Building a Blog That Shares Your Expertise
When it comes to your business, whether you are creating products or services, you want to make sure that you are seen as an expert. Being seen as an expert means that you can build up your authority, build up trust easier, and begin to grow your business.
I never saw myself as a blogging expert. It was always just something that I did and loved to do. It wasn’t until a friend suggested that I teach a workshop that I really thought about all that I knew.
When we are in our element, we can get caught up in thinking that everyone knows what we know. Even the simple things that we take for granted, we assume that our clients and future clients know and understand the things that we are doing. We can forget that we have been doing what we do for so long that it is second nature to us.
I get caught up sometimes in using terminology that my ideal clients don’t understand. It can be hard to remember how far we have come and all that we have learned through the years we have done the work that we do. Blogging helps to break down these processes and explain them to your ideal clients and audience.
Before we dig into ways to share your expertise on a blog, let’s talk about why you need a blog for your business. If you have read my blog before, this may be on repeat for you BUT I think it is important to share why your business should have a blog.
1. It brings potential clients to your website.
Who doesn’t want more website traffic? Blogging is a great way to start bringing more traffic to your website. You can share your blog post on your social media platforms. The best thing is that for every blog post that you can create, you can create multiple social media posts that go along with it so that you are constantly sending people to your blog. The more people that you can bring to your website, the more opportunities that you will have to convert them to clients.
2. Blogs improve your SEO.
SEO means search engine optimization. This is all about search engines and helping you rank on them. When you blog, you are consistently updating your website with new, relevant, and helpful topics that your audience is looking for.
Blogging also helps you to build brand authority and brand trust. It connects you to your current clients as well as potential clients. Search engines love authority and trust. When you give information that helps the people that are using them, it not only benefits you but also them.
Blog posts are a great way to consistently add keywords to your website. This isn’t about keyword stuffing. Search engines have come a long way and are now smart enough to know when this is happening. Keywords are not only about putting specific words and phrases into your blog post, it is also how your ideal readers are speaking.
3. Showing your expertise to potential clients.
Not everyone who follows us on social media truly knows us. They have all come into our followers at different times of your journey. They may only see the most recent pieces of what we are sharing.
Social media moves fast and it can feel like a never-ending game of cat and mouse. Trying to always get new followers and build up trust in a fast-paced platform is hard to do.
Blogging allows you to slow down. It allows you to focus on what you want to teach without it disappearing within 5 minutes, sometimes even less. Blogging gives your brand the best chance to show what it can do.
Consumers nowadays want to be more than just a number. They want to know who they are buying from. Knowing the why of a small business is important to them and blogging allows you to give that to them. It gives them a glimpse into the different aspects of your business without feeling like they are missing out.
Now that you know just a few of the benefits of having a blog for your small business, what do you actually talk about? I love brainstorming and talking about what content you can and should be sharing on your blog and social media platforms.
I think that a lot of women entrepreneurs get stuck in overthinking their content. They also get stuck on trying to be perfect when it comes to content creation and so they just don’t do it. We aren’t meant to be perfect and neither is any of the content that you are creating.
The content that your audience will want to see will largely depend on what your services or products are but there are a few topics that can be used no matter what type of entrepreneur you are.
YOUR BRAND STORY
This is always a great place to start and share on your blog. Stories connect us and that doesn’t stop with just personal stories.
Write about the why behind your business.
Write about the journey of your business.
Write about your mission and your values.
Your brand story is what makes your business what it is so share it!
SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS
We are all searching for ways to solve the problems that we have. What problem does your business solve? Showcase these problems with how you and your business help.
SHARE CLIENT JOURNEYS
I love this one. We all want to see how a business has impacted the clients that it works with. Share the story of your clients. You can even offer to have the client write the blog post and say in their words how you helped them. This is a great way to use the language of your ideal client.
SHARING YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
If you don’t talk about your products or services, no one is EVER going to know about them. Common sense right?! Your blog is a great place to talk about the products and services that you offer.
You don’t always want to be selling but when you create posts that talk about your services, you can give them much more in-depth information.
You can even break down different processes or the reasons why you created those services that you did.
Anyone who is reading your blog wants to either…
This information was provided by HubSpot and the survey that they completed. Remember, it is your business and you have created it from scratch. Share it with those who you know will benefit most from it. Have fun with it and let your brand personality shine.
Now that we have covered why you should have a blog for your business and a few different ideas of content you can share, now it is time to talk about HOW you can improve your content.
We are just going to jump right in and talk about ways that you can improve your business content.
TALK IN THE LANGUAGE THAT YOUR IDEAL CLIENT SPEAKS
Many times, we can get caught up in SEO and keywords. We get bogged down by the technical things that we need to be doing and we totally lose focus on what we are there to actually do.
Yes, keywords are an important piece of your blog BUT if you aren’t speaking in a language that your ideal client uses, your keywords aren’t going to matter. They will leave your site even if your keywords brought them there.
Building authority and trust are more than just using keywords that you know your audience uses. It is about understanding them. Don’t forget this part. You want to build a connection and show them what you are talking about.
DON’T USE A WALL OF TEXT
No one and I mean NO ONE wants to read a wall of text. Remember your high school or college days with the textbooks?! Yeah, you don’t want to be that person.
Breaking up your content using short paragraphs, lists, and headlines, your readers are going to know where in your blog post the information they are looking for is going to be.
DON’T TRY TO TALK LIKE ANYONE ELSE
Be yourself when it comes to your content. You want it to feel as if you are having a conversation with your reader. Yes, of course, there are going to be exceptions to this BUT the majority of readers are going to want to feel welcome on your website.
Don’t throw in fancy words just to use them. Speak to your audience as if they were meeting you in person. You don’t want to sound condescending when you are trying to teach them something or even just build a relationship.
USE GRAPHICS AND INFOGRAPHICS
Let’s face it…
People don’t have the attention span they used to. Infographics are a great way to turn your blog content into an easily sharable graphic. This is also a great way to reach out to other bloggers that are in your niche and ask them to share your infographic with their readers.
When it comes to graphics, you want to make sure that you have a graphic that can be pinned to Pinterest. I suggest having at least one to two graphics per blog post.
WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW
Seems simple right but a lot of time, we forget what we actually know. Go back to the beginning of this post. Brainstorm ideas about your niche.
What do you love to talk about?
What questions do you get asked often?
REACH OUT TO OTHERS IN YOUR NICHE TO GUEST POST FOR YOU
Why do all the hard work yourself? Reach out to others in your niche and in your shoulder niches and see if anyone is interested in doing a guest blog post. It doesn’t even need to be a guest blog post.
Do Instagram lives with someone else.
Do Instagram stories take over.
Do a podcast interview.
Collaboration is going to help build your business and your brand.
USE REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCES IN YOUR CONTENT
You want your audience to be able to relate to you. Using real-life experiences in your content means that you can show them that you understand the struggles that they are currently going through.
We all connect with real life and that means using our experiences to show WHY we are the expert that we are. I think sometimes, we tend to forget that our experiences mean that we do know what we are talking about. I prefer life experiences more than anything else.
I want to know what worked for you and what didn’t. So show me!!
You have expertise that you want to share and these are some tips that can help you do that. If you are looking for help when it comes to your content, I have room for 2 more small businesses for the month of May.
I have a special on my all-in-one package that gives you…
If there is a platform here that you don’t use, we can swap it for stories or another platform. Reach out and let me take over your content creation while you do the things that you love!!
5/02/2022
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