PB096: How to Create a Business Blog on a Shoestring

Hi there and welcome to episode 96 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today I want to talk about business blogging. Blogging, if you are a business wanting to use your blog to promote your business, to promote your products, rather than using the blog as the business itself.

I get asked to speak a lot at conferences for business people on the topic of how to build a business blog and one of the most common questions I get asked is, “How do I create one when I don’t have a team that I can dedicate to that task?” 

The question is often asked by the person who has been assigned to get the blog up and running or by the business owner. They know it’s a good idea, but they don’t really know how to do it when they’ve got a fairly small business, or even a solo business.

I want to give you a few tips on how to build that business blog on a shoestring. I’m not going to talk so much about the content that you need to publish, but rather how you get that workflow going, how do you get yourself regular and consistent as a business blog.

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/96. Let’s get on with today’s show.. 

Before I get into some tips on building a business blog on a shoestring, I do want to mention I have a little bit of further reading for those of you who want to talk more about content. I wrote an article from LinkedIn a year or so ago now with 56 Ideas for Blog Posts for your Business blog. I have heard back from a lot of business, I should say, that are using this as the basis for almost an annual calendar of blog posts, so you might want to check that out today in the show notes. 

But the focus of today’s episode really is how you build a business blog on a shoestring and how you do that when you’ve got a limited team. We look at a lot of the big corporations that have blogs and social media and they’ve got teams dedicated to these tasks.

I was talking to one person from a large Australian company the other day and they told me that they have 30 people dedicated to managing their blog, their social media accounts, and their podcast, their Periscopes. They are doing all of this stuff. Obviously, they’re able to do that because they’ve got this massive team behind it; experts in different aspects of social media or blogging.

But as small to medium businesses, we don’t always have those resources at our fingertips. In fact, we rarely do, yet many of us know we need to have a blog. These are tips that are designed to help you. 

The first thing I would say, and this is particularly relevant for blogging, but I think you can probably extend it to different social media channels as well is that it’s important to have one person responsible as the editor. One person who is the champion of that blog.

I talked to a number of businesses in the last six months who I convinced that they need a blog. They talked to their web developer guys and I set up the blog for them, and then everyone in the business looks at each other and says, “Why aren’t we blogging?” 

It’s because no one is actually being given the authority to blog and no one is being given the authority to crack the whip over the rest of the company to get content produced. 

The editor doesn’t need to write everything. They don’t have to produce all of the content but they are responsible for making sure that content is published and they are given authority to ask people to produce content for the blog. Now they might write some of the content and they might work with different people within your team, but this person is more about editing the content and getting the content up and ready, and thinking strategically about the flow of content on the blog.

I talked to one business recently and I suggested this to them and they gave this job to their receptionist who wasn’t a great writer, didn’t have much experience in content creation, but who did have an eye for detail, who was able to edit the content that other people in the business wrote. But she was also able to crack the whip, she was able to go to different people and say we need a blog post on this topic. It’s your turn to write something, and she overtime grew her confidence to the point where she began to see the type of content that was working and was able to be a bit more strategic about who to approach within the company and helping them to produce that content.

It doesn’t really matter who the person is as long as they are able to have that authority to go to people within the team and to help produce that content. Make one person responsible as the editor. 

The second tip I give you is to establish a publishing rhythm. I think it’s really important to have a rhythm of content. This is important whether you are a solo blogger blogging with your blog as a business, or whether you are a business blogger wanting to blog to promote your business. 

I think it’s particularly important in that case where you’ve got a team because things are very easy to let slip. “We won’t post something this week, we’ll catch up next week.” Particularly if you got someone driving that, it’s very easy to miss those deadlines. 

Workout how often you got to publish and give that editor authority to keep that process moving. You probably don’t want to start with daily content if you are a small team, maybe once a week or twice a week, but establish that rhythm. Maybe think about the types of post you’ll publish on different days, and that’s often a good way to setup a pattern for content. 

Maybe Mondays, a day where you post a tip. Thursdays might be a day where you post something more newsworthy for your industry. That might be a whole publishing schedule but by having that format for post, it gives you a bit of a headstart when you want to create that content.

When it comes to coming up with ideas, the third tip I’ll give you is to brainstorm those ideas ahead of time. Again, this is a relevant tip for all types of bloggers but particularly when you are working as a team, it’s very hard to know who’s going to write what. 

