Quality Blog Content for Your Business: The Great Challenge

So much depends upon the quality of your blog posts:

1. Traffic
2. Subscriptions
3. Comments
4. Community of fans
5. Conversions, registrations, sales
6. Number of new clients
7. Number of new joint venture opportunities

It's no wonder you might feel a little overwhelmed and pressured when you sit down to write a new blog post!

Don't do that! That's a quick road to blog block. Relax. Nothing to worry about. Put on a little music, close your eyes and breathe.

Yet it's very true: if your blog posts aren't interesting, original, thought provoking and provide real value to readers, they aren't going to keep coming back. So think and be smart about your next business blog post.

Now, what's one thing you know really well that your clients and customers don't know enough about? Make a list of 3-5 important key concepts. There you go, your blog post is practically already written.

This is a really quick and easy way to write a blog post. You've probably already written articles or been interviewed about your expertise anyway.

But don't be fooled into thinking you can just make a list and be done with it. You've got competitors out there, and you need to provide more, much more than they do.

Quality blog posts aren't always 200-300 words of bulleted lists. It pays to reward readers with an in-depth article. Truly outstanding blog content will get passed around and work overtime for you long after you've posted it.

At least once a week you should take some extra time to reflect on what would be really valuable for your readers to learn. Make this easy on yourself, however. Make sure to pick a topic that you know really well and are passionate about.

Those two things, expertise and passion, will guarantee you a home run blog post. Nevertheless, here are some additional things to consider to write an outstanding in-depth post:

1. Include some statistics (use the web to do a little background search)
2. Include a quote from a well-known author or expert
3. Include a paragraph from a book you've read on the topic
4. Include historical background that affects your clients today
5. Include a prediction about this topic and how it will affect your clients in the future

Comments

[Tony Papajohn]

Yes. Your five points are excellent jumping off points for new post ideas. Any of then could be the start of a new post.

And I would add this. If you are not a "born writer" or don't think you are, expect your best ideas away from the keyboard. Since time immemorial, writers faced with a blank sheet (be it a stone slab, papyrus, parchment, paper, or a new Word document)have always asked with various degrees of anxiety, "Now what?"

Fine-tune your "Post Radar" and go about your business. When you sit down to write, you will have more ideas than you have time with which to write.

[Jeanne May]

Finding content,I know should be easy... but at times I get stuck with it! Over the last few weeks I found I've really mixed what I'm putting on -- I'm not into scheduling different kinds of posts on different days (although I envy anyone who can do that) -- some days it is a quote, sometimes it could be an audio I want to share, and sometimes it is what I'm doing.

Jeanne

[Angie Pedersen]

One tip I use frequently is to email myself with resources I want to blog about - blog posts, articles, podcasts, images, whatever. I have a bookmarklet set for "GMailThis!", which allows me to quickly email myself a link to whatever page I'm currently visiting. Then I email it to an "extension" using a little "hack" available in Gmail. You can send email to your username+keyword and it will go to your main email account. I have a Gmail filter set up for my username+blog to automatically add the tag "Blog About This" to anything I send to that email address. So I can just sort my email for that tag, and I get a ready-made list of bloggable topics. This is actually a really simple process - just takes a few steps to set up.

[Denise aka The Blog Squad]

To piggyback on comments by Tony and Angie, you can send yourself email reminders about your blog post ideas using your cell phone. I wrote about Jott here:
http://www.biztipsblog.com/2008/02/are-you-forgett.html

[etech.com]

Yes, the blog content (quality) often can bring lots of clicks. To do this, you must maintain the freshness, and content of the blog, and review the high standard of standard. Then through the promotion, let your blog famous, then collecting expected benefits. Of course it's just my little views.