t give up! If you are part of a networking group why not set up a sub writers group. Often a group of like-minded colleagues brain-storming blog post ideas together is a whole lot easier and quicker than staring at a blank computer screen for hours on end!
