We like to do research, and this research can be a little messy.

The time between researching a product or service and buying said product or service could take a few minutes or years!

That’s because we all go to the Internet with different intent. We might be looking for information, wanting clarification, or we may be ready to buy something. 

So if you want to get in front of your potential customers, you need to make sure you create different content that answers the different types of search queries your potential customer will type into Google.

AND you need to optimise that content, ensuring you maximise your chances of ranking.

But how the heck do you do all of that?

Let’s break it down and simplify it all before this whole idea makes you break out in hives. 

(Honestly, this isn’t as scary as it sounds!)

First things first, what is a search query?

A search query is simply the words or phrases you put into Google to find something you’re looking for.

When you’re trying to figure out where you’ve seen that actor before on TV, what do you do? You Google it! That’s a search query.

All you need to know is there are three different types of search queries, and your customers will use these to find you and potentially buy from you.

Don’t believe us? According to a study, 81% of people research online before buying.

We all do it. We can’t even buy a toaster without a bit of research!

So yes, you will need to create content if you want to get in front of people researching. Because if you don’t, your competition will!

What are the 3 types of search queries?

When you search for anything on Google, it normally falls into three categories:

• Informational.
• Transactional.
• Navigational.

Different search queries lead to different results, i.e. different types of content.

So let’s look at each type individually and understand why you should produce (and optimise) content that falls under each category to help more of your prospective clients find you and to make more sales.

1. Informational queries and the content you can create

What is an informational query?

An Informational query is what it says on the tin. It’s the kind of stuff people look for when they need information on how to do something or find out what something is.

For example, you might type into Google: “How to make pumpkin pie”, “How to fix a broken zipper“, or “What does stoozing mean?“

How can you create content for informational queries?

A lot of this is by answering ‘how’ or ‘what’ based questions; you can easily use this in your business too.

To get in front of our audience who are using informational queries, we use content like:

• How to use humour in your marketing so people fall in love with your business (+11 prompts to help you!)
• What is an SEO content writing service? And how does it all work?
• Or How to Make Content Part of Your Sales Process (so you get more sales, faster!)

Why is informational content good for you?

The benefit of publishing content for informational search queries on your website is that it helps you attract website traffic and rankings.

What does this mean?

When prospective customers are looking for “How to” content, they can find your informational content.

Many of us use informational search queries. So if you can help your audience by answering their questions about the information they’re looking for, you could rank in search engines and get those people on your email list. Or even buy!

Of course, it takes time and effort to get website traffic and rankings from content that answers informational search queries. You need to think about keyword research, content writing and optimising the content, etc., but you get the gist. And if you need help with that, our SEO checklist for blog posts should help!

All sounds perfect so far, right?

But let’s play devil’s advocate.

Are there any drawbacks to publishing informational content?

We 100% recommend that you publish content that answers informational search queries (we certainly do!), but if you only focus on this type of content, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Because while you’re attracting lots of people (yay!) they might not be looking to buy from you (oh dear!)

Remember that at this stage, people are looking for information. They want to find out how to get something done. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re considering buying anything at this particular moment.

The idea is to get a lot of traffic using that content, and SOME of that traffic will eventually buy. But most won’t.

The good news is that you can (and should) publish other types of content, too – types of content that get people to buy…

2. Commerical/Transactional queries and the content you can create 

What is a commercial/transactional query?

A commercial/transactional query is what someone types into Google when they know what they want to buy, but they don’t know what company or person they want to buy it from.

Commerical/transactional queries are specifically about products/services/companies. For example, let’s say you’re looking for project management software. You can imagine typing into Google, ‘monday.com reviews‘. Or even ‘monday.com discount code‘. These queries show buying intent.

Commercial/transactional content is what pops up when someone is searching for your products or services specifically.

How can you create content for commercial/transactional queries?

If you look on our website, you’ll find blog posts like:

• 11 Reasons our SEO content writing service is not right for you
• Why is our SEO content writing & blog management service so expensive?
• Or What’s Our Black Friday Offer 2022 All About Then? 

We have many more examples as we create A TON of transactional content.

And as you probably know, if you’ve come across our content before, we are big fans of the teachings from They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. The key here is to focus on what your ideal customers ask you (face-to-face during meetings or sales calls, over the phone, or by email) and take the time to answer those questions in detail through your content.

Ideas for transactional/commercial content YOU can create

If you think you have nothing to write transactional content about, think again because the minute you start looking at your customers’ questions, the idea floodgates will open. But if you’re sitting there scratching your head and wondering how this might work in your world, here are some more examples.

• Content that answers cost-related questions. For example, “How much does a Dyson cost?”
• Case studies and success stories from previous clients.
• “The best” type of content. Examples of this could be “The best website builders for beginners” or “Manchester’s best co-working and freelancing spots.”
• Myth-busing content, that tells people (nicely!) what they get wrong about your products or services 
• Jargon-busting content, like “What depreciation means to you and how our accountants can help.”
• Original research you made in a specific area of your industry.
• Or objection-led content. This is content that you create specifically in answer to the objections (explicit or implicit) you hear from your customers repeatedly. Things like, “I don’t have time to…” or “This won’t work for me because…”, or “I can’t afford this right now because…” This is where you tip the argument and explain why these objections aren’t valid. Acknowledge that you see and understand your prospective clients’ worries, but take the time to break them down and show them how they will get results from working with you.

Why is transactional/commercial content good for you?

You’ll want to publish transactional content on your website because it helps you attract more of your ideal customers and convert leads into sales.

Because ultimately, you want to sell, right?

The people who are likely to come across this type of content are already thinking about buying your products or services. 

They might not have decided to buy from you just yet, but this type of content is designed to sway them in the right direction! 

Why?

First of all, you’d be surprised, but many business owners don’t create transactional content (all the more reasons why you shouldn’t stop at informational content!) So this makes you stand out from your competitors.

But also, transactional content helps you showcase your services and explain how you work and what you offer. By creating content of this type, you’re pre-empting many of the questions, objections, worries, and doubts your prospective clients have around making that final decision to buy (or buy from you).

Think about producing transactional content as providing a service – helping prospective customers make a more informed decision. You’re making it easier for them to buy. And as a consumer, yourself, don’t you just love it when that happens?

Are there any drawbacks to publishing transactional content?

There aren’t that many drawbacks to publishing transactional content. The only thing that slightly plays against it is the fact that it’s sometimes not the best type of traffic-generating content.

This means it won’t necessarily attract tons of traffic to your website from search engines (it depends on what type of content you create). But the traffic it does attract is more primed to buy. 

3. Navigational content

And finally, navigational content is the type of content people land on when they’re looking to find a specific website or page. So when someone is typing in the name of your company or brand into a search engine, they’re performing a navigational search.

Of course, this means they already know you. They know your brand name and the products or services you sell, they’re probably interested in buying, and they want to find the correct website or physical location (like a specific product or service page) to get what they’re after.

Like transactional content, navigational content comes in handy when people are already in your world – they know your brand or business name. But it’s still important to optimise the correct pages on your website to ensure your customers find what they’re looking for.

For example, on our website, you’ll find the page Blog Writing & SEO for time-poor businesses, and that’s optimised for “content writing packages” “SEO content writer” or ‘SEO content writing”. So if someone were to type that in, they’d be directed to this page and find all the information they need.

We also link back to our service pages from other pages on our website or from our blog posts (just like we did above), and that helps our prospective customers find what they’re after.

Why is navigational content good for you?

In a nutshell, it helps you sell!

Take our service page for Blog Writing & SEO as an example again. It has all the information that someone needs to make a decision:

• We open with a short video where you can see us (and see we are real people in the flesh and not robots!) and where we introduce the service.
• It talks about the problems that our ideal customers are experiencing and want to solve.
• It shows them what life could be like – what they would get if they invested in our service.
• Then it explains the service – step by step.
• It spells out how much time (and therefore money) our clients could save with our help.
• And finally, it outlines the simple steps someone needs to take to get the ball rolling with us.

It breaks it all down for our ideal clients, so the only thing left to do for them is get in touch with us! That’s how brilliantly navigational content can work for you.

Are there any drawbacks to publishing navigational content?

Navigational content is an essential component of your website. Just like you need a Home page, you need product or service pages. Otherwise, how will your prospective customers know what they can buy from you and how?

But navigational content alone isn’t enough.

Plus, it tends to be static, meaning that (unless your services change every other month) this type of content isn’t likely to change very often. And if you don’t publish anything new regularly, Google and the other search engines can’t see that you have anything relevant or useful to share and are less likely to rank you high in the search results.

If you only have navigational content on your website with no other content whatsoever, it will be really hard for new prospects (i.e. people who don’t already know you and your business) to find you.

So if you want new customers to find you and your fantastic business, you need to publish fresh and helpful content (both informational and transactional).

Would you like our SEO blog agency to help you?

Your website needs a clean structure with the right type of content (i.e. an active blog with useful, in-depth, optimised articles) and optimised pages for your products and services so that more of your ideal customers can find you via the search engine results and buy from you. That means you need to plan for different types of content, set time aside for keyword research, and then create all that content.

And yes, we know this takes time! That’s exactly why we can create that content for you so you don’t need to worry about a thing.

We create:

• Content that helps you rank on Google and delivers you traffic.
• High-ranking content that helps your potential customers.
• Content that pre-qualifies your customers and helps you attract those who are right for you.
• And content that helps you make more sales.

And, of course, we do all the keyword research for you. Want to find out more? Get in touch and let’s have a chat!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post What are the three different types of search query? And what content can you create for each type? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

If you want your business blog posts to rank on search engines, deliver website traffic, WOW your readers (and I mean really wow them) and deliver leads and sales, you’re going to have to approach blogging a bit differently.

