3 Tools to End Business Blog Blues

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Do you love to read blog posts about a business’s new feature? How about their newest product? Are you excited to read a testimonial or user story? You may be interested in these things but do you really love reading about them?

Are you eager to share these posts with your friends?

The whole purpose of a business blog is to connect with new and existing customers. Yet, if your customers aren’t eagerly gobbling up your content, it’s time to revamp and re-energize your blog.

Here are a few tools that will help you think differently about your blog’s potential and give you new ideas to connect with your audience.

Uncover Hot Topics

Business blog blues start with dull, boring posts. Instead of engagement, content marketers try to push their agenda. Of course, businesses want to educate customers about their latest features! It’s their job to sell those features! But that doesn’t necessarily make for great blog copy.

To find the best blog content, try a free keyword research tool like Ubersuggest to help you uncover popular topics within your niche. Let’s say you sell bikes in Georgia. An engaging and helpful post could be the top 10 bike paths in Atlanta:

Screenshot of “Atlanta bike trails” search

Ubersuggest shares SEO details on that specific keyword, along with competitor tracking features and data on how much a PPC campaign would cost. It also offers suggestions including:

  • Atlanta bike tours
  • Atlanta bike maps
  • Atlanta cycling clubs

This one tool is enough to give you amazing content ideas for years. You don’t need to stop adding content about new features. Instead, focus on adding posts designed to bring value to your target market.

They will reward you by actually reading your next post.

Create Pinnable Content

We live in a visual world. Sure, words are still important and always will be. But the Age of Pictures is extremely powerful in marketing terms as articles with images increase views by 94%!

There are a lot of great graphic tools available, but Canva’s particularly useful for creating outstanding blog pics. Depending on your niche, you may find your best engagement is from Instagram, Tumblr or Instagram. Canva has templates for all these social media sites and it’s a simple process of customizing them.

This example is a Pinterest template that is already sized according to Pinterest standards:

Canva template example

So while you can do a lot with Canva, always look for new ways to create compelling visuals that your readers would share. Check Google Analytics to determine which social media platform is driving traffic to your blog. Then tailor your blog graphics to match that social media’s specific graphic guidelines.

Make It Fun

No one said business blogs had to be boring. They can have as much personality as any other blog. And the tone you set makes all the difference.

Innovative technology is driving engagement and one of my favorite new tools is the Thrive Quiz Builder. It’s an easy to use quiz making program that helps keep people on your site longer. You can create silly quizzes like “Which Dr. Seuss Character Are You?” or the quiz can lead the reader to specific content.

Quiz builder screenshot

The goal of any blog is to keep customers reading. And a quiz is a creative way to keep them entertained and engaged. Plus, people will share your coolest quizzes which will bring even more readers to your blog.

Break Out of the Business Blog Blues

These tools are all helpful and great. But the biggest way to break out of your business blog blues to redefine your blog’s purpose. Too many businesses created their blogs as an afterthought or because they thought it was expected. Others just kept adding press releases and wondered why customers were not engaged.

You get to create any kind of blog you want. Maybe you want to highlight your business’s involvement in social issues. Maybe you want to build your brand’s image by offering free and helpful tips. Or maybe you just want a place to showcase your business’s amazing journey. Whatever the goal, you’ll only accomplish that if you get eyes on your pages.

So stop thinking that you have a business blog. And start remembering your blog can be a valuable piece of internet real estate all on its own.

Liesha Petrovich
Liesha's a writer by day and Kyokushin Black Belt by night. She's the author of Killing Rapunzel: Learning How to Save Yourself Through Determination, Grit, and Self-Employment (her mother hates the title - but it's a metaphor mom!). She talks freelancing adventures at Microbusiness Essentials.

1 COMMENT

  1. Nicely done. I would add observation—drawing readers attention to something they might not have noticed, and that could be important in some way.

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