Business Blogging Tips – Listen Up!

Do you want your readers to listen to what you say? Or are you just adding fresh content to your blog in the hopes that Google will send you more traffic? If you’ve only created a business blog because everyone else has one, you’d better rethink your efforts and start looking at the value you can provide beyond traffic. And the best way to do that is to perk up your ears and listen to what your target market and customers want.

The real purpose of any blog post, business or otherwise, consists of three things: to educate, to inform, or to entertain. In order to do any or all of those, you’ll have to be carefully tuned in to your market.

Try out one of these three business blogging tips for a source of ideas that will draw in readers who are eager to listen to you:

Ideas for Educating

It doesn’t take much research to see what questions, problems or concerns people have related to your industry. People aren’t just browsing the search engines for answers, they’re searching on social media too. Those are the places where they’re looking for advice from real people.

Do your own searches on different social media sites using keywords related to your market. Find the places where your target customers are asking questions or discussing their problems. You can then “lurk” in those spots and follow the conversations. Find ones that you can answer and then write a blog post that addresses the issue.

For example, say that you’re a weight loss coach. When you start hanging out in a few weight loss forums, you’ll probably find that dieters get very stressed at the thought of holidays and vacations. There’s so much great food that can destroy their diet. You can create a post on your business blog that gives them valuable tips and vacation tactics for relaxing and enjoying themselves without destroying their diet.

Ideas for Informing

Many readers are searching the ‘net because they’re hungry for information. They want to know about the latest innovation or any news that will impact their business. Often they just want to see what everyone else is talking about so that they’re not left out.

Look at what’s trending on the big social sites, like Twitter. What’s being “liked” on Facebook among the people in your target market? Pick a trend that’s relevant to your audience and tell them how it might impact them. Let them know why it’s important and what they can do with that information.

Let’s take an example from the photography business. You might be a professional photographer for weddings and other family functions. By searching on bridal forums, you find that many brides are looking to add a vintage feel to their photos to go along with the theme of their wedding. In your blog, you could create a post that shows examples of these types of photos and how other brides are using each element of their wedding to produce that effect.

Ideas for Entertaining

Just because you have a business blog doesn’t mean it has to be all business. Any content that entertains your reader is almost guaranteed to keep them coming back, and could even go viral and bring in scores more visitors.

But, I’m not funny! Don’t worry. You don’t have to be funny to be entertaining. Being controversial can be another way to entertain.

If you take a look around at other blogs in your market, you’ll probably find them all saying the same thing. Question what they say and dare to disagree. Some bloggers have developing huge followings just because they tend to disagree with the common sentiments.

As one example, I recently read a blog post that challenged the whole concept of adding fresh content regularly to your blog. He claimed that you could get more and better quality traffic by simply writing longer articles that delivered valuable, interesting information. He showed examples of ridiculously boring blogs that were updated frequently, and compared them to his own site. Maybe this wasn’t entertaining in a humorous way, but it was intriguing and kept you reading through to the end.

Now it’s your turn. Try out one of these tips and see if you can come up with a few interesting topics that will give your readers a reason to keep coming back for more.

And if you need some content about business blogging itself, check out my latest pack of PLR that all about Business Blogging. You can use that content however you want.

Have any business blogging tips of your own? How do you listen to your market?