What Makes a Good Blog Post?

Blogs offer many advantages to almost every business owner. But only if the blog posts you write are good.

First, they help you build trust with customers. You’re giving away something (information, education, expertise) for free while demonstrating that you know how to help them with their problems. In some cases, this information can even help customers have a better experience with you and your company. 

Second, every blog post offers a new chance for customers to find you through specific, long-tail keywords. A long-tail keyword is a specific phrase, such as “how can I unclog my sink,” or “can my dog eat blueberries?” That search engine traffic can really add up over time. 

Related: How to Write Good Blog Post for SEO and How to Use Keywords in a Meaningful Way

Writing a “good” blog post is mostly about picking topics that will be useful to your customer base and providing them with the information that they need and want. 

Yet many business owners do struggle to figure out what to write about, and this can hinder their ability to put a good blog post together. Fortunately, content ideas are everywhere if you know where to look.

Content Ideas 

Address Frequently Asked Questions, In Depth

Every company has those 20 or so questions they spend all day answering. Each and every one of those questions can make a great blog post. 

If you can’t think of what the questions are, ask your sales and customer service team. They’ll be able to tell you.

You can also get a lot of data by using internet resources like Quora and Answer The Public. These sites offer access to real questions asked by real people, questions which are search terms in their own right. It’s also worth checking the “People also ask” section of the  Google search results, where you can get a big list of questions. Sometimes you’ll find some gems that you may not have heard before or thought of before.

Questions are wonderful right now because they are what customers are typically using when they interact with voice-based searches. Voice-based searches are only going to grow. It’s smart to position yourself to take advantage of as many of them as possible. 

Things You Wish Your Customers/Clients Knew

In many industries there are things that customers can do to have a better experience with you, things that make both your life easier, and theirs.

For example, perhaps you run a vacation rental company, and customers keep showing up prior to check-in. You might put up a blog post explaining why early check-in isn’t really an option, then offer some local places for someone to grab a bite to eat or do some shopping while they wait for their rental to open up.

If you’re an ice dam removal company you might need your customers to thaw out their spigots and get them running prior to your arrival so you can spend less time on the job and save them some money. 

These types of posts really go a long way towards helping customers have a better experience with you, which means that they’re more likely to keep doing business with you in the long run. 

Product Promotions

If you have a particularly good or special promotion running you can write a blog post to let customers know. 

These posts are great for a quick share on social media and will continue to capture keywords related to that product even after your promotion ends. 

You know your customers, so you know the  problems that they face. You know what they care about and you know why they buy your products and services. 

Advice and Expertise

Any time you can provide them with your advice or expertise you are doing them a service. Best of all, these topics are usually evergreen, which means they can continue to draw traffic to your website for years to come. 

For example, while lawyers can’t offer specific legal advice to people who casually read their blogs, they can offer enough to help people avoid certain mistakes. See this bankruptcy lawyer’s post, which explains certain actions that people should avoid taking before they try to file for Chapter 7.

You don’t have to be an attorney to use this tactic. Run a dog training service? Talk about specific problems owners face with their dogs. Run a doctor’s office? A single blog post could cover the age-old question: do I call the doctor about this, go to the ER, or tough it out?

Anyone who buys your products or services does so because they want and need to solve specific issues and problems in their lives. Use your knowledge to help them solve the problems that are too small-scale or one-off to provide a steady source of business for you.

Case Studies

In certain cases you may solve specific problems for your clients or customers. If your solutions are customized or complex then you can showcase client problems and walk readers through all the steps you took to solve them.

This helps to build confidence in your prospects while teaching them a great deal about your company’s approach. 

Community Involvement

Did you go to a trade show? Sponsor a charity event? Bring your entire office out on a 5K run to raise money for cancer research? 

Grab some photos of your company’s participation and talk about your involvement on your blog!

Community involvement captures local keywords, which can be tough to do. It can also show that you’re a company that cares about a lot more than making money. When you support your community, your community wants to support you. 

How Often Should You Blog? 

There’s no right or wrong answer here. You should pick a regular interval that fits your budget, or the amount of time you have to devote to writing the content yourself. Common intervals are weekly, biweekly, and monthly. 

Leaving a blog to sit idle can be detrimental to your business brand, though, so stick to whatever you choose. An idle blog can give the impression that you’ve gone out of business, that you don’t care about your business, and that you’re not very organized. It will give your website an air of neglect, a little like letting cobwebs gather in the lobby of a retail store. That’s not going to inspire trust. Be professional, create a strategy, and stick to it.

Keep in mind, too, that it can take a lot of time to get results. Content marketing is a long game, not an instant win. Still, if you’re consistent and devote time and energy to creating quality content your customer base cares about, you should start to see some impressive levels of ROI.