Cloth diaper business.

Life coaching business.

Subscription box business.

Freelancing business.

Blog coaching business.

Throughout the years, I have tried multiple small business ideas. I love being creative and letting my creativity run wild. I am a big believer in going with the flow. When I get an idea, I go with it. I am not the best at business planning because I consider myself to be a creative brain.

The cloth diaper business came well before I started blogging. That was back in 2011 when I had a newborn and thought that starting a cloth diaper service would be a great idea for the area that we lived in. Not realizing how much work REALLY went into that business. That idea fizzled out fast between having a newborn and a 3-year-old

The other three businesses have my blogging in common. I started blogging and every business that came after the cloth diaper business was born from my love of writing. They were born from everything that blogging brought up and helped me heal.

Businesses are constantly evolving (at least I think they should be) and mine is no different. This evolvement is still continuing with me and I can feel my business changing even more in the next few months. (So excited to release what I am working on!)

I didn’t really start being an entrepreneur until AFTER I had a blog. I want to talk about how to blog if you ALREADY have a business. Blogging when you already have a business is different. I will break down the differences and how you can use blogging to help you grow your small business.

BUILDING BUSINESS CREDITABILITY THROUGH BLOGGING

When you already have a business, the objectives of blogging are going to be different. Why? More than likely, you already have an established audience and an established product or service. You may or may not have customers BUT either way, the point is that you want to grow.

You want to ensure that your objectives are in line with what you want to accomplish with your business. Getting clear on your business goals is going to be the best way for you to know how blogging is going to support you in reaching those goals.

Here are a few objectives that will help you build business creditability.

OBJECTIVE ONE| Growing your customer base. This is objective one when it comes to blogging for your small business. Your blog is going to be all about building up and supporting your customer base. Every business wants to grow throughout the months and years.

OBJECTIVE TWO| Establish your authority in your business niche. Whether you are offering products or services, you want to be the authority in that niche. You want to become the name that is recognized.

OBJECTIVE THREE| Share your brand. You want your blog to be able to share everything about your brand. Blogging is going to allow you to showcase your brand on a deeper level than just a social media post is going to do.

OBJECTIVE FOUR| Providing insight on your current and potential clients. Blogging is a great way to get to know your clients on a deeper level. Create connections with them and learn about what they love, what they hate and what they are looking for when it comes to your business.

OBJECTIVE FIVE| Provide your customers with answers to their frequently answered questions. This is a great way to share with your clients and audience answers to the questions that they have when it comes to your business. This is going to help you build the trust factor with current and future clients. People want to trust who they are purchasing from and answering their questions ahead of time will help with that.

OBJECTIVE SIX| It gets more eyes on your website. Now, who doesn’t want that as a business owner? When you are consistently updating your blog and sharing the blog posts everywhere you can, you are driving more traffic to your website. More traffic means more sales. It is as simple as that. (Doesn’t guarantee you more sales but if you want to get more sales, you need to get more people on your site.)

Now that we have some clear objectives for you to lay out when it comes to blogging for your business. Let’s talk about what YOU need when it comes to your business blog.

BUSINESS BLOGGING CHECKLIST

The biggest objective that we didn’t share above but I want to cover now is VALUE. You need to ensure that when you are writing blog posts for your business, that you are sharing value. This blog is for your customers. Give them information that they are going to want to know and learn about.

I want to keep you organized when it comes to blogging. I know that it can become overwhelming ESPECIALLY when you are running a business. This blog is meant to support that business growth so you want to ensure that you are as organized as can be. Knowing these pieces of blogging for your business will help you simplify the process.

These are the pieces that you are going to want to ensure that you have for your business blog.

PIECE 1| Add a blog page to your current website. You do not need to create a separate website for just your blog. You want to drive traffic to one website to build up your leads.

PIECE 2| Create goals that are specific to your business blog. You already have your goals mapped out for your business but it is also important to create goals for your business blog. Whether it is the number of blog posts you want to publish in 3 months or how many visits you want on your blog, write them down. Are you stuck on blog goals to create? Here is a list of examples to help you create your own blogging goals.

PIECE 3| Create a blogging routine. You want to have an established blogging schedule so that you become consistent with blogging. This is what is going to help drive traffic and is going to help you build up your SEO.

PIECE 4| Set up a place for email subscribers. You are going to want to make sure that you can get fans, readers and clients to stay in contact with you. Make sure that you have a place for email subscribers to sign up and follow you.

PIECE 5| Create a freebie to attract your ideal clients to your email list. Give them value with this freebie. It can be as simple as offering a discount code when they sign up for your list.

PIECE 6| Set up your on-page SEO for your blog page. Make sure that you use keywords that are relevant to your business.

PIECE 7| Choose your blogging categories. What are the main topics that you will be covering on your blog? You don’t want to go over 10 different categories. You don’t want to confuse your readers when they come to your blog. I recommend using keywords as your categories.

PIECE 8| Brainstorm blogging topics for your business before you begin writing. Now you won’t have to struggle to come up with ideas. I have created a Trello board where I list all of my ideas out and then when I plan out my month, I search the list. Looking for blogging topics as a woman entrepreneur, here is the list that I created to help.

PIECE 9| Map out your blogging content at least a month in advance. You can do it even longer if you want but I prefer to do it one month at a time. This way if I come up with an idea that fits in better for the month, I don’t have to rearrange a huge amount of blog posts and content ideas.

PIECE 10| Add in a clear call to action in every blog post. You can share your products, share your freebie or anything else as your clear to action. Just make sure that you make it easy and simple for them to know what to do next.

PIECE 11| Create internal links for every blog post that you write. This is a great way to build up your SEO but also to ensure that your readers know where they can find out more information about things that you are sharing. Whether you are leading them to other blog posts or other pages on your website, internal linking is an important piece of the puzzle.

PIECE 12| Share with your social media platforms that you are going to be launching a blog soon. Get your customers and your followers excited for this blog. Let them know bits and pieces of what your blog is going to cover. Give them sneak peeks and have fun with this launch. Here are some additional tips to help you launch your blog the right way!

If you are struggling with content ideas, look at your social media posts. Are there some that did really well? Remember, creating content isn’t always about creating new content. It is about reusing the content that you have already shared.

You can turn your social media into blog posts by just expanding on the information that you shared. Stay tuned for the new freebie that I have coming out that will help you with this.

Remember to just start. Don’t overthink the blogging process. You will learn as you go. If you are needing help with blogging for your business, don’t hesitate to reach out. Here are 11 surprising advantages of a freelance blogger.

Until November 10, 2021, I have a freelance blogging promotion going on. It is a great way to get started with blogging for your business without having to do the work yourself.