Because there are actually six elements that make a successful business blog.

SIX!

I know, I know. It sounds like a lot and you’re probably thinking, ‘I don’t have time for this, Lyndsay.’

But here’s the thing:

• Most businesses don’t do all six things (or are even aware of them) so if you do, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition
• I’m going to break down all six things below, so you know exactly what to do in each of these areas. Which makes everything much simpler for you.

Ready to learn the 6 key steps to a successful blog?

Let’s get stuck in…

1. Conduct keyword research for your business blog post

Hold your horses! Before you get to the writing, you’re going to need to do a sprinkling of keyword research first.

Why?

Because surely one of the reasons you’re publishing blog content on your website in the first place is because you want to be found on Google.

You want your blog to consistently send you website traffic, rank well in the search engines, and generate more leads and sales for your business.

It’s no surprise that bloggers who do keyword research before writing content see much stronger results.

And if you want that to happen, you need to be strategic about it. That means you need to do your research in advance to make sure you’re writing content about topics that your ideal customers and clients are searching for.

So far so good?

Great.

So how do you know what your customers and clients are searching for?

Customer’s questions give you an idea of what people are searching for

Well, first thing first, you ask them. And before you say you don’t have the chance to do that, we know for a fact that you do.

Every email conversation, every discovery call, or sales call you have with a prospective client is an opportunity to find out what problems they have and what they want to know.

They will ask you questions (lots of them!) and your job is to write them down and save them so you can create amazing blog content about those topics.

But if you want further ideas or find out exactly what search terms people are using when looking for information about your industry, niche, or business, then there are tools you can use to do your keyword research.

Some of our favourite keyword research tools for business blogging

When searching for keywords online, you’re aiming for phrases that are both competitive and profitable.

What does that mean?

In a nutshell, you want keywords that lots of people search for but that aren’t too competitive. So make sure you spend some time doing keyword research for every blog post you write and try to pick keywords that aren’t overused.

Some of the tools we recommend are:

Answer the Public. An amazing free tool (with the option to upgrade to the paid-for version) that helps you visualise real questions that your potential customers have asked via visual and intuitive search clouds.

Quora. This website is free to use and is completely user-generated. This means users ask the questions and others will reply to them.

Keywords Everywhere is a free Chrome extension. Once installed it will pop up on the side whenever you do a search. It’s free to use but a paid-for version is also available.

KW Finder. This is a paid-for tool that allows you to find the best longtail keywords to include in your content. It offers affordable plans depending on the number of keyword searches per month you need and also has a FREE 10-day trial.

Semrush. This is another paid-for, full-service research tool and allows you to figure out what people are searching for in relation to a specific keyword using their content marketing topic research.

You can find more information about each of these tools (including some cool screenshots that show you what they look like) in our blog post 23 of the Best Business Blogging Tools that Increase Traffic and Conversions.

Or, you can read a bit more about SEO and keyword research in our super comprehensive blog post SEO for Beginners.

Check competing blog posts for your keyword/phrase

Don’t forget this final important step: check your competition.

Don’t rely too heavily on your SEO tool to tell you how competitive a keyword or phrase is, instead Google the keyword or phrase and see for yourself.

These are some indicators you’re targeting an ultra-competitive keyword.

Go to Google (in incognito window) and type in your target keyword or phrase. If there is…

• A lot of ads
• Some well-known trusted companies writing about the topic
• Lengthy blog posts and guides dedicated to the topic

This could be a sign it’s super competitive. It may be worth digging a little deeper around that keyword. Is there a longer keyword or phrase you can use? Something more niche? But still with good search volume?

2. Plan your business blogging strategy

Different types of content will help you achieve different goals with different types of people who consume content on your website.

Most people think of content, especially business blog content, as something that will generate website traffic and rankings. That’s true. But actually, content can also sell too.

To do this, you must create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey…

Blog content at the awareness stage

People in the awareness stage of their buyer’s journey might not know about you yet. Actually, they probably don’t even know they need you just yet!

Let’s bring this to life with an example. Let’s say you’re a career coach who specialises in corporate, leadership roles. Some people might land on your website because they’re looking for a career coach that meets those criteria. And those people are further down the buyer’s journey already – they know they want a career coach.

But people who are still in the awareness stage might be looking for information such as “How to be a more assertive manager” or “How to become a better leader”. They don’t know about you or your services, so your job is to create content that answers those questions. And through that, they’ll want to find out more about you. Clever, right?

Examples of awareness stage blog content

So make sure you create blog content that tells people who you are, what you do, how you do it, and why they need to work with you.

This is educational and informative content that targets your customers’ pain points.

For example, a popular piece of awareness content we’ve published on our website is Why Am I Not Ranking in Google, and How to Fix It and How to Make Your Blog Posts Look Good.

These two blog posts came directly from questions we had from our customers. The keywords actually didn’t show up on keyword research tools! But we were confident people were searching for this. A few months later, these were ranking for lots of juicy search terms. Years later, they still are!

Blog content at the consideration stage

Consideration-type content is what helps your customers see that your business is a valid and viable option for them.

They’re certainly ‘shopping around’ and looking to solve a specific problem, so they’re checking what’s out there.

At this stage, they aren’t sure what solution to find for their problem, so they are looking for help. For example, someone who wants more leads and sales could invest inbound marketing (like blogging and SEO) or outbound marketing (like Facebook ads). They haven’t decided yet, so your job is to help them make that decision.

Essentially, your job here is to help people find the right solution for them. This does not mean pushing your solution as the only viable option! In fact, you may recommend a different solution to what you offer in some cases.

For example, if someone wanted to get 100 leads in less than 24 hours, we’d recommend ads over blogging – even though we sell a blog management service!

Be honest in this content and speak to your audience as if they are a friend. Discuss the different options available to them without bias and explain who is the right fit for each solution.

Examples of consideration stage blog content

If you want to check out a few examples of this, we’ve created consideration content like, ‘What is an SEO Content Writer?’ and ‘SEO Content Writer vs SEO Agency, which one should you choose?’ You can see how both these articles would introduce this service as a potential solution to a problem.

Content at the purchase stage

Things are getting serious now. These are people who have decided to buy. They just need to be sure they’re making the best possible decision when going ahead and buying from you.

This is the point where you need to reassure them you’re the right and best option for them. It’s the last checkpoint before they press the BUY button, so you want to give them the last bits of information to help them take the plunge and buy from you.

They may be looking at your competitors too, trying to understand the differences between you and them.

This is where ‘sales content’ can come in helpful. This is content that talks directly about your products or service, not just your industry.

You can learn all about it and get some amazing sales content ideas here.

Examples of purchase stage content

Here are a couple of examples of purchase content we created on our website: Why You Shouldn’t Join Our 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge or Everything You Need to Know About our Content Fortress Course.

You’ll notice that these talk only about our products and services!

3. Create compelling business blog posts

The next thing you want to check to make sure your business blog is as successful as it can be is your copy. It needs to be engaging and compelling. And when we say that, we don’t mean you need to sound like Shakespeare.

Quite the opposite, in fact!

Your copy should sound like you. When your prospective customers read your content, they’re forming an opinion on who you are, the types of things you say, and how you work.

You want to make sure that the way you sound in your blog content is similar to how you sound when you talk to your customers face-to-face.

Make sure your tone of voice and your personality come across – don’t be boring and hold yourself back too much. But also, don’t try to be someone you’re not.

Your copy also needs to be direct, clear, and jargon-free. In your blog post, tell the reader exactly what the piece of content is going to be about and then deliver on your promise. This needs to start from the headline, so make sure you pick a great title for your blog posts. And if you want more information on how to do this, head over to 7 Ways To Write An Irresistible Blog Post Headline.

And all the way through you need to make sure your blog is well structured and makes keeps people engaged. You can read all about this in our article, how to write a blog post – which covers everything from start to finish!

Break the text down

To make your blog posts user-friendly, make sure you include plenty of sub-headings and paragraphs to structure your information so it’s easy to read and digest. As much as we all like to think that people who consume our content will read it all (word by word) that’s really not the case.

We know it.

And you know it.

And according to Nielson Norman Group, website users read on average 20% of the text on the page.

People who consume content online want to be able to get to the information they need as quickly as possible, so make your text ‘scannable’ by adding sub-sections (all with their own sub-headings) and bulleted lists that help you guide the readers’ eyes to the key bits of information.

Make sure you also include lots of white space and images (more on that in a minute) to let the page ‘breathe’ and ensure you break up the text. No one wants to read a big wall of text, do they? That’s the opposite of compelling!

Website design actually has a huge impact on your content, so make sure you do all of the things above. That way you maximise your chances of blogging success!

4. Include standout imagery in your blog posts

Photos and images are essential for your blog. In fact, articles with images get 94% more views than articles that don’t.

An eye-catching featured image (which is the first thing people see when they land on your blog) can help them decide whether to click on the link and read through or not.

This means more people clicking through your content rather than hitting the back button and heading off to another website! So make sure your featured images are striking, on-brand, and clearly include the title of your blog post.

The rest of the images you sprinkle throughout your article should also play a huge role in how successful your content is going to be.

Much like white space, paragraphs, and sub-headings, images help you break up the text and encourage your readers to stay on the page. When you choose the right images, they immediately elevate the quality of your content. Especially if you create bespoke imagery in your branding (i.e. your colours, graphics, fonts, etc.)

The right images help you stand out

We’re not trying to brag here, but people often tell us that the featured images on our blog posts are so unique that when we share them on social media, they’ll immediately recognise the post as being one of ours.

That shows that using the right type of imagery can make you stand out. People know it’s you before they’ve even clicked on the content and read a single word you wrote. And that’s a great place to be!

