Blogging For Small Businesses - What You Need To Know

Last updated on 26 November 2024

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If you are a small business owner, you likely have a lot on your plate. But blogging for small businesses is more than just ‘another thing you have to do’. It’s income-generating. It doesn’t matter if you sell things on Etsy, have a physical store somewhere, or you’ve set up a digital business, having a blog can be a HUGE difference.

Did you know that businesses with blogs generate 67% more leads than businesses that don’t? 67%!! That’s a crazy increase! But if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense.

✅ When you google a question, you’re often taken to a blog for your answer.

✅And then what do you do? You realise where you are on the internet and you take a look around.

✅And hey, this is a small business website that sells exactly what I’m looking for!

✅You make a purchase.

✅The small business owner does a happy dance (fact), and you have the answers to questions you didn’t know you should be asking.

✅ All because you searched something on Google.

Now 67% makes a little more sense, right?

Having a blog for your small business (or heck, your BIG business) is one of the hands-down honest-to-goodness ways to bring customers to your business.

It doesn’t matter if you sell ceramic bowls for jewellery or you’re a Virtual Assistant for health food brands. It doesn’t matter if you sell hand-made rugs or if you’re a life coach. It doesn’t matter if you’re upcycling furniture or providing financial advice.

People are looking for the answers you hold. And they’re searching for it.

Your blog is drawing people in. Into your business. Into your life.

It’s not that simple, though, is it?

It can hard to know what to blog about when you’re a small business owner. Especially a brick-and-mortar shop. But there are some tips and tricks when it comes to blogging for small businesses that I’ve learnt over the years and we’re going to look at them in this post.

6 tips on blogging for small businesses

Think outside the box
Brainstorm your ideas
Get input and insight from your customers
Set up an achievable blog schedule
Batch create your content
Ask for help

Think outside the box

When it comes to blogging for your small business, you need to think outside the box. Especially if you sell physical items. Providing digital items or services or coaching can often be easier in regards to content idea generation, as you can educate people on the aspects of your niche that they’re lacking and offer solutions.

So when it comes to a brick-and-mortar business or even an online business that sells physical items, you need to think outside the box to get blog post ideas.

You can do this in a few different ways.

Brainstorm your ideas
Ask questions about your items
Get insight from your customers

Brainstorming your ideas in a free-flow sort of way (grab a big piece of paper and a pen) will allow you to write down anything and everything you can think of that involves your business and the products that you offer. You can then collate some like-topics, and write blog posts about them.

The other great way to brainstorm is by asking questions of your items. Here are some ideas for questions you could ask:

What are my products made of?
How do I make these items?
Who are these products for?
What do people use them for?
What other items would pair nicely with this item?
Why would this product impact someone’s life? Or help them in some way?

By asking these questions about your products, you’ll be able to form blog post ideas.

Getting insights from your customers is another great way to generate blog post ideas for small businesses. Take the most frequently asked questions about your products and see if you can turn them into a blog post. What are you top 10 products? What makes them popular? How are people using your items? Offer up other ways to use your products in a blog post.

By thinking about the ways that your current customers use your products, you’ll be able to craft blog posts that showcase ways new customers could use what you sell.

Set up an achievable blog schedule

Consistency is important when it comes to publishing blog posts. Think about what’s going to be achievable for you and your business. Is it publishing a blog post once a week? Once a month?

Whatever your blog schedule ends up being, try and be consistent in it. And if things get a little wobbly here and there, it’s okay. Persist through the wobbles, do your best.

It really helps to have a great blogging content planner to help you stay organised and also consistent.

Batch create your content

Batching is the art of doing like-tasks at once, so you can streamline your work. It does wonders for productivity and means that you can get a lot more done in a shorter space of time.

In short, batching works like this.

Break up your time or your week into hours or sessions. For example, 1-hour slots, or Sunday Afternoon, Monday Lunchtime, Tuesday evening etc.
Each day or session will be dedicated to a different task
1 hour/ session 1/ day 1 will be for coming up with blog post ideas. Then the next slot will be writing headlines and drafting out the main points, for example. The next slot would be drafting all the blog posts. Then the next, editing. The next, finding images etc

Doing like-tasks all in one go like this means that you’re focusing on JUST writing or JUST finding images. It means that you’re using brainpower to switch between tasks and interrupt your own flow of work.

If you’re writing a draft on Google Docs, for example, and then you’re jumping around to find photos on Unsplash, you’re pasting it into your WordPress, you’re limping back to Google Docs … etc etc … that’s a lot of wasted time and also it means your attention is broken up and scattered.

Ask for help

Don’t be afraid to ask for help! If blogging for your business isn’t something that you can do regularly, or you’re really struggling with thinking up ideas for your blog … ask someone to help you.

Whether you hire a freelance writer to create content for you, or you work with a blogging coach or join a blogging membership to help you unlock those ideas, asking for help is going to about something completely outside of your area of expertise or comfort zone, then find someone who does know what they’re talking about when it comes to certain topics.

So what do you think? Going to pop the blogging for small businesses tips up your sleeve?

What else would you add to this list?