If you write business blog articles regularly, one of the biggest challenges you’ll face is trying to come up with innovative, engaging, and original ideas. So how do you keep your content fresh and interesting week after week?

To keep both yourself and your reader engaged, you want to mix up the ways in which you interact. When you’re writing articles for your company’s blog, rotate between the three main types of content:  comment or opinion; list posts, such as ‘Top five ways to boost your business’; and news posts which react to current events.

If you focus more on articles for other websites (i.e. if you’re following a guest blogging strategy), then try to write for a variety of online publications. Keeping your style shifting and evolving will keep you engaged by making your brain work harder and appeal to your readers as they are always given something different and new.

But where does the content come from? Everyone has their own way of sourcing ideas, whether it’s through osmosis or research. Most writers keep a notepad in constant attendance, jotting down ideas as and when they come, whether it’s from a conversation held, a book read or a radio show listened to. The book can be a home for anything and everything; if it fires your imagination, write it down.

Don’t be afraid to mix these ideas up with your own thoughts and opinions either – the most important thing, whether writing articles or blogs, is to provide something people haven’t read before; so don’t just repeat ideas – improve on them.

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.

When you first sit down to write an article, it can be a daunting task. Here are Write My Site’s top tips for writing an article that grabs attention.

Make a list – Bullet point all the ideas you would ideally like to cover in your article. Do they fit together as a set? Are there any duplications? Which points are essential and which can you remove?

Take some time – Once you’ve sorted your list, take some time out. Focus on something else while the ideas germinate. When you sit down to write the article, you’ll feel calmer and more prepared.

Don’t force it – Write for as long as the words flow. If you hit a wall, don’t fight it.  Change task, maybe go for a walk - you’ll come back refreshed and ready to jump back into the fray.

Don’t censor yourself – On the first pass, don’t edit your own writing. Trust your ideas and abilities and express them in the most comfortable way to you. This will eventually lead to a more natural and personable article.

Proof read carefully – Of course the flip side of this is the need for a number of revisits to edit and correct your article. This gives you the opportunity to refine and crystallise your concepts, while ensuring you put your points across.

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.

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.