Plus, there are other benefits to using great images in your blog posts. Pictures can make you more visible and relatable. Rather than sharing generic stock images from the Internet, we always recommend you use pictures of yourself and your team. That helps you build trust and rapport with your readers.

And you’ve all heard the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s true. Choose your images wisely, and they’ll enhance your content.

You can optimise your images

There’s also a slightly more technical reason why it’s important to have images – you can optimise them! That’s right – it’s not just text that you can optimise for search. So if you’re trying to be found for a particular keyword, you can include that keyword in the title and description of any images you use in your blog post and increase your chances of ranking for that keyword.

5. Optimise each blog post for your keywords

Another important factor to help you decide whether you’re doing a great job with your business blog is optimisation. We know this is something a lot of people don’t even want to hear about, but it really doesn’t need to be complicated!

Optimisation is actually really simple when you know the key steps you need to take. All you need to do is to allocate 15-20 minutes at the end of writing a blog post to make sure you’ve included your keywords in a few strategic places.

How to optimise your blog posts

Remember that keyword research process we talked about at the beginning? Let’s say you went for the keyword “piano teacher in Liverpool”. You’ll want to mention that exact combination of words in the text of your blog post.

On top of that, you’ll also want to include it in:

• Your URL. That’s the web address for your blog post.
• The title tags. The headline and some of the sub-headings, if possible.
• The meta description. That’s the short description that appears on Google under the title of the blogpost that tells people what the content is all about. It’s what helps them decide whether they want to go ahead and read or not.
• Your images. If you’ve included any images in your blog post (and we really recommend you do), you should add your selected keyword in the Alt Description.
• Throughout your article. Include it naturally within your blog post. And if you can, within the first paragraph of your entire article too.

And finally, remember to add links to relevant and related content. These should be both internal links (i.e. links to other pages or blog posts on your own website) and external links (i.e. links to resources from reputable websites that aren’t your competitors).

And that’s all you need to do to make sure your blog posts are optimised! When you break it down, it’s still not the most exciting of tasks (yes, we can see that). But it’s easy enough to do, and it’ll definitely give a huge boost to your business blogging efforts.

You can learn everything you need to know about optimising your blog posts in this handy guide: The Ultimate Guide to Optimising Your Blog Posts.

6. Lead Generation

Last but not least, a successful blog post will help you generate leads. In other words, you want your business blog to attract your dream customers.

Driving traffic to your website is great. You definitely want more people to find you through search engines and consume your content.

But what you want even more is for people to give you their email addresses, sign up for a free trial, or hit that buy now button.

Tips to improve your blog lead generation

Here are a few things we recommend you do to encourage people to give you their email addresses…

Mention your products and services. Don’t be shy!

This is your business blog after all. It’s published on your business website! And while you can absolutely help people with the content you share, you can help them even more through your products and services. That’s why they’re here – looking for help. So let them know how you can serve them. (For example, did you know we offer an SEO Content Writing and Blog Management service? 😉)

Include a lead magnet on your blog posts

In this blog post, you may have noticed a Business Blogging Quiz. We include this in our blog posts about blogging (shocker!)

We also have an SEO quiz, and we mainly include this in blog posts about SEO. Either way, we are able to capture email addresses via our blog.

Use imagery throughout your blog post to promote your lead magnet

Rather than just signposting people to your lead magnets through a link (which isn’t all that visible) we recommend you use branded images with big and bright call-to-action buttons.

Images are more eye-catching and encourage the reader to spend more time on the page. Plus, these images will have a big button that people can press if they want to download your lead magnet. And give you their email address. Win-win, right

Make your lead magnet irresistible

So lead magnets are often a bit…meh. They are often a checklist or an email series, and that’s fine but it’s not exactly compelling. That’s why our quiz seems to work so well. It’s interactive, and fun and you also get a personalised report too. So that appeals to people. Try to think about how you can make your own irresistible lead magnet too!

And finally, the free blog post template!

Below, we’ve included a free blog post template you can refer to, to help you improve your blog posts! And if you want something more substantial, you can check out our blog post template pack which includes 12 fill-in-the-blank blog post templates.

What area of your business blog should you focus on first?

So there you have it. The 6 key steps you need to take to create epic, lead-generating business blog content. As a reminder, these are:

1. Keyword research
2. Blogging strategy
3. Compelling copy
4. Standout imagery
5. Optimisation
6. Lead generation

To know which area you should focus on first, take our blogging quiz which will score you in each individual category and tell you EXACTLY how to improve.

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post 6 Simple Steps that Make a Successful Business Blog [+ Free Blog Post Template] appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

We know better than most just how time-intensive writing consistent and high-quality business blogs can be. We’ve been doing it pretty much every week (or more) since 2017. 

Back when we kicked off our blog we were primarily web design and SEO specialists. And we’ll admit there were times when blog production dropped to the bottom of our to-do list due to lack of time. ⏰

But, we also know just how crucial a strong content strategy is for growing your business.

So over the years we’ve tried and tested a bunch of business blogging tools to help with SEO, improve the quality of writing and shave some precious hours off the process. 

In this blog, we’ll share our best blogging tools to help you create blogs faster than ever before. 

IMPORTANT! There are zero affiliate links in this blog post. We don’t earn any money out of recommending these companies, we’re here to just give you the best tools for your business.

And don’t worry, these tools aren’t going to set you back hundreds or thousands of pounds. They are all either completely FREE to use or pretty cheap – so they won’t break the bank.💰

There are some key areas that these blogging tools can help in, so we’ve split the blog post into these sections:

Table of Contents

Evaluating Where You Are Right Now

First thing’s first, you’ll want to evaluate where you are now with your blog and how you can improve. That way, you’ll know exactly what you need to focus on moving forward (and what blogging tools you can use to help you do that).

Luckily, we created just the tool for you…

1. Business Blogging Quiz (FREE)

If you have ever wondered how “Good” your blog is, then check out the Business Blogging Quiz. We created this FREE tool that will automatically assess how well your blog is performing.

It will also tell you exactly how to improve your business blog so you can increase your website traffic, rankings and sales.

Click the link below and get your Business Blogging Score instantly.

The Best Blogging Tools for Generating Blog Post Ideas…

“I’ll run out of things to write about.” 

Have you ever found yourself saying this? ⬆️

We know that coming up with amazing, traffic-generating ideas is one of the biggest barriers to getting started on your blogging journey. 

But if you’re tearing your hair out trying to come up with blog ideas then stop. 🛑

We’ve been consistently blogging since 2017, and trust us when we say we’ve still got loads more to write about. 

That’s because we employ a few different blogging tools that help us generate ideas. They hack into what our potential customers are actually searching for online. 

Not only do these tools help create blog ideas, but they will allow you to see what terms and phrases people search for on Google. These are known as longtail keywords. 

For example, if you bake cupcakes, it’s unlikely that people are just typing “cupcakes” into Google. They are probably searching for things like:

• Where to buy cupcakes in Blackpool?

• How much do cupcakes cost?

• How to make my own cupcakes?

This is a crucial step for SEO, as you can sprinkle these phrases into your content. And this will allow you to be found by search engines.

Using these tools allows you to integrate topics your potential customers are actually searching for rather than guessing. So when they type their query into Google guess who’s blog will pop up first – that’s right, yours. 

• Related content: 5 FREE ways to check keyword rankings in Google

2. Answer The Public (Free)

Answer the Public is an amazing tool that helps you clearly visualise real questions that your potential customers have asked via an image known as a “search cloud”. 

Simply enter your topic into the search bar, and Answer the Public will produce a “mind-map” of questions that have been searched for.

Remember people ask Google questions they would never ask someone else (or you). So it’s a great way to gain insight into the inner workings of potential customers’ minds. 

It’s a useful tool to come up with blog titles, but also individual sub-headings and sub-sections. 

The free version gives you up to three searches per day, which will be enough for most small businesses. But if you think you’ll be running multiple searches a day, then you can upgrade to the PRO version. Below, we’ve shown an example of when we put in the phrase, ‘book editor’. 

3. Quora (Free) 

People ask a lot of random questions on the internet…

How long would it take me to walk to the moon?

Which country in the world has the strangest shape?

If you’ve ever searched for something online then you’ve probably come across Quora. 

It’s a free-to-use, search and answer website, that is completely user-generated. This means users generate the questions asked and the answers given.

It’s a really great insight into what people are searching for, and what the common answers (or potential misconceptions) around your industry are. All really juicy information when you are trying to come up with blog ideas. 

Plus, you can follow specific topics and keep tabs on any new questions that are popping up. Below, I typed in the phrase ‘book editor’ and look at all the juicy questions that could easily make great content!

4. Keywords Everywhere (Free and Paid Version) 

Keywords Everywhere is a free Chrome extension that helps you with keyword research, and SEO. 

It allows you to do keyword research on the go, as you type queries into Google. Once installed it will pop up on the side whenever you do a search and will give you access to:

• Trend data and search volumes for that keyword
• Related keywords to the search term you selected
• ‘People also search for’ suggestions.

It’s free to use but a paid-for version is also available if you want more information on monthly searches and competitor analysis. However, most people will find the free version more than adequate for their needs. 

Below, we’ve shown you an example of how this works by searching for the keyphrase ‘business book editor’. We do pay for this tool, but it’s incredibly cheap at just $10 for 100,000 credits (which is a lot!)

5. Semrush (Paid) 

Semrush is the creme de la creme of keyword research tools, but with a price tag to match. 

It’s is a full-service research tool and allows you to figure out what people are searching for in relation to a specific keyword using their content marketing topic research. 

