Your blog doesn’t write itself.
It’s funny how website owners who are redesigning their website get really excited and enthusiastic about all the things they want in their new website. Wanting to jumpstart a blog is one of those ambitious undertakings that sounds really good on the surface… until you know how much work is involved.
If you are serious about wanting to add a blog to your business website, you MUST prewrite or have prewritten at least 6 blog post articles BEFORE you launch your blog.
Here’s 3 reasons why.
1. It gives you a head start.
Writing 6 articles in advance gives you a huge head start on creating your blog content. It helps you:
- Plan out your blog’s themes, topics, categories, and titles.
- Develop your blogging “personality”, including style, voice and tone.
- Gage how much time and energy is involved in getting a blog post up from start to finish so you can plan and budget.
More importantly, it gives you a chance to discover if you really want to do this thing or if blogging isn’t for you.
During this trial period, you may figure out that you need to delegate or outsource some of your blogging initiative. For example, you might be great at writing quick first drafts of potential blog articles, but need someone to edit and refine your work and then publish the articles to your website. Or maybe your type of business doesn’t need personality-driven writing and information. In this case, you could consider complete blogging solutions.
I work with businesses on their blogs, and in my experience it takes about 6 articles to get organized into a productive blogging flow and assembly line. You’ll be surprised how much your work speeds up and how efficient you become over this time. It’s totally worth the investment!
2. It helps direct the visual look of your website's blog design.
Pre-populating 6 articles makes it easier to design how your blog will look.
This includes being able to put together a realistic layout for your blog archives page and blog single page. Your blog archives page is your blog’s “home page” that lists teasers for all of your articles—magazine style. Your blog single page is the beautiful layout template that is applied to your individual articles.
When you have REAL content in there, it makes all the difference and it makes it personal. You can see right away if the content you are writing visually matches your business’s branding and website design.
3. It means you’re serious about blogging.
Last, but not least, if you can’t whip up 6 articles quickly, how will you be able to commit to blogging regularly? If writing isn’t your strong point, then perhaps blogging isn’t your best channel for creating content to promote your business. It might be easier to post short videos to YouTube, Instagram or Tick Tock, if that’s your thing.
I have one client who’s jam is audio. She is absolutely brilliant at voicing her opinions and explaining things. She speaks confidently and eloquently in perfect length about topics related to her business. This lady needs to consider podcasting for her main marketing channel.
Did you know that you can add podcasts to your WordPress website similar to how written blogs work. If audio's your thing, go for podcasting! Then transcribe your audio sessions into words and post that on your website too. The search engines love this technique too.
Writing a blog article for your business should come naturally and easily. If this ends up being not the case during your 6-article beta test, you need to pause the initiative and rethink it.
Wrap Up: Blogging for Business Takes Practice & Discipline
Once you get your first 6 articles written and completed, you’ll have a great start for your business blog. If you had put your website’s blog on hold, you can now proceed with adding your blog to your website and be able to pre-populate 6 quality articles.
This writing challenge helps you feel accomplished and determined. You’ll have grown exponentially in your areas of expertise, and be further ahead in creating your blog strategy, plan and schedule, especially knowing what’s involved.
Writing these initial posts gives you a good taste of what running a blog is all about. It helps you figure out what the heck you will do with your blog: its purpose, voice and personality.
Above all, your business blog MUST be focused on promoting your business and directly connected to creating leads and acquiring customers. Blogging for business MEANS business.
