As we often say, maintaining a blog for your business is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field, help visitors to your site get to “know you” a bit before potentially working with you, and increase your website’s SEO.

Blogs have come a long way in the past few years. With most major companies and news organizations hosting a blog on their site – not to mention experts and practitioners in a wide variety of fields – blogs are starting to lose the stereotype of a 13-year-old’s online journal. Writing a personal blog is extremely different than writing for a business blog, though. So how do you get started?

Here are 5 tips for writing a business blog post:

1. Pick a Topic. What do you want to write about? You can include a list of tips, provide your commentary on industry news, answer frequently asked questions about your company, share client case studies, etc. The sky is the limit when it comes to coming up with topics for blog posts.
2. Brainstorm Content. What do you want to include in your blog post? Although you want it to be promotional, remember that the purpose is to provide something of value. What helpful information can you share for your readers?
3. Write the Post. Once you have your topic and know what you’re going to write about, start typing out the actual post. It’s always a good idea to write as if it’s a note to a friend. In addition to keeping the tone pleasant and casual (as blogs tend to be less formal), this will help you avoid the industry jargon. How would you explain it if you were talking to a friend that doesn’t work in your field? Use the same language for your readers as well.
4. Edit. This is a step a LOT of bloggers miss, but it’s extremely important! Read over the post you’ve written and check for words spell check mis-corrected, sentences with extra words, and typos. Since your blog is a way of introducing yourself to potential customers, you want it to be as accurate as possible. Even if you aren’t a trained writer, your credibility is established through correct grammar and spelling. For editing tips, read this blog post.
5. Publish. Once your post is ready to go, upload it to your blog and publish away! I always recommend previewing the post before hitting “publish” as you can often catch last-minute typos and formatting errors. Feel free to include an image within the post, too, as it can make the article even more appealing to readers.

We want to hear from you! How do you approach writing a blog post for your business? Do you have any tips to share?

Photo Credit: Maria Reyes-McDavis

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