It is a paid tool with prices starting at around $119/month, however, you can sign up for a free trial to see if it would be worth it. This tool is something that we use to get really deep insights into keyword research, rankings, backlink data and more. Below is a screenshot of SEMRush, with us searching for the keyword ‘book editor’ – and this is just surface level stuff (yes, we do geek out over this!) 

The Best Blogging Tools for Planning Blog Posts…

“Aghhh, I’ll just wing it, and see what happens.”

Does this sound like you?

We can almost guarantee that this is the easiest way to fall off the content bandwagon. We’ve seen it time and time again in the 90-day content challenge we run within our membership.

The people that fail to plan are always the ones that struggle to complete the challenge. Every👏 Single👏 Time👏.

Putting a little time aside upfront to plan out your content, and organise it into a schedule will give you a fighting chance. 

Not only will you not have to worry about what you are writing about every week (especially if you use the brainstorming blogging tools above). But it will also help you plan and prioritise blogging as a task on your to-do list. If it’s written down in black and white it’s not as easy to push it to the bottom of the list.

Everyone plans in a different way, so we’ve got a couple of different blogging tools that will suit depending on your brain works. 

• Related content: How to plan 50 pieces of content in 30 minutes

6. Trello (Free and Paid Version) 

Trello is an amazing visual planning tool if you have a logical and linear brain. It is a very simple visual planner that allows you to layout all your blog posts via boards and cards. 

The cards allow you to add more detail in an unstructured way. This makes it easier to create content plans than something like Google Sheets/Spreadsheets. 

You can create columns for each of your products and services so that you can manage what blogs are coming up, and what ones have been done. 

Trello is a free tool, however, if you need more than ten boards or want a calendar view then you can upgrade to a paid plan (starting from $5/person/month). But we’ve found that for most small businesses, the free tool is more than powerful enough. 

7. MindMeister (Free and Paid Version) 

Did you know that mind maps are 30% more effective than linear documents when it comes to generating ideas? 

MindMeister is a mind-mapping tool, and it’s a brilliant way to plan out content for people who love to inject some creativity into their planning process. 

The free plan allows you to create up to three mind-maps, which should be enough for most businesses. However, if you have a team, or if you really want to get into creating mind maps, then you can upgrade to a paid plan. Below is an example of how we use MindMeister.

The Best Blogging Tools for Creating Blog Post Images…

Have you ever seen a blog post image and immediately known who wrote the blog at a glance?

This is definitely something we’ve managed to achieve throughout pop-art blog images (or so we’ve been told). And while we create a new blog post image for every single blog, there is a definite and distinct theme running through them all. 

With over 4 million blogs published every day, and shared all over social media, you need a way to stand out from the crowd. 

Creating an eye-catching image for every blog post is a great way to do this and to convey your unique brand personality in the process. 

This might seem like a daunting process if you aren’t a graphic designer, but we use one great tool that is simple and effective. 

8. Canva (Free and Paid Version)

You’ve probably heard of Canva, it’s got a bit of a love-hate relationship, especially among the graphic design community. We are definitely on the LOVE side for Canva, and it’s a tool we happily recommend to all our clients and MYMO members. 

It’s much easier to use (and cheaper) than Photoshop. And it’s brilliant for creating consistent and beautiful images for your blog post. 

The free version has tonnes of functionality and allows you to overlay text onto existing photos, or add graphics to your website. 

There is also a paid-for version that offers a little more functionality and access to more images and graphics. 

The Best Blogging Tools for Editing Your Blog Posts…

Ever hit publish and then realised there is a glaringly obvious, totally embarrassing error?

Oh no, you’ll never be able to show your face in public again😳

Not really, we’ve all been there. But it is a good idea to eliminate as many errors from your blogs as possible. 

And we know the fear of errors is one thing that can hold people back from writing and publishing blog content -especially if they aren’t confident writers.

There are a couple of blogging tools that will help you write like you’ve got a team of editors and proofreaders on your team (well almost, they aren’t quite as good as trained humans).

9. Grammarly (Free and Paid Version)

Grammarly is an AI-powered tool that helps you write mistake-free content across loads of apps including Google Docs, Gmail, Facebook and Twiter. 

Contrary to what the name would have you believe it’s about more than just grammar (although it certainly does help with that). It will also check spelling and punctuation, as well as ensure the content is clear and easy to read. 

Basically, it’s an absolute life-saver if you are writing lots of content. It’s one of our favourite blogging tools!

And the best part is that it’s free, although you can upgrade to a premium version. 

Yes, you‘ll still need to read over your work, as some slip-ups will bypass the super-smart AI. But it’s a quick and effective way to check your work for mistakes and make your writing better in seconds. Below, we’ve shown you an example of how it works using this blog post!

10. Power Thesaurus (Free) 

If you’ve ever seen Friends then you might remember when Baby Kangaroo (a.k.a Joey) turned to a thesaurus to help him sound smarter. 

And while running every single word through a thesaurus is not a good idea – it can certainly help. 

Power Thesaurus is a free, community drive app that allows you to find synonyms or antonyms for over 80 million English language words. 

Perfect for when your brain stops working after lunch and you just can’t think of a smart-sounding way to say nice.

Ps. amiable, charming and good-natured could all work. 

The Best Blogging Tools for Optimising Your Blog Posts…

Despite what the latest marketing doomsday opinion piece will have you believe, Google is very much alive. 

And paying homage to the Google Gods can really make or break the success of your blog.

You could craft the most informative, beautifully written blog post, and still have it flop if you don’t adhere to some of Google’s rules.

The algorithm is ever-changing, so appeasing the search engines is an ever-evolving task. We call this optimising content, and we’re taking what we’ve created and tweaked it to give it a better chance of being found online. 

However, there are some blogging tools that remove the guesswork and help us adhere to the rules. 

• Related content: WordPress SEO For Blogging – How to Optimise Your WordPress Blog Posts

11. Yoast (Free and Paid Version – WordPress Blogging Tool Only)

Once you’ve written your blog it’s time to get it uploaded and hit publish. 

Well, yes but there are some steps to take before hitting publish to make sure that everything SEO related is in ship-shape for Google (and other search engines).

Yoast is a WordPress specific plug-in that double-checks the soundness of your blog content, and give you practical suggestions for improvement, including:

• Readability improvement (ie. sentences are too long)
• Keyword distribution and density
• Text length
• As well as loads of other features…

It’s one of our favourite blogging tools. It’s great for issuing practical prompts and presenting them in a traffic light system. Perfect if you’re like us and like competing against the machines. 

Ps. don’t worry if you can’t get all greens. It’s not always possible but it’s a good goal to have. 

The basic version of Yoast is free, but you can also upgrade which gives you access to even more SEO based tools to improve your writing. It is a tool that every self-respecting blog writer should include in their repertoire. We’ve included an example below of how Yoast looks evaluating this blog post for the keyword ‘blogging tools’. 

12. Tiny PNG (Free and Paid Version)

Have you ever tried to get on a website or a blog and it just takes forever to load?

Not only is it super frustrating (who has time to wait for a page to load). 

But if people get tired of waiting and bounce off the page then this can negatively affect your Google stats. Which can cause them to rank you lower than they would if your website was super speedy. 

One of the ways that you can stop this from happening is by compressing your images so that they take less time to load. You can use a free web-based app called Tiny PNG helps to compress the image size. 

It’s a really simple thing that you can do to help improve your site speed and overall Google ranking. 

This is us, showing you Tiny PNG by compressing this image of Tiny PNG (how meta!)

13. Pic Resize (Free) 

Got the ideal image but it’s HUGE, or needing to be cropped down?

Having images that look good, and are appropriately sized for your blog is essential in making it look good. 

And luckily Pic Resize helps you with just that. Allowing you to resize image dimensions, and crop out sections that are necessary quickly and easily.

Once you’ve done this you should still pop it through TinyPNG to compress the image size and make sure it loads.

The Best Blogging Tools to Make Your Blog Look Good…

While we’ve all been led to believe that looks don’t matter, that just isn’t the case for your blog posts (or websites in general).

Have you ever been on a website and left straight away because it’s a wall of text?

Of course, the content and what you are saying really matters, and there is no point in creating a beautiful blog with no substance. 

However, creating a visually appealing blog post is arguably just as important as writing amazing content. And the last thing you want is for people to not read your super amazing blog because it doesn’t look good. 

Getting people to click on your post and stay there requires a balance of content, SEO and visuals. 

Especially when there are some really simple solutions…

15. Depositphotos (Paid) 

We always recommend that you have professional images that you dot around your website and blog posts. This helps add personality and ensures people know what the person behind the site looks like. 

However, we know that sometimes stock images are needed, and when that is the case we recommend Depositphotos. It’s a bank of royalty-free images, videos, vectors, illustrations, and music, that you can use on your website. 

It is a paid tool (either on-demand or subscription-based), but we find that it’s much better quality than many of the free tools out there. And you can be confident that they are licensed to use for business. 

Just be careful of those super cheesy stock photos. You know the ones, where everyone has a psychotic smile and are way too happy!

16. Death to Stock Photo (Paid) 

Sick of cheesy stock images? Enter Death to Stock Photo. The clue is in the name really but this website provides the most amazing images that look, well, non-stock-photo-like!

There are no cheesy smiles or fake-happy looking people. Here’s an example of one of the images that came up when we typed in ‘office’.

17. Pixabay (Free)

If you’re on a budget, using a free stock image website like Pixabay can come to your rescue! They have literally millions of stock images you can choose from. And the best thing is, they are free. Although, it’s nice to ‘tip’ a cup of coffee sometimes to the photographers!

If you want to do even more than just create images, check out this blog post on how to make your blogs look good.

