Blogging can help increase your online presence. Posting high-quality content can continue generating leads over time³.

While it is important to create a blogging schedule², the bottom line is that quality is more important than quantity. You shouldn’t push yourself to post blogs that are below quality just because of your schedule. Lots of poor-quality articles will never perform as well as a small number of high-quality articles⁴.

Keep reading for more tips on How to Blog for Your Business.

How often should I blog?

In short, as often as you can produce quality content. For a small team (or yourself!), unless blogging is your profession, you have lots of other things going on, and can’t devote a lot of time every day to blogging. And that’s okay!

Guidance about posting monthly, weekly, daily, or more often is often industry and audience specific. For example, blogs covering breaking news generally post more frequently than food blogs. And, remember for all types of blogs, don’t post unless you have quality content to post.

In terms of results, businesses with between 1-10 employees had the strongest results when they posted at least 11 times per month³, which is about 3 per week. On the other hand, there are blogs with impressive results that post far fewer times, 1 time per month or less, and still have impressive results⁴. It really comes down to the quality of your content.

What should I blog?

Coming up with blog ideas can be a daunting task. Here are some starting points to brainstorm unique blogs for your business.

Timely News and Reminders

You can blog about annual events and service reminders. What news impacts your industry every year? Are there deadlines that impact all your clients? What preventative maintenance should your clients complete?

Industry-specific examples might include cleaning your gutters in the fall for a gutter/roofing company or an upcoming tax deadline for an accountant.

Consumer-Impacting Industry News

If there are big changes in your industry, they might be of interest to your audience. Ask yourself, will this industry news affect how I serve my clients? If the answer is yes, it might make for a good blog topic.

Industry-specific examples might include procedural changes or updates rates.

Topics Your Clients Have Questions About

Maybe you already have an FAQ with answers to the questions your customers ask the most. Either way, providing the answers to these questions more fully can make for good blog posts.

For example, if you regularly get the question about how long a project takes, then you could have a blog that goes through a general timeline and project milestones. This can give your potential customers a great idea of what to expect working with you.

Topics You Wish Your Clients Knew

While you probably aren’t trying to teach your clients everything you know, there are probably some beginner tips and topics you wish all your clients knew before coming to you for services or products.

For example, an accountant might write about tips for tracking your deductions, and a musician might write a blog about the type of music they play.

Look Behind the Scenes

If all your customers see is finished work, then they might enjoy a look behind the scenes. It could include in-progress images, unboxing videos, staff introductions, and more.

Brainstorming Ideas

At its most basic, brainstorming involves generating many more ideas than you want, and then choosing your favorites and rejecting the rest. There are many brainstorming variations that can help you generate ideas⁵.

To get started, you can choose a very general topic, say ‘Apple Pie’. Maybe write it down on the top of your paper. Then, without editing, write down as many topics or titles as you could in a few minutes. Here are some Apple Pie blog ideas (some of them are bad, that’s the point):

5 Classic Apple Pie Recipes
Cheddar cheese apple pie?!
What apples should I use for the best apple pie?
Pie Apple: Inside-out Apple Pie
Pocket Apple Pie: Hand pies
What other cheeses can I put in an apple pie?
Making the Perfect Apple Pie Crust
Is apple pie better with peeled or unpeeled apples?
The Perfect Apple Pie
Apple Cuppies: Apple Pie in a cupcake pan (cup-pies)
…

After you have your list, you can go through and edit. Maybe you already have 3 classic apple pie recipes, so you could change the title of the first one, or you could come up with 2 more classic apple pies. Either way, it is much easier to rule out options that you’ve already brainstormed.

And, some of the ideas on your list may just be bad. Even if you have a whole list of ideas you don’t want to use, you can use what you’ve learned to strategize in a different direction.

In Conclusion

Start by brainstorming ideas that you think are relevant to your target audience. Once you have a few promising blog topics, you can spend the time to create a quality article that will appeal to your audience and attract new customers.

And, remember, blogging continues to yield leads over time, so don’t give up if you don’t immediately see a giant leap in visitors and clients. You have to compare the analytics to see which topics perform better, which again can help you refine your strategy.

References and Further Reading

Carmicheal, K. (2020, August 3). How often should you (or your company) blog? [new data]. HubSpot Blog. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks.
BhaumikHi, A. M., Sami, A., Bhaumik, M., Attri, K., Rai, P., Sinha, S., Jina, Clement, M., Pal, S., Prasad, Emmanuel, E., Kevin, Sethi, A., Fahmeez, Mathew, A., & Kashyap, T. (2021, August 27). How often should you blog in 2021? (Answer lies in these 4 QUESTIONS). WPBlogging360. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://www.wpblogging360.com/best-blog-post-update-frequency/.
Brenner, M. (2021, July 12). How often should you blog? [blog post frequency research]. Marketing Insider Group. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/how-often-should-you-blog-blog-post-frequency-research/.
Patel, N. (2021, June 20). How often do you need to blog? 5 simple steps that’ll help you know. Neil Patel. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://neilpatel.com/blog/5-simple-steps-thatll-help-you-determine-how-often-you-need-to-blog/.
Rudy, L. J. (2020, April 23). 19 top BRAINSTORMING techniques to generate ideas for every situation. Business Envato Tuts+. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://business.tutsplus.com/articles/top-brainstorming-techniques–cms-27181

How to Blog for Your Business