You know why you need to blog. It helps you in search results because Google loves fresh content. When you blog you add valuable content to your site that will show up in search results – months and years after you’ve created it.
Secondly it gives you a lot of added credibility to potential clients as it clearly demonstrates that you know what you’re talking about.
What should I blog about?
Develop a strategy based around the audience you need to reach. It’s that simple. Start by creating a couple of personas. If you’re not a marketing dude or dudette, personas are profiles of your ideal clients. This exercise will help put you in their shoes and get you thinking about what the content they want to see. It will also stop you churning out content that is “you-focused.” Why? Because life is too short to be reading blatantly promotional blogs, tweets or updates.
The trick is to then connect the interests of your ideal client to what it is you need to communicate.
If you want to reach managers and executives, and you happen to be a sales speaker or sales trainer, then you have to create blog content that your ideal client will want to read, share and subscribe to. But you also have to consider how that content will get them to connect with you as a potential business partner.
How often should I blog?
This is a big one. Ideally you should try and blog something every day. But let’s face it, you’re busy. And coming up with something new and interesting to write about is hard work. Some professionals fall into a trap whereby they start putting out all sorts of crap just so they can say they are blogging 3 times a week. The problem is that the reader get so sick of filtering through the crap, that they stop paying attention all together.
It’s better to create a single amazing piece of content each week that will get shared to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, than three space fillers that your ideal clients don’t care about. They aren’t going to sort through a lot of bland posts just to find the rare nugget of gold.
Are you still looking for help? Check out Short Circuit Media’s new Blog Coaching Service with James Bullbrook.