The Best Blogging Tools for Collecting Leads on Blog Posts…

Ultimately the aim of creating a blog post is to make sales. However, while we’d love for someone to pop on a blog page and buy straight away it’s not always realistic. 

People need to come into contact with various touchpoints before they buy from you. And that’s why it’s important to drive people towards an email list so that you can stay in contact with them and nurture them towards the eventual sale. 

We’ve recently launched our new SEO and blog management service, and this prompted us to look into who bought from us on launch, and whether they were already on our email list.

And guess what…they all were. 

In fact, we found that:

• they were on our email list for at least 12 months before investing in our 1-2-1 services
• they are engaged, email subscribers (ie. they open, click or reply to emails)

So aiming to get people off your blog posts and onto an email list is a good one to have. 

But how exactly do you do this? Well below is a good example using one of the tools we recommend. 😉

18. ScoreApp (Paid, with Free Trial)

One of the BEST ways of gaining leads from your blog post is by creating a quiz. Quizzes are fun, interactive and offer a ton of value. And our favourite quiz software has to be ScoreApp.

ScoreApp allows you to create beautiful quizzes easily. It’s so easy to create your quiz, and it comes with:

• Beautiful landing page designs
• Results page designs
• Personalised feedback depending on the results your audience gets
• Category scoring – so you can give people a score for different categories

19. OptinMonster (Paid)

OptinMonster is a very powerful, and intuitive lead generation tool that allows you to create beautiful and eye-catching opt-ins, pop-ups. Their ultimate goal is to help turn blog visitors into email subscribers. 

Ideal!

You can integrate these into your blogs, and on other pages on your website to drive people towards your email list. 

OptinMonster is a paid tool, however, the entry-level package is very affordable, and has all the essentials for building a lead generation campaign from your blogs. 

20. Thrive Leads (Paid) 

Another one that we love is Thrive Leads which focuses on driving uses from your blog onto your email list. 

It allows you to create visually stunning opt-ins in the form of pop-ups, widgets, in-line forms, screen locks as well as others. 

Thrive Leads is also a paid plugin, that you buy as a yearly subscription, however, it’s well worth it for those serious about making their blogs work for them. 

The Best Blogging Tools for Measuring the Success of Blog Posts…

Before you kick things off with your blogging you need to know your starting point. 

What pages or blog posts are the most read on your website?

Where do your visitors spend most of their time when on your website?

Knowing this is invaluable because it allows you to understand what is working, and more importantly what isn’t. From this, you can tweak and optimise your content to do more of what works. And if you’re struggling to see rankings, check out this blog post on why you’re not ranking in Google (and how to fix it). 

So how do you measure your website traffic?

21. Google Analytics (Free)

Google Analytics is a brilliant free web analytics tool that helps you analyse your website traffic in pretty minute detail. 

While the background workings are pretty technical (involving code, and tracking links), Google Analytics allows you to access easy-to-read reports that will give you insight into who has visited your website, how they found you, what content they consume and how they behave on your site. 

If this sounds a little scary, then don’t worry Google has a free course to help you get started with Google Analytics. Below is a screenshot of our daily users from Google analytics. It’s good to know!

22. The Hoth Rank Checker (Free)

The Hoth Rank Checker is a free tool powered by Semrush that helps you identify your website’s top traffic driving keywords. Simply put, what are people typing into Google that is leading them to your website. 

It’s a great way to figure out what is already working, and how to utilise these current top-performing keywords to boost you to page one. 

Think of Hoth Rank Checker as a soft “quick-wins” identifier. It will still require some work to boost these rankings, but it’s a good place to start.

It’s completely free, and the same website can also give you access to other tools such as backlink checkers, and keywords planners – but the rank checker is our favourite.  

23. Fat Rank Chrome Extension (Free) 

Fat Rank Chrome Extension is as it sounds another Chrome extension tool to help with on-the-go keyword ranking research. 

After installing the extension, simply visit a website and click the Fat Rank icon to find out where that website currently ranks in Google, and which page URLs are ranking. 

Again it’s a great, free, way to figure out what pages and keywords your website is already ranking for and might help with some potential quick wins or areas to focus on. 

Below is a screenshot of us using Fat Rank to determine where we’re ranking for the keyword ‘write blog post headline’. This shows us we’re number 12, so with some more tweaks to that blog post, we should be able to get to page one! Handy to know, right?

Does this sound like a little too much work?

Phew! That’s quite a lot of work and quite a lot of blogging tools to get your blogs in tip-top performing shape. 

Loads of people think blogging is just banging out some words, uploading it to your website and hoping for the best. 

But the reality is that in order to produce successful blogs, that actually drive traffic (and sales) there is a little more to it than that. 

And while these blogging tools will help you shave hours off your blog writing sessions, they will still involve some time on your part. 

If this all sounds like a little too much work then you might want to consider our SEO content writing and blog management service. It’s a full blog writing and SEO service, that could shave 10 hours off your to-do list every week. 

Just think about what you could be doing with that time?

We take care of:

• Generating search-drive blog ideas
• Writing the blog content
• Keyword research
• Planning the content
• Creating blog images
• Edit the blog (using a professional proofreader)
• Optimising the blog
• Ensuring you can collect leads
• Measuring the success
• Uploading it to your website

Basically, everything that we’ve covered above is included in our SEO and blog management package. 

Not sure if this service is right for you?

Don’t forget our free blogging tool! 

Take our Blogging Superstar Quiz – a quiz that tests how well you’re doing in the 6 key areas that make a successful blog post to see if you’re all sorted or need some help.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post 23 of the Best Business Blogging Tools that Increase Traffic and Conversions appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

The same goes for your blog posts. People will only click if the title is tempting. Whether that’s from social media or in search results, your title is the thing that will grab your audience’s attention. 

The problem is, writing a blog post title is HARD. 

We personally find writing an entire blog post easier than writing a title. 

But over the years (and after A LOT of testing) we’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t. 

Read these 7 ways to write a blog post headline that’ll excite and entice your viewers to keep reading on.

1. Make Your Blog Post Headlines Specific 

If people don’t ‘get’ what your blog post is about from the headline then they won’t click on the blog post. 

For example, let’s say you’re writing a blog post about the best Keto Brownies you can order online. 

Imagine if these were the headlines…

‘The day I got to try a load of brownies!’ 

‘Brownies for the win!’ 

‘Chocolatey goodness without the sugar – yum!’ 

They don’t tell the reader what the heck your article is about. Yes, they’ll know it’s about brownies, but you need to be more specific with things like…

‘The best keto brownie companies that deliver straight to your door.’ 

Now that is specific, and it tells the reader exactly what they’re going to get. This brings us nicely onto our next point…

2. Optimise your Headline for Keywords 

If the aim of your blog post is to bring in website traffic, then you’ll want to optimise it for your keyword/phrase. 

Think about the example above. No one is searching for ‘Brownies for the win!’ on Google. 

But we bet there are people looking for ‘the best keto brownie companies that deliver’ or ‘the best keto brownie companies’ or even ‘keto brownie companies’. 

If you do a little keyword research, then you’ll know exactly what your audience is typing into search engines. 

Once you know that, you’ll know what words or phrases you need to include in your blog post title. 

Does anyone else really fancy a brownie right now or is it just me? 

3. Use numbers for list posts 

Oh, we don’t half love numbers. 

Numbers make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 

When we see a number as part of a blog post title, we know three things: 

1. This is going to be easy-peasy for my brain to consume 
2. This is going to be specific and actionable 
3. I’m going to be able to skim read this and get the main points 

This is what makes articles that feature numbers way more appealing. In fact, in 2020, 41% of the top articles were listicles – i.e. list-based posts just like this one. 

4. For Big, In-Depth Blog Posts, Make Them Sound Epic

We love to read epic articles that go into real depth on a topic. 

I’m talking thousands and thousands of words here. 

But sometimes they might get missed if they have such a lacklustre headline. 

When you create an epic blog post, make sure your headline reflects that. Use phrases like…

• The Ultimate Guide 
• The Beginners Guide 
• X 101 (for example, Puppy Training 101)

When you call your post the ultimate guide, your audience will understand that this is a chunky post that will go in-depth on one topic. It’s definitely an appealing post title, particularly for those who are ready to learn. 

One caveat though–only use the phrase Ultimate Guide or Beginners Guide on blog posts that really do go in-depth. 

Don’t use it for blog posts like this that are more of an overview. Even though this is 1200+ words long, we would never class it as an ultimate guide. 

5. Sprinkle Your Blog Post Headline with Magic Words 

Magic words are exactly like they sound…magic. They add that extra pizazz to a blog post headline, making it irresistible to clicks. 

Take this blog post as an example, we could’ve said ‘7 Ways to Write a Blog Post Headline’ but we added in the word irresistible. 

Notice it’s still search engine friendly (it contains my chosen keywords ). But just that one word makes the blog post more interesting, right? 

Some other words you could use are…

• Surprising 
• Unknown 
• Shocking 
• Skyrocket 
• Drastically 
• Latest 
• Awkward 
• Impact 
• Instantly 
• Under (give timeframe)
• Steal 
• Ultimate 
• Secret 

6. Go Niche on Your Blog Post Title 

It may seem counter-intuitive to go super niche with your blog post title, but honing in on your audience can have much better results. 

Let’s say, for example, you edit fantasy fiction for self-published authors. Which of these blog post headlines do you think would appeal to fantasy fiction writers the most?  

1. 8 Writing Tips 
2. 8 Writing Tips for Authors 
3. 8 Writing Tips for Fiction Authors 
4. 8 Writing Tips for Fantasy Fiction Authors (Bingo!) 

You’re right, it’s the last one! Even if numbers 1, 2, or 3 received more readers, your target audience is far more likely to click on number 4. 

