When writing an article, for traditional or electronic media, you need to play up to the psychology of your audience. They’re only going to keep reading as long as they are getting something from you, so what is it they’re after?

In the first instance, they want to be empowered. When they click off of your webpage, they want to know or be capable of more than they were when they started. Whether you are writing an information or opinion piece, the same point stands.

If you are writing an information piece, Five Steps to a Perfect Blog, for example, make your five steps as clear as possible. That means not only saying what your reader must do to achieve their aim, but also pointing out potential pitfalls and traps that can be easily avoided. Knowledge should never be assumed. Omitting supposedly ‘obvious’ details is as bad as patronising your reader.

And always leave them wanting more – remember how Scherezade in Arabian Nights extended her life by never completing her story? Well, what will keep your readers coming back? There may be a tangential point included in the article, or you may wish to divide a major topic across several posts, but if your original article is giving something to your readers, they’ll be back for the sequel.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article  PR or SEO copywriting. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the nitty-gritty of blog writing. The finer details of SEO, word count and Google rankings can sometimes obscure the entire point of writing a blog in the first place. So, why should you invest time in business blog writing?

First of all, it’s a cost-effective marketing tool. Publishing online can be done at little or no cost across many different platforms, whether you wish to utilise established networks through multimedia sites, create an account with an independent blog platform, or integrate a blog facility into your own website, ensuring continuity of brand identity.

Whichever route you choose, a blog provides an unparalleled opportunity for you to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, with a potentially massive audience. The instant, and relatively ephemeral, nature of blog publication means you can create and publish unique web content extremely quickly, reacting to industry developments and current affairs almost before they happen; placing you at the cutting edge of your field.

Returning to the golden rule of web content (i.e. it is all about the customer) blogs are an excellent way to provide advice, answering problems that you know are prevalent amongst your client base. This advice can act as a teaser for your own services, attracting more custom. They also provide a fantastic opportunity to interact with clients through a comments section, creating a dialogue.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article PR or SEO copywriting. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Blogging is not a formal writing style and as such you don’t always need to adhere to the strictest grammatical or structural forms. Here are our top three rules that you can bend – and one that you shouldn’t.

The rules you can bend

Splitting infinitives: Once of the most notorious TV catchphrases in history is Star Trek’s ‘To boldly go’, the bane of grammar pedants for decades. The entire show is about space exploration and the key word is ‘go’. To hide this mid-catchphrase in ‘to go boldly’ would diminish the entire phrase’s power. It can have a similar effect within your blog.

The one-sentence paragraph: When setting out the structure for your business blog, the general consensus is to cover one key point in each paragraph. The exception to this comes in one-sentence paragraphs which add nothing new to your structure, but emphasise what has gone before.

And that’s a fact!

Beginning a sentence with conjunctions: This is largely frowned upon in formal writing and many people hold it is downright wrong. However, as you may have noticed from the sentence above, it is fine in more conversational forms to avoid overlong sentences and add emphasis. Business blog writers often use this technique as a way of making the content more informal and interactive than other kinds of web content.

The rule you should keep

Here is your unbreakable law for business blog writing.

Apostrophes: An apostrophe can take the place of missing letters – as in don’t for do not – or indicate a possessive proper noun, such as ‘this is Julie’s scarf’. Only use the apostrophe in one of these two situations.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Matt Chatterley of Mattched IT is our guest author for the first of a series of features about how businesses are using blogs as part of their marketing activities.

Once in a while, I wonder if the premise under which we run the Mattched IT Blog is good or not - then I stop procrastinating and get back to the business at hand - typically writing up another blog post.

The reason I tell you this is because our blog is distinctly different from most corporate blogs - partly because we are a small business - and partly because we want it to be different. The goal of our blog (and indeed, this meshes with our whole approach to Social Media) is to engage an audience that is wider than our immediate client base and to promote an atmosphere in which they feel comfortable communicating with us.

Of course, behind the scenes, it’s part of our marketing strategy and ultimately we have the aim of winning more business through Social Media. Instead of constant streams of “Hey, look at our Product X!” and so forth, we try to focus most of our blog posts on issues which come up in the day to day running of our business, topics which we as directors are interested in and items which we feel would be of interest to our audience. The intended results from this are a greater depth of interaction and promoting ourselves amongst said audience as a good source of information.

