How Can Small Businesses Start Effective Blogs

In a world seemingly overrun by YouTube videos and TIkTok clips, businesses are understandably wary when someone tells them there is still lucrative potential in blogging. If you are skeptical about the commercial viability of starting a blog for your own small business, just know that hundreds of millions of people still visit and regularly use blogs.

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According to one estimate, as many as 77 percent of internet users still visit blogs. This represents millions of potential customers your business could be missing out on. But starting a blog can be difficult and complicated. You can't just write anything, post it and expect a huge boost in profits.

Below are some basic tips you should keep in mind when you start a blog for your small business.

Be Succinct

Internet users are no longer used to reading thousands of words unless they are keenly interested in a subject. Because of this, brevity is the blogger's best friend.

If you are writing a long blog post about something complicated like loans for the Federal Housing Administration or the nuances of dry-cleaning management, you need to use the simplest sentences possible. This will make complex topics much easier to understand and shortens the reading time for the entire article. You must practice writing short sentences for blogs, a process which can be made easier by dividing the blog post into subheadings, like a listicle or a step-by-step article.

Find Evergreen Topics

The key to successful blogging is to have posts that can have readers keep coming back for years because the information contained within is still useful or relevant. These types of information are called evergreen content and finding the right topic for a business blog is a skill. Examples of effective evergreen content include retrospectives on a topic, how-to guides for basic skills and recounting historical events. This is because there are little chances of the information in such article requiring updates.

Evergreen content is essential for small business blogs because, unlike seasonal or one-off blog posts, they will provide your website or page with a stream of readers. They may not be a lot, but constant readers are still better than none, especially for a small business blog.

Engage with Readers

Readers and internet users don't appreciate it when the blogs or businesses they patronize ignore their input. The digital atmosphere has made it increasingly easier for consumers and businesses to connect and establishing a blog for your brand is part of that.

Therefore, engage with your readers through the comments section. Think of it as a component of conversational marketing. Although you may not be selling something outright by replying to reader comments, you are making your brand more authentic. Authenticity through engagement is a powerful tool if utilized properly. You could start by acknowledging longtime readers of your blog with a friendly thanks. Then you could take into consideration their comments.

If a reader has helpful suggestions about their user experience, they could really make your blog and your business site more attractive to other users.

Use White Space

Writing and grammar are essential in making a successful blog, so is design. Too often, businesses will write wonderful article but forger to format them properly once they're uploaded. This could lead to blogs with enormous blocks of texts with nary a paragraph break in sight.

Readers will be actively discouraged from spending their time on an article that's bound to give them eyestrain. This is why you need to use negative space or white space judiciously throughout your blog. Separate paragraphs to give readers a chance to rest their eyes and their minds.

Pictures, Please

Humans are primarily visual creatures and readers will want at least some pictures in your article. A few pictures put in a few paragraphs to break the monotony of the text. Make sure that all the pictures you use are of decent quality. No one wants to look at a grainy pixelated image in a professional blog, after all.

You should also put captions under the pictures, especially if they are there to showcase information. For example, if you're using the pictures to differentiate two species of roses for gardeners, labeling both pictures will be helpful for readers to identify them.

Writing an effective blog for your small business will take time to perfect and you need to work on your skills constantly. But the pay-off to writing a great blog post can be more than you thought and help your business thrive in these uncertain times.

This is a contributed post.

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