7. Experiment with the positive and negative 

Your blog post headline should make a promise to your reader. It should say, if you read this, this is what you’ll learn.

You knew before you read this article that you would leave knowing some ways to write better blog post headlines – and hopefully, we’ve done that! 

But you should also experiment with ‘negative’ headlines and ‘positive’ headlines. 

What we mean by this is headlines that point out what can happen if your audience doesn’t read your article (i.e. the bad stuff) vs headlines that point out what can happen if they do (i.e. the good stuff). 

Take this blog post for example. We focused on the positives–learning how to write an irresistible blog post headline. 

But we could’ve gone down a more negative route…

Positive focus: How to write an irresistible blog post headline

Negative focus: How to avoid writing blog post headlines that turn people off 

It would’ve been the same article but with a slightly different angle. 

It’s good to test out the positive and negative angles, to see what resonates with your audience. 

Where to start? 

It’s tempting to finalise your headline right at the beginning before you’ve even started on your blog post. But it’s often better to wait until the end of the post when you’re more clear and warmed up with lots of writing! 

Make sure you test out a few headlines too and see which one feels best. 

Martin & Lyndsay

The post 7 Ways To Write An Irresistible Blog Post Headline appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

• Best salesperson, bringing leads and sales to your business 24/7
• Trusted customer service advisor, informing and building trust and loyalty with your customers
• Knight-in-shining-armour, defending you against those crappy clients or customers who absorb all your time and cause you stress
• Personal ‘Town-Crier’, someone who will pull in the crowd and get traffic to your business

Publishing content consistently could help you rank higher in the search engine results and drive more traffic to your website. More traffic from the right kind of people means more leads and, ultimately, more sales. Ka-ching!

But getting results from your business blog takes time, and you have to be doing ‘all the right things’. This is why we put together this guide for you – covering everything you need to know about running a successful business blog.

Ready to grab a brew, sit comfortably, and get stuck in?

How to create a successful business blog

The first thing you need to decide (before you even get started) is what you want to achieve with your blog. Maintaining a business blog requires time, focus, and consistency, so you don’t want to do it just for the sake of it, right? Like with anything you do in life and in business, you need to have a specific goal in mind. Otherwise, how do you know if it’s working or not?

For your blog to be successful, you need a goal for it first.

So what do we mean by goals? What can a business blog actually help you achieve?

Here are some examples…

1. Drive more traffic to your website using your blog

Publishing regular content on your business blog can help you drive more traffic to your website. How? Well, how many times in a day do you search for something on Google? Loads, right? Every time we need information, we head over to Google. And your ideal customers are exactly the same.

So if you publish content on your business blog that answers their questions, bingo! You immediately increase the chances of your website popping up in the search engine results (ideally super close to the top), which in turn means that more people might click on the link, go visit your website, and read your articles.

Want some tips on creating content that gets found on Google? Check out our SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.

2. Attract more qualified customers with your business blog

Once you get people on your website, your amazing content is your chance to show them who you are, what you have to offer, and how you work. And your web pages (like your Homepage, your About page, your sales pages, etc.) can do that to an extent. But with the articles on your business, you can showcase who you are, what you stand for, and what you know in a lot more depth.

So what happens when people land on your website and find all your valuable content? They either feel they can relate to that (and find it interesting and relevant), or they don’t. And if they don’t, they’ll hit the back button, go back to Google, and move on to the next piece of content.

Now, that might seem like bad news for you. But it’s not, really. Because if someone can’t relate to you your content, they’re not the right people for you! You don’t want to work with them as much as they don’t want to work with you!

We’ve written loads about this, so if you want to find out more, check out How and Why You Should Create ‘Wrong-Fit’ Content, or How to Stop Customer Issues Before They Happen (Using Content Marketing).

What you really want is for the people who are the right fit for you and your business to stay on your website and engage with your content. Because these are the people you ultimately want to work with – the people who will buy from you and who will prove to be great clients. These are much better-qualified prospects. And you can attract them (like moths to a flame) simply by sharing awesome content on your business blog.

3. Increase your sales by blogging

Did you know your website can sell for you? That’s right. A lot of people treat their websites as fancy online marketing material. But if you play your cards right, your website can actually make sales for you.

How? Because people don’t care what you say – they care what you publish. And the content you share on your business blog can help your ideal customers get to know, like, and trust you. When you answer all their questions, reassure them you’re the right choice for them and the person who can solve their problem, the next logical step is for them to press the buy button and work with you.

And wouldn’t it be nice if instead of spending hours on a sales call with a prospective client, that call only lasted 15-30 minutes? If you publish enough of what we call decision-based content on your website, people will start to self-qualify, meaning that they’ll only go ahead and get in touch if they’re truly interested in working with you. So by the time they jump on that sales call with you, it’s only to finalise the details, sign on the dotted line, and ask when they can get started!

If you want to find more about that, here’s a handy blog post we wrote: How to Make Content Part of Your Sales Process (so you get more sales, faster!)

4. Grow your email list through your blog

Another goal you can achieve through your business blog is to grow your email list. When you give people something of value through a lead magnet (this could be a pdf guide, a quiz, an eBook, etc.) you can ask people to give you their email address in return. And with that, you get the privilege of landing straight into their inbox as often as you like.

Sure, you can advertise your lead magnet on your Homepage, but how well do people know you by then?

Probably not much.

But when they consume content on your business blog and learn about your views about a certain topic, it’s a lot easier for you to include what we refer to as content upgrades that people can download for free by entering their email address. Once they’re engaged with your content, your readers are more likely to want to grab the freebie you’re offering and land on your email list as a result.

So now that you know what you’re trying to achieve with your business blog, let’s try and work out how often you’ll need to share content.

Important! What to do if you have multiple goals...

You’ll probably have multiple goals for your blog.

In fact, our blog helps us achieve all the points above. We use it to get traffic, increase sales, deliver excellent customer service and to make sure we attract the right people to our business.

We know At some points in the year, we focus on sales – creating sales content for specific products or services we want to promote at that moment. 

During non-sales-focused periods, we focus on creating content that will drive traffic to our website and grow our email list (this blog post is an example of that – notice it’s published in December, a particularly quiet month for us). 

And then there’s the content we create that helps deliver excellent customer service and helps us attract only the right customers – this generally will come from the questions that people ask us. 

How often will you blog for your business?

If you’ve decided to start a business blog, the worst thing you can do is to publish one blog post and then disappear from the face of the earth for months on end. (Seriously, don’t do that).

Unfortunately, as much as we all wish blogging was like waving a magic wand, it’s not. It’s a game won with showing up regularly and consistently. So if you’re going to start, make a solid commitment and stick to it!

Yes, we know it’s hard. And that’s why we run our 90-day Content Marketing Challenge a few times a year to help you produce consistently good content that gets ranked on search engines. We also help you get faster and more efficient at content creation and, ultimately, get more leads and sales from your website. The cherry on top? We give you accountability and feedback and break down all the technical stuff that’s holding you back so it becomes super easy and actionable.

You can find out more and join the next 90-day content marketing challenge here.

Decide on your blogging frequency

So, now you’ve made the decision you’re going to blog, you need to work out how often you’ll publish new content. We find that consistency is key, so whatever you go for, make sure you stick to the deadlines you’ve given yourself.

Ideally, if you could blog weekly, that would be amazing, especially if you’re just starting out and don’t have a library of content yet. Nothing stops you from blogging more though – you could publish content 2-3 times per week or even daily if you wanted.

Blogging frequently tells Google and the other search engines that your website is updated regularly, which must mean you have great content to share. So by publishing more content you’re not only giving yourself more chances of being found for more search terms that are relevant to your business, but you’re also telling Google that your website is the place to be to find new and relevant information.

Having said that, you need to strike a good balance between quality and quantity.

Publishing a piece a day of only 300-500 words might not give you as much as going really in-depth into a topic and writing a good 1,500-2,000+ word article. So if that means blogging every fortnight or every month, then that’s a great start. But be consistent. Because your audience will expect to see new content from you on a regular basis, and delivering on your promise helps you build trust with your readers.

Decide on your platform – where should you put your business blog?

We’ve seen some companies use various platforms for their business blog, including…

1. A separate website for their blog
2. A website they don’t own like Medium
3. Using LinkedIn articles to replace their blog
4. Housing their blog on their own website

We recommend you house your blog on your own website. That way your articles will rank and get found by people searching on Google. And then easily be able to find out about your products or services or sign up to your email list.

You can always repurpose your blog posts for Medium or LinkedIn articles, but it’s wise to publish on the platform you own first!

What will you share on your business blog? 

I know what you’re thinking now. “This is all well and good, but I don’t know what to write about!”

Well, we know that getting started with something new is always tricky. But once you get going, you’ll have so many ideas you’ll never run out again. Promise!

So let’s look at some content inspiration for you.

“How to” content

This is the most popular form of content you’ll find on the internet and business blogs in general. There’s a reason for it – it’s great for website traffic. Because when you don’t know how to do something, you head over to Google to find the answer, right? So your “How to” articles provide your audience with the know-how they’re looking for.

Although this blog post you’re reading doesn’t have “How to” in the title, it’s a “How to” piece of content. It tells you everything you need to know about the topic of starting and running your own successful business blog.

So think about the kind of things you’re an expert in. What do you teach in your business? What do you find yourself explaining to your customers or clients over and over? Sit down with a cuppa and make a list of topics – you’ll end up with an awesome starting list of potential articles for your business blog.

Here are a couple of examples from our own business blog:

• How to Write Website Copy for SEO.
• How to Create a 90 Day Content Strategy.