We recently won a good piece of business with our combined social media strategy.  A prospect got in touch through our website and mentioned they’d been referred to us on Twitter. Not recognising the name of the referrer, we were slightly confused, until upon further investigation we realised what had happened.

One of the people whom we interact quite often via Social Media had recommended us to someone they deal with regularly - because they thought we might be able to assist with an ongoing problem. Although said referree had not yet had time to get in touch, they had been asked if they could help with an upcoming project by one of their own clients. Because they were not able to - and presumably because we were fresh in their mind - they referred the client to us.

I think this is a great example of how maintaining a profile in the world of Social Media is valuable to a business (particularly if service or consultancy based) - and in my opinion, why you should seek deeper engagement than simply telling people what you’re selling. We regularly post links to our blog on Twitter, which has helped establish us as an authority source, and that’s what triggered the chain of events that led to us winning our new client.

Given that we have recently set up a group on Linkedin called ‘Content Marketing for SMEs’ it seemed an appropriate moment to explore some content marketing strategies.

Let’s start by examining what sort of content businesses can use as part of a content marketing strategy. Talks for networking events, presentations, pitches, speeches and training materials are all types of content that most businesses produce from time to time. They can be incorporated into an online content marketing strategy by:

•    Turning the material into articles for your corporate blog and announcing it on social networks such as Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.

•    Contributing guest pieces to other corporate blogs (with a back-link to your website, of course).

•    Spinning any news-worthy angle into a press release and sending it to journalists in your industry.

•    Creating a white paper that is available for download through your website … in exchange for the recipients’ email addresses.

•    Writing articles for publication and syndication.

•    Sending a monthly e-newsletter to your database of customers and prospects containing highlights from your corporate blog and any attention-grabbing company news.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article writing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

What’s the first thing you think about when writing a blog for business? The answer should be your audience. No matter who your target demographic is, they are always your number one priority in creating content. A business blog is different from a personal blog, in that it should aim to generate a following, not simply to share the latest goings-on within the company with anyone who’s interested (sadly, few people outside of the business will care whether you’ve changed stationery suppliers).

Once you’ve identified your audience, your first question should be; How can I capture their interest? Statistics, jokes, anecdotes and rhetorical questions all serve to create an engaging introduction. You just need to decide which is most likely to appeal to your audience. A scientific-minded group may be grabbed by a startling statistic; younger audiences by an anecdotal joke.

A typical reader will have time constraints and probably the same relatively short attention-span that applies to most web-users. Therefore, to accommodate them you need to write clearly and concisely. While good writing is essential, a business blog is not the place for linguistic hyperbole or fancy ideas. Overdressing your content in metaphors, similes and long-winded sentences creates a diversion, ultimately distracting the reader and weakening your message.

Business blogs should aim to be interactive, and appeal to readers’ imaginations. To reinforce this connection you next want to address your tone. An overtly formal tone can over-complicate sentences and seem patronising. Keep a relatively conversational tone, free of slang, buzz words or jargon. The latter is especially important if your audience is non-specialist, as technical terms can be extremely alienating.

Putting yourself in the reader’s place will greatly enhance your business blog writing and increase interest in your website. Just bear in mind at all times – there is no ‘I’ in blog.

A blog is one of the fastest and easiest ways to grow your web presence and provides a superb platform for your business to engage potential customers, without resorting to the hard sell. A recent study of 1,500 SMEs found that blogging increased website traffic by an average of 55%. Furthermore, the average company that blogs has 97% more inbound links and a massive 434% more indexed pages than the average company which does not blog.

Having a blog on your website brings huge benefits. However, with only 250-ish words to get your point across (the best blog posts are brief), how can you make your blog stand out and best reflect you?

Before starting you should have identified your main target demographic, as this will largely dictate the tone of voice you adopt within your blog articles. Consultancy businesses may wish to take an advice-led approach to display their expertise, for example. Whatever your decision, make sure your chosen voice is an authentic representative of you; there is no point writing in a ‘teenage’ voice if your business is a luxury catering service.

