Business Blog Content Writing Tips

If you have already set up a WordPress blog (if not, subscribe to our FREE WordPress Tutorials to learn how to install, set up, configure and use WordPress), the only hurdle left to overcome, is actually getting down to the business of writing your blog content.

Here are some great tips to help you blog about your business successfully:

Tip #1 – You don’t have to be a writer

Tip #2 – Write as you would normally speak

You don’t need to be clever or entertaining – just write as you would speak to someone about your business. For example, pick a common problem many of your customers experience when choosing to buy your products or services and address that problem in your blog post.

Talk about the benefits and advantages of your solution, give them some insider tips to help make their buying decision easier, let them know what results they can expect to see after buying from you and where they can get after sales support or training if they need help.

Tip #3 – Find a writing style for your posts and articles that works for you

Once you get used to blogging about your business and have enough data to be able to start measuring your results and assessing your general readership, you will find a structure and style that works best for you.

For example, you may discover that you have a natural knack for providing unbiased product reviews and comparisons and that customers are gravitating towards your site for advice and research before buying.

Or, you may discover that you really like to engage with your readers through interactive areas of your blog like the comments section. Or maybe, your posts turn into great answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for your visitors, and help to reduce the time prospects spend doing pre-purchase research with your sales staff.

Tip: You can also integrate Facebook and WordPress commenting on your blog so that any comments left on your site will also be displayed on the Facebook walls of your blog readers.

Whatever you discover works best for your business blog, it’s good to establish certain principles in the way you structure your content early on.

Here are some of the basic principles of good business blog copywriting:

• Use your main keyword in your title and create an engaging title. You want your post titles to catch the eye of visitors who are browsing your site and get them to read the rest of your post.
• Make your post educational and informative for readers. Try to avoid blatant self-promotion and focus on giving your readers value instead. The more value you provide to your blog readers, the more trust, confidence and authority you will build with them and this will greatly improve the reputation of your business online. Great posts also get shared around the web, giving your business and site additional exposure. Consider adding content sharing features to your blog to make sharing and bookmarking of posts easy for visitors.
• You can publish posts any size you want, but we have found that posts and articles with a minimum of 500-700 words (4-5 paragraphs) generally work very well for both visitors and search engines.
• Make sure you use the main keyword and keyword variations you want to rank well for in your post. Generally, we recommend introducing your main keyword in the first paragraph and using it as a bold hyperlinked anchor text (i.e. link the keyword to a different page on your site that is relevant to the keyword, e.g.: blog management.)
• Don’t stuff keywords in your content. Search engines like Google are very savvy to this trick and may penalize you for “keyword stuffing”. Use your keywords appropriately and in the right context and you will do well with both your blog visitors and search engines.
• Always have a “call to action”at the end of your post. You want to inform and educate your readers about an aspect of your business, and then direct them to a desired outcome, such as subscribing to your newsletter, contacting you via your site’s contact form, filling in a survey, adding an item to your shopping cart, etc …

Let’s take a look at each of these options in more detail:

Option 1: Write the blog content yourself

This is normally the option that gets the best results. Blog posts written by the business owners themselves (or anyone who cares deeply enough about the business) often come across as being naturally sincere and more authoritative. The writing also tends to include many industry-related terms or phrases (i.e. jargon), which works great for both readers and search engines.

An effective content writing strategy to use if you decide to write your own blog content, is to follow the A.I.D.A. principle. A.I.D.A. stands for:

Attention – Get your reader’s attention with a headline, or in this case, the title of your post and make sure to use your main keyword in the title as discussed earlier. For example, an article about Content Management Systems (CMS) might be entitled “Content Management Systems – Avoiding The 5 Most Common Mistakes Made When Choosing A CMS For Your Business.”

Interest – Help your reader maintain interest in your post by writing about things that relate to them and their situation. This could be issues, problems, frustrations, benefits, challenges, etc. that are commonly experienced by people who need your products or services.

The A.I.D.A. principle is not only very effective when used to create your own blog content, but it is also important for the other options we’re discussing here, so be sure to familiarize yourself with it.

