Are you a business leader wondering how to get started with your own blog? Business blogging is little different from traditional blogging at least in terms of its objectives, be it driving traffic to your newly established business or trying to influence your visitors to buy your products or services. Blogging is never without a purpose.
I just came across this curious question while working with one of the B2B clients here in Canada. So here is a short and actionable guide, I just wanted you to know that blogging is an art and science, and this article is bit opinionated basis my experience being a blogger for four years now.
For the ease of understanding, I have divided into 3 quick sections:
a) Before you start writing
b) During writing
c) After writing and before publishing
1. Before you start writing a business blog
a) Decide a topic
A topic could be anything from your experience, whatever you learn in a week, your likes, business priorities or anything else that matters to you. Avoid targeting keywords to rank for as you are a business leader who is just getting started. This will keep thing simple for you and keep you motivated to write. And of course, do not worry about what others think!
b) Structural flow of blog content
Having a structural flow or narrative is common sensical but it is worth mentioning here. It is like simple mathematics, 2 comes after 1 and so on. A simple way you can think of this step is to address 5 Ws (Who, what, when, where and Why) and 1 H (How) in every article in the beginning, if you can’t cover all of them that’s perfectly fine.
This helps is going deep into each topic and keeps you engaged, thinking, and gets better by practice, and yes, helps a lot in SEO.
By just doing this, aim to reach 600 words or more, again, do not worry if it is less ore more word count.
c) Personal writing guideline or style
Keep this section for your personality, write as if you are presenting or having a real conversation with someone at your level. It is your writing style, tone of voice, candidness, hobbies, philosophy, beliefs and so on and so forth. Write like this comes out as your personality throughout all your articles.
d) Combine all steps above
Once you are convinced on the steps that work for you between a, b and c, have a specific version or “writing style” if you will, for yourself.
Example:
- is going to be my hobbies
- I am going to follow 5Ws and 1 H
- I am going to write authoritative content and I start my blog by asking questions in the beginning to set the context right for my readers
2. During Writing
a) Typical word length – try writing a paragraph for 150 words or less and each paragraph is best to start with a new information.
b) Actionable points for your readers if any are best to be included towards the end of the blog. It could be as simple as “subscribe to my blog”
c) Once you notice comments or engagement from your readers, ask them if they would like to cover anything else.
d) An article of 800 words or more is great to get started with.
3. After Writing and before publishing
a) If you have had previous blogs written, link at least 3 related articles within a blog post. Numbers could vary basis your experience.
b) Wherever possible, add links to reference articles outside your blog to help readers learn more if they wish to.
c) Most importantly, no copy paste, no plagiarism and only original content must be published. Here is a great free tool to check it online.
d) Run a grammar and narration check, edit twice before hitting the publish button. Grammarly is a great tool to do so while you write.
e) For basic SEO, always add meta description to your blog. 150 to 160 characters are good to write for. This will ensure website crawlers or search engines know what your blog is all about in those quick 150 characters.
I don’t recommend?
Absolute outsourcing without knowing a thing about the blog. It may sound untrue, but I can safely tell you that there are people who know nothing about the very subject, they do hire freelance bloggers for complete ghost-writing projects. Please do not get me wrong, blogging or any other business work can always be outsourced. I recommend owning and knowing your subject well though. There is also this mental piece and satisfaction when you create a blog, its kind of gives a kick you know 
I do recommend this.
Once all is set, going back and forth is quite natural. Update your blogs every 6 months for relevancy and updated information.
Promote, repurpose, and promote wherever you can. LinkedIn, Twitter, Discussion forums, Event websites etc. are some of the quick ways to get started.
I hope this helps in getting you started with business blogging.