Once you have your style, you want to look at your substance. Blogs should contain certain keywords that will get your site ranked by the search engines, but without becoming a blatant sales platform. They are an amazing way to show off a wider knowledge to your customers, informing, helping and sparking debate. For example, if you sell wedding dresses, you may wish to highlight new catwalk shows, provide handy hints on finding the ideal accessories or ask if white really is the best colour for the big day.

Finally, remember that blogs are interactive, so don’t be afraid to express an opinion and start a debate. However, do try to present a balanced argument; it lends your blog credence and inspires thoughtful and considered responses.

Remember Write My Site offers a full blog management service if your business wants to add blogging into the marketing mix.

One of the best ways to get your company name out there in cyberspace is to publish articles – both on your own blog and on other people’s. Ask other bloggers if they will publish your article along with a link back to your site – as long as what you’re writing about is relevant to them, and the nature of your business is not in direct competition with theirs, most bloggers will agree to let you do this – after all, they get some free web content out of it.

There are a number of things you need to consider when it comes to blog writing. First, you need to pitch your idea to the blog on which you want to publish an article. It’s a good strategy to pitch the idea before writing the article itself as a) you’ll find out straightaway if your proposed article isn’t of interest and b) it’s a good opportunity to get some guidance about how to shape your article.

When a blogger has given you the green light to write an article for their website, make sure you keep the readers of the blog in mind at all times. This will help you to ensure that both the content and style are appropriate for the people who are going to read the blog.

You also need to keep the blog owner in mind. What are their objectives? They are likely to want website content that’s optimised with particular keywords. Earn extra brownie points by finding out what these keywords are and working them into your article. If your writing helps the blog attract traffic from the search engines you will almost certainly be invited back to write for it again!

Finally, help the blog owner out by publicising the article you’ve just written. Link to it from your website and your social networking pages on Twitter and Facebook. Go back to the blog post from time to time in order to respond to any comments that readers have left. Keep the dialogue going as long as possible for everyone’s benefit.

We have today published the results of our blogging survey and we were not surprised to discover that 70% of the small businesses we interviewed struggle to find the time to keep their blogs up-to-date.

We asked 125 small business owners about their blogging habits and found that, while 62% of respondents set up a blog in the hope that it would increase traffic to their websites, only 29% are managing to populate them between one and three times each month. The remaining 71% have admitted they just weren’t able to find the time to maintain their blogs.

The survey focused almost exclusively on very small businesses, as these organisations tend not to be able to afford the ‘people power’ that larger businesses can leverage. 42% of our interviewees were one-man-bands; and a further 43% worked within organisations with 1-5 employees with the remaining 15% working for larger organisations.

The full release is available in our Press section. Please feel free to reproduce as long as Write My Site receives a credit and a link back to www.writemysite.co.uk.

We’ve put together a little survey for UK businesses in order to find out who’s blogging and how often they’re doing it.

The survey has been designed to help inform us about people’s views on business blogging. We want to know whether UK businesses see blogging as an important part of their search engine optimisation or PR strategies. We’re also interested in finding out whether the size or industries of the businesses who respond to the survey make a difference to the way blogging is viewed. The results so far are looking pretty interesting: many of our most enthusiastic business bloggers are in the professional services or marketing industries, and most are small businesses (fewer than 6 employees).

Plenty of studies have issued depressing findings about the number of abandoned blogs floating around in cyberspace, but based on the responses so far, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that in fact small businesses are well aware of the benefits of having a blog. Early results from our survey suggest that the only thing stopping small businesses from maintaining their blogs as often as they would like is time - very few people are of the opinion that a blog wouldn’t be beneficial to their business. In fact, even amongst the people who haven’t yet got a blog, the most common reason is simply that they haven’t yet found time to set it up. Of the people who do have a business blog, 70% said they update it less frequently now than they used to, because of time pressures – this certainly tallies with the most common reason people give for using our corporate blogging service!

We’ll be releasing more results as and when the number of respondents rises. If you’d like to take part, go to our online business blogging survey and fill out the ten questions on the form. It will take no more than five minutes of your time. Please feel free also to post your views about business blogging on this thread.