Option 2: Rewrite Existing Content

If creating new content from scratch is too difficult, the next best option is to rewrite existing content and make it 100% unique. There are several ways you can do this:

Copy, Paste & Rewrite: Do a search online on the topic you want to write about, then go through the sites that come up on your search results and copy and paste information relevant to your article into a text file or Word document. You can source material this way from a whole range of different places, such as government sites, other business websites and blogs, forums, product review sites (e.g. Amazon), audio podcasts, videos, etc. Once you have enough information gathered, don’t just rewrite the content – use it as a template for creating your own unique content.

Use Content Rewriting Software: Avoid using “automated” software that promise better search engine rankings but create garbled and unreadable rubbish for human readers.

There are great software programs available that will help you save time by facilitating the process of researching and gathering content from a number of different online sources, and then allowing you to intelligently rewrite and combine the content into a unique and highly readable article. Two content rewriting software tools you should check out are Rewrite Rocket and Instant Article Wizard. Visit their sites for video demos, examples, testimonials and more information.

Buy Quality PLR Articles And Rewrite These: PLR stands for Private Label Rights. What a PLR article service does, is leverage group buying power by hiring professional writers to write content, then selling a limited number of the same content to members (e.g. 150, 500 or 1,000 copies). For example, if you need Travel related articles, you can become a member of a Travel PLR site, and receive new articles each month on travel-related topics.

You will need to rewrite PLR articles, however, because a number of other members of the PLR site will also own the same content as you. At best, you should rewrite the entire article to ensure its uniqueness. At the very least, you should at least give the article a unique title.

Please note: PLR articles can vary greatly in quality, so make sure you check out the supplier thoroughly before you commit to spending any significant amount of money.

If you don’t know where to start, here are some great PLR sites you can check out:

PLR Mini Mart - This PLR site was started by Tiffany Dow, a very successful ghostwriter who has written articles and content for many online business owners.

EasyPLR – This is a very popular PLR site for business owners looking for quality, engaging and informative content to post on their blogs or send in their newsletters, etc. The site makes its PLR content available only to low limited numbers of content-buyers (usually only around 100-150 per PLR pack) and uses teams of professional writers to create niche-specific content. You can buy content only for the topics you need.

All Private Label Content - This is another great PLR site that allows you to buy specific content packs on the topics you need, or become a member of specific niches.

Option 3: Outsource Your Article Writing

The last option to consider is outsourcing the writing of your blog content to professional writers, experienced freelance writers, or using professional content creation or article writing services.

When outsourcing to freelance or professional writers, you can look at online services like Elance or Freelancer. These sites let you post a project and freelance writers then bid for the work. You then hire the writers and manage the process, or sign on with a service that manages the writers and the content creation process for you and charge you a nominal fee for the content they produce on your behalf.

When you’re first starting out, outsourcing your blog content writing to a service like like Elance or Freelancer may not be practical, because it takes time and experience to discover good writers.

Some of the pitfalls to watch out for are:

• Writers that are inconsistent with their turnaround time (e.g. from time of request to time of delivery)
• People who bid cheaply for the work, then deliver content that is really poor or plagiarized
• Spending a lot of time recruiting new writers to replace the bad ones you hired.
• Learning how to manage the outsourcing process (you can end up becoming an article-writing manager, which is not something you really want to do).

If you don’t know where to start looking, here are some established article-writing services we recommend you check out:

SEO Writers -This article writing service is used by thousands of business clients worldwide. It uses only professional writers who are native English speakers and who are highly trained to write content that is both engaging to human readers and optimized for search engine. Their prices are very affordable and they offer quick turnaround times.

Articlez – This article writing site also uses 100% American sourced writers while offering a competitively priced service when compared to other content outsourcing options and quick turnaround times on content delivery. You can create a FREE account and purchase content as you go.

TextBroker – This service provides unique, customized content for articles, blog posts, travelogues, product reviews, press releases and more. Incidentally, if you plan on using the TextBroker article-writing service, we recommend you also check out the WPTextBroker plugin, which allows you to order articles and receive ready to publish content for your blog directly from your WordPress administration panel.

The above services will manage and audit the writers on your behalf and provide a reliable turnaround time. All you have to do is submit the work to be done and they will handle the rest.

NOTE: No matter how good the writing is, you should always review the content to make sure it’s exactly what you want to send out to your readers. It’s not uncommon when using professional writing services to find you need to make some tweaks and adjustments to your articles to ensure quality.

I hope you have found this post useful.