“They Ask, You Answer” content

In a nutshell, this is about answering the questions that your existing customers or prospective clients ask you all the time. The term comes from the book They Ask You Answer, by Marcus Sheridan. You may have heard us talk about this book before (we love it!), and that’s because its teachings have literally transformed our business and the way we use content marketing to generate leads and sales.

If you want to find out more about the exact topics that Marcus Sheridan recommends you create content about and want more inspiration, head over to the blog post, How to Plan 50 Pieces of Content in 30 Minutes.

“Content Fortress” Content

If you’ve come across any of our content at all, you’ll probably be familiar with the phrase “Content Fortress”, which is the title of our book and online course.

So what does this phrase mean? Imagine your business is the ‘castle’ you’re trying to protect. To keep it safe, you might want to build a wall or some sort of structure around it. And for us, the way to build this ‘fortress’ is to create content. That’s it. Creating a content fortress means protecting yourself (as the most important asset in your business) with content.

With us so far?

“But protect yourself from what, exactly?”, you might ask.

Glad you asked.

From bad clients, for example. From people who aren’t right for you and your business – people who come with the wrong expectations or assumptions. Or people who might be after a product or service you don’t even offer!

See, the thing is – when you create the right type of content around your business (and publish it on your business blog), you start to attract more people who are right for you and repel those who would you might say yes to despite your gut telling you not to, and they turn out to be people who aren’t a great fit for you (or you for them).

Like we said earlier, repelling clients might sound like a bad thing, but it’s really not! Especially if it protects your mental health and ensures your business occupies a positive place in your life.

If you want to find out more about all this, head over to the blog post, What is a content fortress?

“Pillar” content

Pillar content is long-form content that goes really in-depth into a topic. We’re talking 2,500-4,000+ words here. Yes, it’s epic! But that’s what’s so good about it. It’s comprehensive, it goes into detail, it answers loads of questions that your ideal customers might have, and it’s great for SEO. It’s your typical “Everything you need to know about X” content.

Here’s an example we have on our website, SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.

When you write this type of content you’re not just providing a great customer experience for your users, but you’re also increasing your chances of being found on Google. Why? Because when you write long-form content you’re probably going to use lots and lots of handy phrases that people might search for (a.k.a. keywords) and also link to other pieces of content you’ve created. And these are the kinds of things that the SEO gods absolutely love!

Plus, with articles of this length, you’re also telling the search engines that their users are more likely to find what they’re looking for in your piece, rather than in your competitors’, who may have written a short 500-word article on the same topic. So you’re winning all round!

News-related content

There’s a lot you can do here. You could share newsjacking content, which is all about creating a piece showcasing your thoughts and opinions based on trending news topics or breaking news stories. This could be anything you have an opinion on, but we’re talking about your business blog here, so ideally, stick to topics that relate to your industry, niche, or business.

For example, are there any changes coming up to rules and regulations that affect your industry? Could your readers benefit from you breaking down key information and explaining how the changes impact them? Say you’re an accountant. I’m sure you have loads of clients who could do with an easy explanation of what Making Tax Digital is all about and how it impacts them, right? (No, seriously, are you that accountant? Help!)

And finally, when it comes to news-related content, it could be something about your own company. Although, we always say to try and limit this because as much as this is your website and your business blog, the harsh truth is that your prospective customers don’t care about you – they care about how you can help them.

So whenever you’re sharing news about yourself and your business, make sure they’re relevant to your audience. An example of this may be talking about ‘your why’ (i.e. why you started your company and do what you do).

But how do you write one of these blog posts?

Once you know your topic, then you actually have to write them damn thing. And even if you’re a seasoned blogger, there’s always so much room for improvement. We know, we learn something new on every post we create.

You’ll want to make sure you hit the key points that make a great blog post. Including…

1. A killer headline that attracts attention (and helps you rank)
2. An opening paragraph that grips the reader and gets them to read on
3. A structure that is easy-to-understand and follow
4. A conclusion that gets your reader to take action

We’ve actually created an in-depth blog post on how to write a blog post.

What will your blogging schedule look like?

Okay, so now that you know what you’re going to blog about, it’s time to look at how you’re going to do it. How will you distribute content across your business blog?

You have a few options here:

• You could mix and match your topics, choosing from the different types of content we shared in this blog post. This gives your audience a good variety of topics and ensures you’re not only just creating the same kind of article week on week. This is exactly wa
• Goal-focused approach. If you have a particular goal you’re trying to achieve (for example, increasing your website traffic), you could decide to create a lot of ‘How to’ or Pillar content to attract more visitors to your website from the search engines. Or, if you’re trying to rank for a particular keyword, you might decide to create a series of articles on that topic for a month or two or until you’ve said everything you wanted to say about that topic.
• Campaign-driven approach. This is about choosing the one thing you want to sell and going to town with creating content around it. If you want to read more about this approach, head over to our piece, How to create a 90-day content strategy.
• Awareness days content. You could also decide to create content around specific awareness days, such as Mental Health Week, Dry January, or whatever you choose. Again, you want this content to ideally be relevant to your industry and your business, as this gives you a chance to let your readers see what your take is on a particular issue and add value to them. 

How will you optimise your blog posts?

So you now know how often you’re going to blog, what you’re going to blog about, and how you’ll distribute your content creation. What’s next?

You’ll notice we talk a lot about SEO and the fact that having a business blog where you publish regular and valuable content will help you be found on Google.

But the thing is – it doesn’t just happen by magic. There are things you need to do before, during, and after writing your blog posts to make sure they are picked up successfully by the search engines. This is called optimisation, and even if you don’t know the first thing about it, you don’t need to be a techie or hire an expensive SEO agency to be able to do it.

You can learn everything you need to know about optimising your blog posts in this handy guide, WordPress SEO For Blogging – How to Optimise Your WordPress Blog Posts.

And once you’ve done that, simply set aside an additional 20-30 minutes to optimise each of your blog posts, and you’ll be good to go!

How will you drive traffic to your business blog?

Now that you have the most amazing business blog, the last thing you need to do is to start driving traffic to it. You’ve got this incredible content you’ve spent all this time and effort creating, so of course, you now want to make sure people find it, right?

Definitely (and pleeeease) don’t fall at this last hurdle! We see so many business owners do this, but your job when it comes to business blogging doesn’t stop when you hit the publish button. You need to get eyeballs on your content. Because that’s the first step to generate leads and sales from it.

So what are some of the things you can do to promote your blog posts?

1. Repurpose your content

Optimisation is of course the first big step in making sure you’re ticking all the right boxes so that Google and the other search engines pick up your content. But you can’t just leave it at that. So the next thing you can do is to repurpose your blog posts into other pieces of content to get them in front of more people.

So, for example, you could repurpose your blog posts into:

• LinkedIn articles.
• Guest posts on more influential websites with a broader reach than yours.
• YouTube videos.
• A series of slides, a talk, or a presentation.

To get more ideas and information about what repurposing is (and find out how to do it), head over to the article, How to Repurpose a Blog Post (and Save Yourself So Much Time!)

2. Share on social media

Sharing your content on social media also gives you a chance to reach more people. However…

How many times have you seen a post from someone on your social media feed saying,

“Hey, here’s my latest blog post! Go and read it! Here’s the link.”

Do you honestly stop scrolling and go and read it? We’re willing to bet that most of the time you don’t. (Unless the title or the title image happens to jump at you as the thing you’ve been wanting to look into for a while).

So instead of just broadcasting and letting your social media audience know you’ve published something new, try repurposing that content (see above). You can do that by pulling out some of the key points you covered in your blog post and inviting people in that way. You’re more likely to grab their attention and have them click on your link to head to your website and read.

3. Share with your email list

If you have an email list (and if you don’t, why not?), it’s another great chance to let more people know about the new content you’ve published on your website. A brand new blog post gives you a nice excuse to email your list, but (again) don’t just drop the link and run. Make sure your email shares something of value that links nicely to your latest blog post. And then you can drop the link.

And if you’re looking for tips on how to grow your email list, head over to the article, The Ultimate Guide to Generating More Leads From Your Website.

4. Paid advertising

Another way to drive traffic to your website is through paid advertising. You could run paid ads via different social media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) While this isn’t free (the clue being in the name), when done right, paid advertising gives you the chance to get in front of new audiences, especially if you don’t already have a large following on your social media channels.

You see, social media platforms hold lots of information about their users that you could never dream of getting direct access to – things like where people live, how old they are, what interests they have, etc. So by using social media advertising, you’re in a much better position to utilise that data and get your content in front of more of your ideal customers and clients.

How to generate leads and sales from your blog

So now that you’ve driven traffic to your website, what’s next? Well, the last thing you want is for people to just come and have a quick read and then click the back button and never come back. When that happens, you have no real visibility of who’s been on your website, which means you can’t interact with them and steer that relationship in any way.

Instead, you want to generate leads – i.e. capture your visitors’ details. You want people to give you their email address in exchange for some sort of freebie or giveaway. It could be someone booking a call with you or filling in your contact form.

As we explained earlier when talking about using your business blog to grow your email list, you can do this by offering:

• A freebie or lead magnet. This is something you offer on your website to all your visitors.
• Content upgrades. This could be, for example, a free checklist or PDF that expands on the content you covered in a specific blog post.
• A paid product. Similar to a content upgrade, this product fits in with the content of your blog post, but instead of being something your audience can download for free in exchange for their email address, it’s a paid-for product.

You can learn more about how generate leads through your blog and website in general in our blog post, how to create a lead generating website.

Want to Cut Your Blogging Time in Half?