I think getting that team together and brainstorming together the types of content you might want to create can be really helpful and to slap those topics in ahead of time into that publishing rhythm. You might want to say once a month we are going to get together as a team to brainstorm and then we are going to allocate who is going to write what and when those posts are due. That way, everyone knows what’s coming, rather than everyone hoping that this week someone else will write a blogpost. Once you get all of that, you can setup that editorial calendar with deadlines, that’s tip number four. 

Personally, I find batch writing really helpful and stockpiling of content. The business I was actually talking to before who gave the receptionist the task of being the editor. What she started to do was stockpile content so she went to people and rather than saying, “I need a post this month from you,” she asked them to write three posts that she can use over the next three months. She didn’t have to keep having those conversations with people. 

That was a system that worked really well in their business, and they actually got to a point where people were given a whole day off from their normal task to write content for the blog every three months. That’s the way they produce their content. 

Someone was approached in the sales team to write three sales related blog posts that will be used over the next three months. That’s going to depend on the type of content, if you’ve got more timely content, that’s not going to work as well. But that may be one way you can work and give people permission to create that quality content.

Again, another tip I do recommend for all bloggers of all types. I think it’s really important in this team environment when you have team bloggers is to dedicate time to create, complete, and promote content that you create. 

Everyone knows the benefits of social media. Everyone knows the benefit of having content, but I guess we just have to come to the point of acknowledging that it doesn’t just happen. It won’t just appear out of nowhere and you need to dedicate time within your business, you need to allocate time for people to create their content as I just talked about, but also think about who is going to have time in their job description allocated to editing.

Who’s going to have time allocated in their job description to engage with people who leave comments, to watch social media. Those things shouldn’t just be fitting around the edge. If people have time, they need to be priorities, if you really want to take the business blog to the next level.

Another great tip I’ll give you is to not look within your team as to the type of writers and content creators you might have. They may actually be guests that you can get in and in the type of blogging that you do where my blogs are a business, I regularly feature guest writers.

I think this is particularly a strategy that you can use in your business blog as well. Of course you do want to have writers from within your team because that builds credibility for your organizations. Their employees really know what they are talking about, but within your network as a business, there will be other people who will be great at producing content for your blog. You might have a supplier, you may have a customer, you may even have a competitor that you’re friendly with. 

These are people that you can collaborate with to create content for your blog. It doesn’t need to be them sitting down and writing an article for you. It could be as simple as you jumping on Skype with them and recording an interview with them that you post as an audio, or that you transcribe, or that you write an article based upon that interview.

I think interviews are a brilliant way particularly for businesses to create content, but also when you interview someone they are more likely to share that content for you. If you write about one of your customers and a story they’ve got about how they use your product, that is fantastic. 

One, it’s proof that you’ve got a customer, that’s a bit of social proof there. But two, that customer is highly likely to share that story with their own social networks. Involve other people. It may be industry leaders, suppliers, customers. Involve them in the creation of content.

Another quick tip that I will give you in terms of content creation is to really look at your everyday activities. There are things that you do as a business that would be interesting to potential customers. There are questions you are asked everyday by your customers that should turn to blog posts. There are things that happen in team meetings that would be interesting to other people in your industry, so it’s about a mindset.

It’s about constantly being on the lookout for interesting moments within your business, interesting processes in your business, interesting questions that happen in your business. The things you forget you do everyday might actually be interesting to other people, and we’ve got these wonderful technologies in our pockets with our phones where we can video and take photos of the things that happen everyday.

Be aware of those types of things. Be aware of the stories that happen within your team that may actually be the beginnings of really useful content.

The last tip I’ll give you if you are a business looking to use blogs is to experiment prolifically with different types of content to track the results and to evaluate what kind of content is working. It’s so important that you dedicate time not only to creating content, to promoting that content, to engaging with people as I mentioned earlier, but also dedicate time to analyzing what the impact is of the content that you are creating.

You need a return on your investment. Every business needs that. The things we dedicate our time to shouldn’t just be fun for us, they should actually have a return on our investments. Dedicate some time to digging into your stats, looking at how things convert, and experimenting with lots of different types of content to see which types of content work best. That should then inform your strategy going forward.

I hope some of those tips have been useful to those of you who have businesses and are wanting to use blogs to promote those businesses, and build a profile of your business. I know there are quite a few ProBlogger readers who fit into that category and I hope this has been helpful to you. If you got a tip for other business bloggers, please head to our show notes today. They are at problogger.com/podcast/96 where there’s an opportunity to share your own tips in the comments, and also to get those 56 blogpost ideas for your business blog which may just give you enough content for the next years or so of content on your business blog. 

Thanks for tuning in. I’ll chat with you in Episode 97 of the ProBlogger Podcast. 

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