The 3 biggest challenges in writing a business blog
Writing a blog to promote your business has more benefits than I could care to mention – building relationships with clients and potential partners, getting feedback, learning more about what it is that you do, building your personal brand, getting found easily by the search engines… and so the list goes on.
And by and large – if you stick at it – writing a business blog is easy, rewarding and fun.
But there are some writing challenges that come with the territory and the recent redesign of Confident Writing threw up 3 for me:
#1 The porch pitch
The micro version of the elevator pitch, I spotted this in my travels round the blogosphere looking at approaches to navigation – including navigation with our words. At the same time the need to declutter my sidebar and generate some eye movement meant coming up with a new porch pitch for Confident Writing.
The challenge: describe your blog in 50 words or less
#2 The “about” page
The new navigation bar created the space for the “about” page – which challenged me to come up with the words. Most of us have read how important the “about” page is and of course that makes it harder to write… Plus it forces us to step out from immersion in our own words, move away from our writer’s perspective and take a long hard look at what we’re really blogging about.
The challenge: provide a clear introduction to your blog for new readers
#3 The “work with me” page
One of the reasons for doing the redesign was to make it easier for people to find out how to work with me. Again, the navigation bar created the opportunity and the necessity to do just that. But finding the right words to promote your own business isn’t totally easily in a social media context (and I’m relieved to hear I’m in good company in finding self-promotion a challenge). You need to highlight the benefits and keep it brief without diverging from the tone and style of the rest of your blog.
The challenge: find the words to promote your services without breaking rapport
Hi Joanna – Thanks for the great info. I’ll definitely be practising my porch pitch.
I run a plumbing business and it really is tough to write a business blog on plumbing, so I’ll be looking forward to your tips over the coming weeks.
Hi Catherine – it’s hard to take our own medicine isn’t it? I bet you’ve written stuff about how to pitch your business on your business blog before… Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be easiest just to do a swap – I’ll write your porch pitch if you’ll write mine sort of thing.
BTW I clicked your about page to see more about your plumbing business – I hadn’t realised you were in the north of England. Not so far away at all. It’s always good to meet other UK bloggers
Joanna
Thank you for all the good information! Right now I am really struggling a lot with pitching myself – well, actually every redesign of my own website brings this struggle – and reading through several of your postings has helped me a lot.
Marlyse, I’m glad you’re finding the material useful.
I found it very hard to work through those challenges myself, so I wanted to try and share the tips that might make it easier for other people.
Let me know if there’s anything else on these lines you’d find it helpful for me to cover – and good luck with your site
Joanna
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