Become a Business Blog Writer for Your Small Business

Coming up with ideas for your business blog can be harder than writing the blog posts - especially if you're busy, as most business owners are. Finding ideas is a skill that becomes better with practice so here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Keep a little notebook and when you do come up with an idea, write it down! Any writer will tell you they've forgotten more good ideas than they've remembered. You know how that goes - you suddenly have a great idea, then someone interrupts you, and when they leave, your idea seems to have departed with them!

2. Remember the phrase "I'm blogging that" and when your see, hear or think of something you can blog about, say to yourself "I'm blogging that" and...write it into your notebook.

3. Set up a Google News Alert for things relating to your business. Google will send news stories straight to your email inbox - giving you a constant supply of topical and timely ideas for your business blog.

4. Have you added new products or services recently? Can you offer a special deal? Blog that!

5. "How to" blog posts - depending on the product or service you offer, there might be topics you can blog about that would be of great interest to your prospective clients. These might be things that are common knowledge to you because you're so familiar with your business - but your clients may not be so learned on the topics.

DO

Let your prospective customers know what an expert you are in your field by adding informative and helpful items to your business blog.

Show off your products or services by adding photos to your business blog if this is possible.

Give your site visitors tips on how to care for your products or free 'how to' advice that relates to your product or service.

Use a conversational style and plain English.

DON'T

Don't publish your personal information on your business blog.

Avoid using your business blog to give your opinion on matters that don't relate to your business.

Don't slam your competitors - it makes you look bad and you could be sued.

Pictures can help out with SEO too so adding pictures to your blog posts is a great idea. The trick is to name your picture using the keywords that relate to your post. Naturally, the picture should be relevant to your post too.

Using photos can be tricky. You can't just use any photo you find on the Internet - photos are subject to copyright. You can purchase bundles of photos cheaply from some sites. Others have photos you can use for free - always check the terms of use before you use photos from a site. Another easy way to ensure you have a good supply of photos for your blog is to simply take your own! A little digital camera and a bit of imagination and it's hard to go wrong these days. You might think that time consuming - but it might take less time than trying to find the perfect photo online.

If you don't like writing for your own business blog and you don't want to pay someone else to do it, you might like to try inviting guest bloggers to submit posts for publication on your blog. There are many writers and topic experts out there who reslish the opportunity to contribute to a blog - although there's usually a small catch. The blogger will most likely want to be credited as the author of the blog post, which is fair enough. If they have a business website themselves, it's likely they'll want you to provide a link from the blog post to their website, which again is quite reasonable.

How can this work for your business blog? Simple. If there are topics you'd like to talk about on your blog but don't have the expertise, writing skills or the time to do it, invite someone who does. Let's say for example, that your business blog relates to a carpet and rug store. You'd like to sell more Persian rugs and so you want to add those keywords to your blog. Blog posts should be informative and interesting to your site visitors, in addition to adding keywords to your site and promoting your business. It's possible to do all of this at the same time. A post about the history of Persian rugs would be great. Perhaps another blog post telling your prospective customers how to remove marks from a Persian rug. No doubt, there'd be some lovely photos that could be used to make the post visually attractive too.

Now all you need is someone knowledgeable about the history of Persian rugs and/or stain removal. This person might be someone you know personally, or a supplier, or someone who responds to your online request for a guest blogger.

One word of caution when using guest bloggers - make sure they know what they're talking about. Hopefully you will know enough about the subject matter to know that their blog post is factually correct but if you're uncertain, do a little fact checking yourself. The last thing you need on your business blog is information that is incorrect.

Networking with other business people and suppliers in your trade can help you find guest bloggers - some will be happy to get a link from your blog while others will see it as a little free advertising opportunity. It can be a win-win situation.