We have written about effective business blogging in the past.  Social media marketing for small to mid-size businesses is a topic RevenFlo is passionate about and we have a lot to say.  Our unwavering belief in the power of social media compelled us to write this follow up post with Five MORE Tips for Effective Business Blogging.

1. Your Blog Topic must be Relevant to Your Audience

Ideally, you know your audience – the potential customer you are trying to reach and persuade. You know what they care about and what they need.  Hopefully, your product or service fills a need.  So, if you are blogging to support your replacement window business, please PLEASE focus on that! Energy savings, ease of installation, home resale value, green tax credits, and so on.  If you want to write about politics, religion or movies, start a personal blog someplace else.

2. Your Blog Post Must Have an Attention-grabbing Headline

Your reader makes his first decision right at the top of the page: read on or skip it? So your headline must engage the reader in some way, or the post will not be read.  For a typical service business (the kind RevenFlo serves) some sort of financial benefit to the reader might make a good headline, such as:

Protect Your Investment by…

Save Money with…

Increase your Resale Value with…

Cut Through Red Tape with..

Achieve Greater ROI by…

So what comes after the “with” or the “by”? Ideally, your product or service.

3. Begin Your Post with an Illustration – in Words or Pictures – of the Benefit Stated in the Headline.

This is sort of like starting at the end, but it’s an effective way to keep the reader’s attention. And, as we said, it can be prose or pictures. So, if your headline is something like “Save Big Money with Replacement Windows,” you could begin with something like “Charlotte homeowner Joe Jones never believed his replacement windows would pay for themselves within a year…but they did!”  And if you are talking about home resale values, nothing says success like a photo of a real estate yard sign with a big old SOLD slapped across it.

4. Your Blog Post’s Layout should be Clear and Easy to Skim

It’s pretty much accepted that people don’t have much patience for reading from the computer screen. There is a kind of attention deficit disorder caused by having the whole universe of information at your fingertips. People tend to scan a page quickly and bounce if nothing catches their attention. Poor layout – often in the form of an endless gray block of text – is a sure way to lose your audience.  So break it up. Use headers like you see here. Experiment with white space. And don’t use 100 words when 50 will do.

5. Your Blog Post Should Include a Call to Action

Hopefully, you began with this point in mind. Again, if we look at replacement windows, you began with some remarkable statement about energy savings that helped the homeowner recoup the cost of windows quickly. You probably stepped back in time to recall how the homeowner was paying high home energy bills. You followed him through the process of selecting the right vendor (you) and you wrapped it up with how happy he is today.  All that’s left is to offer that same satisfaction to the reader of your blog. You call them to action by saying “these are the kind of savings you could be experiencing! Lower your energy costs.  CONTACT US to find out how!”

Effective Business Blogging is a Powerful Marketing Tool

We have said before: blogging for your business builds a sense of community with your current and potential customers. It allows you to present yourself as an opinion leader in your field. And it promotes search engine optimization, driving traffic to your website.  Business blogging is an important part of RevenFlo’s social media marketing services. We believe in it, and we believe in doing it right. From simply getting you set up to blog, to full turnkey blogging services, we can help your business “get social.” Contact us to learn more.

If you’d like to read more on this topic, go here.