Blogging is intimidating for pretty much everyone – WHY?  There are a lot of answers, but the main reason is because we, as bloggers, don’t have confidence.  We aren’t confident people are going to like….or care….about what we have to say, we aren’t confident what to write about. We aren’t confident in our writing style and we aren’t confident people will read it.  People are never sure blogging isn’t a total waste of time.  I know this because it’s taken me a long time to build up confidence to “just do it”.  Basically, if you put it out there someone is going to read it.  You may not get a million hits on your blog, but your article may get indexed by Google which means it will pop up on a search engine, but most of all it will secure your customer’s confidence that you know what you are doing!

How to have a successful Blog

The main strategy to a successful blog is Planning!!!  You need to sit down on a day that you feel creative and brainstorm about ALL ideas, questions, comments about your industry.  Basically, if a customer has asked you a question in the past, you can blog about it.  This is a picture of what I did.  I took a calendar and wrote my ideas in each day.  I don’t necessary write about that subject on the date it is listed, but it’s there, so I have the idea already.  Some people prefer a list, others prefer a spreadsheet – it doesn’t matter how you do it, just write down at least 30 ideas.  Then the fun begins – writing the blog!

You can do this a couple different ways also.  If you are having a really creative day, you can spend a couple hours and knock out a few blog posts all in one day.  In WordPress you can even schedule the blog to post on a certain date and time so it doesn’t look like you just posted everything one day and forgot about it.  I find this is the easiest way to get the blog knocked out.

If you get burnt out writing blog articles, then you can schedule a time EVERY day or 3 times a week to write the blog article, but make sure you do it at the same time or you WON’T DO IT.  Many are better in the morning, so blog as soon as you start your day.  Some people find themselves more creative after lunch do it then, but make sure you do it and don’t put it off.

Is your Business too boring to blog about?

Pretty much every one I talk to thinks their business is too boring to blog about.  This simply is not true.  You throw an industry at me, and I bet we could brainstorm at least 30 articles about it.  I worked for an accident injury attorney when blogs first started getting popular and we always found ourselves thinking “Who wants to read about an accident injury attorney”.  Truth is, if you are in an accident, you would love to read about statistics, facts, hints coming from a professional like an accident attorney.  Once we sat down and actually started brainstorming we came up with hundreds of subjects to blog about.

My husband is a contractor and he thinks his business is too boring to blog about, so we did the same thing.  We brainstormed a list of blog subjects and wa-la we got about 40 blog articles within just a few minutes.  If you are running out of ideas just google your industry and you will find a ton of other blogs and articles that you can get ideas from. DO NOT COPY someone else’s article though – get ideas and then rewrite it to make it your own!

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People don’t realize that blogging is more then “selling” yourself or educating people about your business.  It DOES work for that also, but the main reason a blog is important for your website is for the CONTENT.  I have talked about Content is King in the past.  Basically, Google serves the websites that have the best content for their users.  If your website is packed with information about your industry then guess who’s website is going to be at the top of the Google list!  Google has algorithms that know if you have updated your content or if the content has sat stagnant for months.  They love it when content is fresh, relevant and helpful to their end user – easiest way to obtain that is through a blog.

Do NOT “keyword stuff” your blog

A few years back people would write blogs that were obviously just for keywords.  Years ago, an article like this on a marketing website would have sentences like:

“You should do Scottsdale, AZ blogging so your business can grow in Scottsdale, AZ.  Blogging is best done by a professional Scottsdale, AZ marketing company”.

Is this helpful for you?  Did you benefit from this?  Google became savvy (like they always do) and wrote more smarter blogging algorithms to discount or punish websites that did this.  They called it “spammy” or keyword stuffing and it is considered bad in the Google (or other search engine) world.

Be Relevant, Be Helpful with your Blog

Google will take notice to your blog if you are trying to help out your customers.  If you are are plumbing company and writing about how to fix your toilet then the keywords plumbing, pipes, plumber will come up naturally in your blog post without you having to obnoxiously stuff the keywords down your readers throat.  Also, remember not to always be selling.  I know this is NOT what you are use to – your website is to sell right?  Not here.  You can make some comments about your services or talk about your business, but do not write:

“If you have a clogged toilet you should call Pat’s Plumbing for all your Scottsdale, AZ Plumbing Needs”  Or “Pat’s Plumbing has been in business for 25 years, so you should call us to unclog your toilet”.

Your blog is on YOUR website.  If someone comes to your blog and reads about remedies for a clogged toilet, chances are they will become overwhelmed with the details or they have already tried some of the remedies and failed, so they will call the professional who wrote the article….and guess what, your phone number is listed on  your website so they will call YOU!

Happy Blogging!  Be Relevant and provide a lot of content for Google…..and ultimately your customer!

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