We know building content is one of the key aspects of marketing your business (and one of the most time-consuming ones). If you love to write, you relish your blogging time! If you don’t like to write, it is a procrastination haven. Let’s move you out of that rut.
There are a few basic options for how to approach writing and posting content for your business
- Do the writing yourself
- Write your own draft and hire a copyeditor to polish it off for you
- Hire someone to write it (you or a team member will need to provide them with a brief)
Typically these reasons are what I see people struggle with in building their own written content
- Fear of the blank page
- Low confidence in writing
- They don’t like writing and resist building content, thinking they don’t know how
- They feel intimated by marketing their business – they don’t know what their options are or how to build a strategy and plan to know what to write
- Perfectionism shuts them down. The ideas are there but the pen never gets to paper as overwhelm kicks in fast
- It feels never-ending sometimes
- Run out of ideas
- Don’t really understand their audience or how to write to them
- Feel like the process is creating ideas out of thin air while staring at a blank page
- Write a rough draft but feel like it isn’t good enough to post
Ultimately whether the blogs get written or not, it can take far more time and stress than necessary! This article is here to help you overcome those challenges.
A Brief Note About Marketing and Writing
Blogging is a form of content used in marketing your business.
Marketing in its simplest form is connecting with your audience, building awareness and trust, and demonstrating how you can solve your clients’ problems. Content is a key component of this communication.
Each business will be unique in how they serve clients, it is your unique value position in the market. No two businesses will serve their clients the exact same way as their competitors. Your audience doesn’t know that though, unless you tell them.
It comes back to the principle of knowing your audience. When you have these answers, it is much easier to write a blog because you know who you are writing to, what they want, and how you can help them.
10 Ways to Make Blogging Easier for Small Business Owners
I’ve got you covered for ideas here. There are many more, but these are tried and true. Find what fits for you and experiment.
1. Review and Revise Your Customer Avatar
Know who you are writing to, their language, and what problems they need solving is part of knowing your customer. It will give you focus and direction with your writing. You will be having a “conversation” with this profiled audience. For example, writing to engineers and city planners will be different vocabulary and industry lingo than writing to IT specialists in manufacturing. You want to capture your audience’s interest and resonate with what they feel and think.
2. Create a Content Plan and Calendar
Prepare a 30-60 day content plan based on what is a popular topic with your clients, what is trending in their industry, and what problems they are struggling with. Put this plan in a calendar, spreadsheet, notebook or document. One that is easy to find and reference. Then when you sit to write you know exactly what to get going on.
3. Write an Outline
Some writers like to just get started and write, others, like myself, usually need more structure. Structure can be a very detailed plan or a loose outline with notes scribbled in sections. The beauty of blogging is there is no wrong way to go about your writing process. Blogs are conversational and educational, opinioned at times. They can take on any tone – depending on who you are writing to. Blogs are not in depth research articles for professional journals. Your audience needs to get to know you, your personality and style, as you are having a conversation with them. That being said, if you reference other authors’ work, do cite the reference out of professional courtesy.
4. Tap into AI
There are infinite uses for AI (such as ChatGPT) in making blogging easier. I hesitated to include it here for the simple fact that writing is an organic process. Learning how to access your creativity, build a structure and process for yourself early on, and understand principles and practices in writing cannot be replicated by a computer. Your creativity muscles weaken and it can quickly become an easy cop out that turns into a habit if you hand your writing over to AI.
Using AI to do all or most of your writing in a blog, makes your content become voiceless and generic online. AI can be very helpful for ideas, outlines, and a bit of editing or phrasing if you feel stuck, but do not fall into the hole of getting AI to write your blog, then copy paste it into a document and upload it for your audience. As a writer, I write my content, AI helps with research, direction, structure and outline ideas, but I make a lot of changes and additions.
In the future, I will be writing more articles about how to use AI effectively and productively in your business to make life easier, while not compromising your brand and connection with your audience. Those AI articles will be found on this website, bloomcontentdesign.com, as well as my other website, lisamillar.ca where I talk about strategies for high-functioning operations in small businesses.
5. SEO
Doing keyword research in batches ahead of time for some writers works very well as they are prepared ahead of time to incorporate terms into their blog writing as they go along. Other people, if focusing on SEO research when they start to write actually overwhelms the writer – they get stressed about picking the “right keywords” (tip – there is no “right word”). It stops them before they start. An hour later they are stressed and still fiddling with SEO for a 500-1500 word blog. Some writers like to go back into the rough draft and add SEO then.
If SEO has you stressed out, first get your writing productivity routine going, publish some blogs, and then find your SEO process. SEO can be simple and complicated, but it alone is not going to make or break a blog being read. There are MANY factors going into whether your audience will read your blog or not. SEO is a long-term game not a get it right the first time game. Writing consistent content is key. Worry about SEO later if it is slowing you down and getting you stuck.
6. Decide on How Often You are Going to Blog (Consistency is Key)
Are you going to blog weekly, biweekly, monthly? Weekly is ideal, but getting a regular routine and practice going for consistency is more important at this point. I don’t recommend leaving it for longer than a month between posting blogs.
7. Create a Routine and Blog Writing Habit
Look at your schedule and see where in your business and creative time you are the most creative and clearheaded to write. Trying to write in the mornings if you are a night person is going to be miserable. You want to set yourself up for success.
Learning to improve your blogging skills takes time. You are overcoming a hurdle here, being kind and not overwhelming yourself is where you want to start. Don’t set yourself up for failure by putting the pressure on to perform and expecting senior level writing and speed early on. It will feel defeating and definitely interfere with building your blogging productivity.
8. Ask a Teammate For Support
Have a coworker read what you wrote and provide you with feedback/suggestions. Not only will you grow as a writer, but you will get out of your head from over-analyzing and getting stuck in your own thoughts. It doesn’t have to be the final draft you share – have them look at the rough draft or after the first edit. Choose someone who is kind, provides constructive criticism and is encouraging, as this is how you will learn the most and build your confidence to keep writing.
9. Writing Can Be Lonely
Set yourself up for success by having a place you go to to sit and write. Some people like music in the background or the hum of a coffee shop or library. Others need quiet with no one around at home or in their office. You will begin over time to associate that physical place with writing productivity. You can always change it if you need to.
10. Reward yourself
When you get your blog written, do something kind for yourself and celebrate your writing win! You did it! Go out for coffee, go to your favourite park for a walk, play with your kids, watch a favourite show, or visit a friend. Register that feeling inside of what you just accomplished. It will motivate you in the future.
Conclusion
There you have it – 10 strategies to make writing blogs easier and get you out of the hamster wheel of feeling like you are getting no where in your writing. Try out a few strategies, such as getting to know your customer better, creating a content calendar, and rewarding a job well done. Work with your organic process of what fits for you to get those blogs written. We’ve all been there, editing a blog and fussing over it for too long, and it’s no fun. You will find your way, it simply takes some ongoing experimentation and practice.
Have you already decided you really don’t want to write your blogs? Or you want a professional copyeditor trained in digital marketing to give you advice and provide feedback on your blog copy?
Let’s connect for a free 20 minute consult. I can give you a few custom tips as to what will help your blog writing and get the stress off your mind.
