If you’ve been asked to write a blog for your firm’s website or have taken it upon yourself to do so because you’ve heard “blogging is good for business”, you may be asking yourself “what’s the point?”. The good news is, that’s exactly the right question to be asking.
Why? Well, one of the biggest mistakes people make with business blogging is that they don’t have a clear reason behind why they are writing what they are writing. For blogging to be a worthwhile use of your time, you need to be clear specifically what you are trying to achieve for your business and how the blog you are writing is going to support that goal.
Defining the purpose of your blog
There are two key points you need to consider here:
- What does your business need to get out of this blog?
- What will the person reading it get out of the blog?
Why are these two points so important? If your business isn’t going to get anything out of the blog, it’s a waste of your time writing it (at least from a business point of view). If the person reading the blog isn’t going to get anything useful out of it, then you’re wasting their time (which they almost certainly won’t appreciate!).
Knowing what your business and the people you want to read it will get out of your blog is therefore a really important place to start.
Making sure your blog works for your business
So, what can your business get out of a good blog? There are various potential reasons to write a blog, including:
- Sharing important information about your firm or services with clients
- Demonstrating your expertise in a particular subject
- Bringing people to your website (who have seen a link to the blog on social media, via a search engine, in a newsletter etc.)
However, a blog only has real, measurable value to your business if it ultimately results in more people choosing to pay for your services. A blog that doesn’t in some way support that goal probably isn’t worth writing (unless you are doing it for non-business purposes, such as supporting a charity).
The trick then, is to write a blog that effectively helps you to sell your firm’s services. But how do you do that?
Writing blogs that sell
The simplest way to start is by deciding what service you want to promote and building your blog around this. So, if your firm wants to get more enquiries about residential conveyancing, it makes sense to write a blog connected to that subject. But how do you decide what to write?
This is where we come back to the second question I posed above:
What will the person reading it get out of the blog?
A successful business blog is one that makes a connection between something a potential client wants to know and the service you want to promote. Your blog should therefore aim to provide valuable information to the type of clients you want to attract while making a clear link to the service you can provide.
For example, you want to promote your residential conveyancing service and you know customers often ask how long conveyancing takes. You therefore write a blog with a title such as “How long does residential conveyancing take?” in which you explain the stages of the process and how long each stage and the overall process typically takes.
While you won’t be able to provide a definitive answer to a question like this (because conveyancing timeframes depend on the particular circumstances involved) that’s fine – all you need to do is provide a useful answer. So, if the reader wants an idea of how long conveyancing takes and you help them understand roughly how long it’s likely to take, that’s probably good enough.
To really help your blog sell your services, however, you need to do a little more. You need to make sure that when someone has finished reading your blog, they have a clear reason to want to get in touch with you about using your service or, at the very least, to explore your website to find out more.
Driving conversions from your blog
This is the place where many people fall down, even when they have written an informative blog that effectively answers a question potential clients are likely to be asking.
While having a client read your blog is usually helpful in and of itself (because they now know or have been reminded that you exist and they’re already on your site) what you really need to do is make sure they see why you are the best people to help them with this issue. That way, they will be much more likely to decide to use your firm rather than one of your competitors.
How do you do this? Let’s stick with the “How long does residential conveyancing take?” example. You may have answered the reader’s question, but is there any particular reason why they should now decide to use you for their conveyancing?
What you need to do is give them a clear reason to use you that links to the issue they were concerned about.
So, if a client is wondering how long conveyancing takes, you could highlight that your experience and expertise mean you can minimise the risk of delays that could make their conveyancing take longer. If you have specific examples of ways you can speed up their conveyancing, such as making effective use of modern technology, so much the better.
If you get this part of your blog right, you will end up with potential clients who are primed to get in touch with your firm as you have shown them that you can offer them clear benefits with your service.
The final step is to make it as easy as possible for readers of your blog to take whatever action you want them to take in order to convert them into paying customers. This is where your “call to action” comes in.
Don’t forget the call to action!
You’ve written a really informative blog that answers a potential client’s question and made it clear why you are the best people to help with this kind of service, well done! But if you don’t clearly tell the reader what to do next, there’s a good chance the next thing they do will be to hit their browser’s back button and carry on with their day.
While you might think it’s obvious what the reader needs to do next (e.g. scroll up to the top of the page and find your phone number, fill out your contact form etc.) the easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to actually make the decision then and there to get in touch.
This is why your blog should always end with a call to action telling the reader exactly what you want them to do next. After all, if getting them to contact you or find out more about your services was the whole point of your blog, it makes sense to tell people what you want them to do and how to do it.
For our residential conveyancing blog, your call to action might be something like: “To see how much your conveyancing might cost, try our free instant conveyancing calculator or call our residential property team now on 01234 576890.”
By including a link to your conveyancing calculator and your phone number (which should ideally be click-to-call) you are making it as easy as possible for the reader to take the action you want, significantly increasing the likelihood of them taking that next step to becoming a paying customer.
And that, ultimately, was the point of your blog. Right?
What was the point of this blog?
It seems only fair that I answer my own question here, so, what was the point of this blog?
Having helped businesses with writing content for just under seven years now, I’ve read a lot of business blogs and spoken to a lot of people at a wide range of businesses about their blogging. Something that has really stood out is how often blog writing gets dropped on people who feel they don’t have the time, writing ability, understanding of their company’s marketing strategy or simply the desire to write a blog.
This blog was my attempt to answer a question I’ve been asked multiple times (and suspect is thought but not asked much more often) while giving anyone writing a blog for their business some useful tips on how to make it a worthwhile use of their time.
Of course, there is much more to this subject than I could possible cover in a single blog (if I could fit everything I’ve learned about content writing in seven years into a single blog post, I think my boss might have cause for concern!). For example, I haven’t gone into generating effective blog titles, structuring your blog, getting the right tone of voice, search engine optimisation, promoting your blog on social media or the various other things you need to get right for a really effective blog post. Not to mention all the other types of content you should think about as part of your overall marketing strategy.
But what I’m hoping I’ve done is to give you some useful tips about the mentality you need when approaching blog writing, while also helping you to see the benefits of getting expert help with your content marketing *hint hint*.
So, why should you come to Conscious Solutions specifically for help with blog writing (and all other types of content marketing)?
Well, I’ve just told you. While knowing why you are writing a blog is the first thing you need to figure out, there’s much more to creating really effective content than just that. And do you really have the time, confidence in your writing and enthusiasm to get to grips with this yourself?
With years of experience and content writing expertise across our team, we can help you create all sorts of content that will help bring people to your website and turn those people into clients of your firm. By outsourcing your content writing to us, we can save you the time and hassle of writing your own content, deliver that content more cost-effectively than producing it yourself and help you achieve better results.
Sound good?
This is the call to action
Find out how we can help your firm with content marketing by calling 0117 325 0200 or use our simple enquiry form to ask a question and we’ll get back to you quickly.