Blogging can be a bit of a headache, can’t it?
- What do you write about?
- What’s the point of it all?
- How is it different from social media or email newsletters?
Although email marketing, social media and blogging are all ways of marketing your business, they each function a little bit differently so that they can capture the attention of customers and potential customers in different ways and at different times.
The content you create for your business has to attract people at all different stages of familiarity with you and your work. And it has to attract people who like to consume content in different ways, people who have different amounts of time to spare, people who like to ask questions and people who don’t know what they need to know.
The easiest way to do this is to have a range of ways in which you provide content that helps them to discover more about you, your work and the products that you have available for sale.
Your blog posts are content that is available at all times, on your website, that can answer questions and let people learn more about your work.
In contrast, your email marketing goes directly into inboxes and demands more attention than a blog post which is just passively sitting on your website. But equally, once your newsletter has been sent that’s it. Anyone new doesn’t get that information.
We need to make sure we take care of everyone interested in our work, no matter how or when they show up.
This is where your blog post content can be really useful. When people visit your site, they’re looking for information. Who you are, what you make, how you sell it, where to find it, who it’s for?
Of course you provide answers to these questions in your About page, your product descriptions and maybe a Frequently Asked Questions page.
But answers to these questions also make really good blog posts.
So do answers to the questions you get asked all the time when you show your work in person (everyone has them), the common misconceptions people have about your work or your medium, and the worries people have about buying it.
So, blogging is a good idea.
But how often should you be updating your blog?
As often as you can comfortably maintain. If you’re creating short posts that answer your customers’ questions and highlight new products and upcoming events it shouldn’t be too much of a chore to post something weekly or at least every couple of weeks.
Posting regularly also gives you some SEO benefits. If you’re writing about your products, chances are you will be using the keywords and the phrases you need to boost your search rankings without even thinking much about it.
Even if you’re not someone who makes the kinds of products people are typing into search engines, Google loves a regularly updated website and you will see improvements in your ranking when people type in your name or your brandname. So, although you may not find lots of new customers via Google, the customers you meet in other ways will find you more easily online as a result.
And of course, blog posts are content that can be shared to social media, so you can get a bit more benefit and also remind your social media followers to take a look at your website.
So what can you blog about right now?
Here’s how you can generate 52 topics for blog posts in the next 15 minutes.
- Six posts about your promotions and sale events
- Six posts highlighting new product releases
- Six posts which show behind the scenes or work in progress
- Six seasonal posts or gift guide posts (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter etc)
- Six common misconceptions about what you do
- Six posts about events you are attending (art fairs, exhibitions, Christmas shows etc)
- Six answers to common questions about your work
- Six posts either highlighting customer feedback or writing about one of your stockists
- Four posts showcasing one of your products or a collection of products.
