Do you need a blog?
When building your business, there are many ways to raise your profile. You’ve more than likely read a few blogs, but do you have one for your business? Maybe you're wondering, do I really need one?
Blogging for your coaching or training business takes time, but it can be hugely beneficial.
First the techie bit. Blogging is a good way to improve the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) bringing more and better quality traffic to your website.
But more importantly, your prospects can get to know you. They get a feel for who you are and what it might be like to work with you. They will begin to understand your skills and how you can help them.
How to structure a blog
Firstly you need to decide on the tone of voice. The tone should be the same for all your marketing. For some it’s strictly professional, for others it’s more friendly and familiar. It’s completely up to you, but in my experience, it’s good to be yourself. If you’re not a big corporate, why try and sound like one?
Topics to blog about
Brainstorming ideas always helps. Write down a handful of different central words related to your business and see what subjects you can think of stemming from your central words.
Answer questions and solve problems that your prospects have. What are the most frequently asked questions? What do your prospects need help with?
Explain how you have helped a client, you could put together a case study. You don’t have to mention the client by name, but tell a story about what your client was struggling with and how your coaching or training helped them move forward.
Include blogs about you and your services. Share some stories from behind the scenes so that your audience can get to know you. You could write about why you set up your business.
Write about industry news or latest trends and give general tips and hints to help your prospects.
Why stop at the written word, you could attach a video to your blog. Videos get great engagement and are an even more powerful way to show your expertise.
The title
Include a long-tail keyword in the title, this is what will help your SEO. Your keywords need to fit the description of what the blog is about.
“Make the value of the post clear. Set the right expectations – what is the reader going to get out of it? Shorten the title. Google only shows the first 50-60 characters of a title in search results.” ~ Professor Justin Champion, HubSpot Academy
The body of the blog
It helps if you break the body of the blog into paragraphs and sub-headings. By breaking up the text, you are making it easier to read and enable better keyword recognition.
You can also break up the text with pictures.
Include relevant links for people to read more about the subject.
The conclusion
You can include a summary at the end of your post to round things up. It is also good to include a clear call to action so that your prospect will know straight away how to get in touch with you.
To further help your blog get found, add some relevant hashtags at the end.
So, to conclude! We would all love Google (and other search engines) to show our site to a few more people and having a blog and website with relevant content will help with that.
I also find that I can repurpose my blog content for social media posts, which saves time thinking of new content.
Let me know if you have any questions, I would love to hear from you if you are setting up or already write a blog. What has worked for you?
Email me at: hello@claireshelley.co.uk
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