Writing For Small Business Blogs

Reading time: Approximately 4 minutes

Photo by lowjumpingfrog

I’ve started writing another blog recently on the topic of small business website design.

I started the blog to help support businesses that I do work for when they’re adjusting to running a website for their small business.

In my writings I’ve noticed quite a cross over between that blog and this one so I thought I’d talk about writing techniques people can employ on business websites that have a blog element.

It’s not quite the same as writing for yourself, or a website your mates will see as you have to cater for a different audience (your customers), and generally portray your blogging in the same manner as you want your business to be perceived.

Perception

Perception is very important to consider when in business. Are you a funky business? A professional business? A local hero? A corporate player?

As you can imagine, the approach you might take for one kind of business image could be vastly different to another.

Take the difference between a funky fresh business and professional corporate business. Imagine you are presenting a press release – think about the wording you would use in your writing.

Would you play it up, or play it down? Do you want to get people excited, or convey factual information? Colourful language or formal?

Tone sets perception in writing and it’s important that the values of your company are conveyed in the writing you put out on your business blog.

Audience

There are a number of things to consider with your audience.

Who are they?
How do they want to receive this information?
What are they interested in?

Who Is Your Audience?

Usually for business blogs you’re writing to your customers, potential customers, and suppliers.

For customers you want to convey information that might affect them as customers of your business. This can include press releases, product information, rewards for being loyal, and specials.

Potential customers will be more interested in hearing about how your products or services are going to help them. You should work on providing them with some real value via your blog to build trust and convince them that the best stuff is your paid offers.

Suppliers will want to know about press releases and products that affect them and not really much else.

Information Delivery

How this information is delivered to your audience can take many forms and how you approach this should depend on your audience as well.

Long posts are suited for detailed information transfer. Short posts are great for getting a point across quickly to those who have limited time – they also suit announcements such as revealing special offers.

Video is usually absorbed quite well because it’s often easy to comprehend ideas visually. Audio will allow for listening while they’re doing other tasks (again, for the busy audience).

Language

The correct use of language shows professionalism and builds trust with the reader. It’s paramount. Even for “funky fresh” type companies.

Run spell check! It’s really not that hard – typos and downright incorrect spelling does NOT look good and send a shock wave of a message to your customer saying if you can’t spell, they can’t trust you with their money.

Before hitting “publish”, get someone else to check the grammar in the post to make sure it’s all good. Failing that, read the post out loud to yourself or to your cat/dog – it’s surprisingly useful for finding the places that trip up the flow of the writing and expose grammar problems.

Have you written for a business blog? What sort of business was it? Does their blog do well and could you make changes to how you approach it?