So there you have it. Everything you need to know about business blogging! As you can see, there’s A LOT that goes into blogging and creating a blog post can take a lot of time. This is why we’ve created our Blog Post Template pack. It includes 10+ fill-in-the-blanks blog post templates that will save you so much time and increase your traffic and rankings!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post The Ultimate Business Blogging Guide appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

‍Best salesperson – that will deliver you actual direct sales (as well as be helpful) 

‍Knowledgeable customer service advisor – to help your potential customers make the right buying decision 

Knight in shining armour – to protect your time from those who are the wrong fit 

Advertiser – encouraging lots of footfall (i.e. web traffic) to your business

But we’ve noticed that some of our blog posts are the ‘shining stars’ – they work really hard for us (and other businesses too). They pull their weight by saving us time, increasing sales, and getting lots of traffic to our website. 

And the best thing is, you can create content like this too. And if you’re not sure where to start with blogging or need some help, then read our ultimate guide: how to write a blog post. 

So in this blog post, we’re going to tell you about 5 key killer blog post ideas that will work hard for your business.  

1. Blog Post Idea One: How much does it cost… 

What’s the one thing you Google? 

How much does it cost. 

How much does it cost to hire a marketing coach/personal trainer/book editor? 

How much does a shark hoover cost? 

How much does a swimming pool cost? 

How much does a mansion cost in London? (I already know this one – way out of my budget)

You get the picture. 

And better yet, creating a ‘how much does it cost’ piece of content is easy because you already know the answer inside out. You’ll know and understand the variables that can make the cost of your product or service go up or down. And you’ll know and understand the market and what the minimum/maximum price might be for your product or service.  

Top Tip for this Blog Post Idea!

The one thing I would recommend when creating content like this, is that you give someone an indication of what you charge within the content too.

For example, you could go into details about how much it costs for a website, what the variables are, what can make the price go up or down etc. And then you could say, I charge between £x and £x or I charge ‘from £x’.  

How Will This Content Work For You? 

One of the biggest benefits of this content is that it ranks – especially if your competitors shy away from this topic. This is something we learnt from Content Marketing master, Marcus Sheridan in his book, They Ask, You Answer. 

The reason we recommend you also include your costs is because…

1. It’s just good customer service if you do this 
2. It saves you time -it prevents people from getting in touch with you when they don’t have the right budget. This can save you hours on emails, calls and writing proposals. 

Key advantages of ‘how much does it cost’ article:

• Rankability 
• Time saver – you can send it to new prospects once they get in touch, providing help and advice and preventing you from spending time with people who don’t have the right budget

Example of this blog post idea in action!

Fit Roots Martial Arts School do a great job at this with their article, How Much Does Martial Arts Cost? And it shows how this can work not just for B2B business but also a B2C business.

2. Blog Post Idea Two: Everything you need to know about x service/product

I personally follow a lot of people because they deliver thought-provoking, helpful content. 

They give and give and give. 

And…I don’t have a clue what they do. Not specifically. 

Their website might be unclear. Or I just soak up their content on social media and never actually visit their site. 

This is the danger when you only give helpful content. There’s got to be a point where you ask for the sale and explain what it is you do.

This is where a piece of content can help. We love ‘everything you need to know about my x product/service’ or ‘how to work with me’ type content.

This is a very specific piece of content that walks the reader through the key features and benefits of your product or service in a simple way. It’s a great way to get eyeballs on your products and services. You can share it on social media and email it to your list. 

It grabs the attention of those who love you but may not have considered working with you before. Or it gives those people who have been considering you a little nudge in the right direction. 

Top Tip For This Blog Post Idea

This content isn’t a sales page. So try to avoid over the top, unnecessary sales copy. Imagine this content is a good customer service advisor, providing helpful advice on a particular product or service – that’s exactly how it should sound!

How Will This Content Work For You? 

This isn’t content that ranks on Google. And that’s okay. Not everything has to rank. This is something very much aimed at people at the ‘decision stage’ of buying from you – where your potential customer is looking at different companies to buy from and weighing up which one suits them best. 

This content delivers good customer service and it fills in any gaps missing from your sales pages. It also shines a light on your products and services as you can share this on social media and in your email. 

Key Advantages of an ‘Everything You Need to Know’ Post

• Sales generator
• Customer service 

Example of this Blog Post Idea in Action:

I love Adele’s blog post all about her Greek Retreat. It tells you everything you would need to know without being salesy or overly promotional. It’s frank and informative. Exactly what’s supposed to be. 

We also published an Everything You Need to Know post about our 90-day content marketing challenge. In exactly the same way, this is an unbiased overview of the product – the exact opposite of the sales page!

3. Blog Post Idea Three: ‘How to find the right x’

We all hate making a bad buying decision. We fear wasting money and time. We fear looking silly. We fear getting ‘ripped off’. And that’s also why we do a lot of research before we invest in things. I can’t buy a bloody toaster without doing a deep dive on reviews. 

That’s why it’s a good idea to hold your audience’s hand when it comes to buying the products or services you sell (even if they don’t directly buy from you). This is where the ‘How to find the right x for you’ content comes in. 

This is content that helps guide people to find the right person for them. It could be how to find the right editor, coffee machine, graphic designer, estate agent, personal trainer, content writer, social media expert, recruitment agency etc. 

Whatever it is you sell, people need help buying it. Your job is to help them. 

Top Tip For This Blog Post Idea

When you create this kind of content, it’s not about selling you specifically. It’s about helping your audience find the right person for them. 

It has to be unbiased and incredibly helpful. Sure, mention what you do (definitely don’t shy away from it) but that’s not the sole purpose of it!

How Will This Content Work For You? 

You can deliver excellent customer service and rank on google too. People often search for ‘how to find the right x’ and similar key phrases, so it’s a good one to go after. 

It also builds a huge amount of trust with your audience. Imagine struggling to find the right personal trainer. Then you come across a helpful blog post that tells you exactly how to find the right personal trainer for you. 

Who are you going to remember? And who are you more likely to use as your personal trainer? The person who helped you, of course!

Key Advantages of a ‘How to Find the Right X‘ Post

• Rankability
• Customer service 
• Trust Builder 

Example of this Blog Post Idea in Action:

I love this example from Denise, who actually published a podcast on how to find the right editor for you. It’s great content that really does help the audience. There are so many different factors that go into hiring an editor, and in one piece of content, Denise clears everything up!

4. Blog Post Idea Four: Reasons you shouldn’t work with me 

This is the juiciest piece of content you will ever create, and it’s fun and highly therapeutic! But most importantly, it’s the best kind of content for attracting the right people to your business and repelling the ones you don’t want. 

This content is a simple list of reasons why someone shouldn’t work with you. It could be something you don’t do – for example, a fiction editor might say, ‘I don’t edit non-fiction’. 

Or it could be something more specific to your service, such as ‘I don’t work with people who have a budget of less than £5,000.’ 

It could even be something to do with mindset or attitude, for example, when we wrote our repelling content (that’s what we call it!), we stated that we didn’t want to work with people who were searching for a ‘yes-man/woman web designer.’ Essentially, we didn’t want to be told what to do and treated as an employee. 

Top Tip For This Blog Post Idea

It’s quite easy to slip into arrogance when you create this content. You might not do it purposefully. But when you create a list of reasons why people shouldn’t work with you, it can understandably come across as egotistical. 

Just have empathy for your reader when you create it. Come at this from a ‘good customer service’ point of view. You want to help your reader understand if they’re the right fit for you. You want to prevent them from wasting their time (as much as you don’t want to waste yours). 

So leave your ego at the door. And if someone isn’t the right fit (if they haven’t got the budget, for example) then point them to resources that can help them too. 

How will this content work for you?

Creating this kind of content works well for two reasons: 

1. You don’t waste your time communicating with the wrong people
2. You increase your trust with your ideal clients as they understand you’re exclusive. And you’re not out to make a quick buck from everybody out there. It shows pride and confidence. And people like that. 

We use this in our sales process quite often, particularly if someone gets in touch and they’re already bossing us around! But that’s rare now. Just having the content there really does prevent the ‘wrong fits’ from getting in touch. 

Key Advantages of a ‘Why You’re Not the Right Fit For Me’ Post

• Customer service
• Prevents bad clients
• Saves time

Example of this Blog Post Idea in Action:

I love this piece of repelling content from the content writer, Debbie Ekins. It’s confident and respectful and hits the perfect tone of repelling content.

If you’d like help creating this kind of content, check out our blog post on how to create repelling content.

5. Blog Post Idea Five: What’s the Process of Working with Me? 

How does it work? What’s the process? What’s the next step?

Ever asked yourself those questions when you’re thinking of working with someone? 

I have. All the time. And I hate it. I personally hate not knowing what’s going to happen. It makes me suspicious. 

I’m not interested in mystery and in the secret formula you promise to show me (once I hand over my cash, of course). 

Nope. I (like many other people) want to understand the EXACT process. 

And this is where process content comes in. 

Process content is extremely simple. It outlines the step by step process of working with you. 

There’s an argument to suggest that your prospects don’t need to understand the exact ins and outs of how you work. But in our experience, people do want to know your step-by-step process, even if it’s just a basic overview. And of course, it really does depend on the level of investment. You’re going to want to know more if you’re spending thousands. 

How will this content work for you?

Process content can work in many different ways. Firstly, it can actually be a way of generating sales because if someone sees your process they understand you know what you’re doing. 

You can also use it at various stages of working with someone. We add our process to every proposal we send and we also send it to each client at the start of them working with us. This means no one has that horrible ‘I’ve just paid money and don’t know what happens next’ feeling! 

Key Advantages of a ‘What’s the Process of Working With Me’ Post

• Customer service 
• Saves time 
• Can lead to sales!

Example of this Blog Post Idea in Action:

This is one of our oldest blog posts but it still pulls its weight 4 years on! This is the blog post where we listed our web design process step by step. 

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

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