How to Start a Small Business Blog

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If you’re launching a new business blog or launching a new blog for an established company, this article will help you generate content—even if you are starting from scratch.

When it comes to content creation, you have a few options.

1. You can hire a professional writer. Pro: You get great content in short order. Con: Not every business owner has the budget for professional copy.
2. You can get all spammy and go with a spinner. Pro: Sorry, just can’t think of one. Con: This can hurt your search ranking and your reputation.
3. You can get organized and do it all in-house. Pro: You don’t have to scrape extra money together to pay a writer. Con: You have to make time to write.

This blog post is for everyone who picks Option C.

Build an Org Chart for Your Small Business Blog

Your first order of business is to make an organizational chart like the one in the graphic below. You can’t write without ideas. In our example, Annie is a flower shop owner. She starts with her business’s big picture—flowers. From there she makes a chart of the different kinds of flowers she could blog about: daisies, roses, and orchids. And, voila! Almost instantly, she has level two of her organizational chart.

Annie wonders how she can come up with subtopics for flowers, and in a matter of seconds has level three for her chart. Realizing that lots of people want to know the symbolic meanings of different flowers, she adds a topic for symbols to each variety. People also need to know how to care for flowers, another level three topic.

You can see for yourself where Annie goes from there.

Use the Chart You Make to Generate Titles for Your Small Business Blog

The items on the chart are not your titles, they are a point of focus for thinking up titles. Start with level one, your big idea, and work your way through the chart. Here are Annie’s level-one titles:

• How to Identify Flowers
• 10 Reasons Annie’s Flowers are Better Than the Competition
• Types of Flowers and Where They Grow

Moving on to level two:

• 6 Interesting Facts about Daisies
• Types of Daisies
• The History of Daisies

Now, one of these blog titles is not as good as the others. Can you guess which? Bingo! “10 Reasons Annie’s Flowers are Better Than the Competition” doesn’t really belong. That’s because it’s too sales-y. Keep your readers’ interests in mind, and use your business’s blog only to inform or entertain your readers. There are plenty of other places to use a sales pitch.

Get Billions of Interlinking Titles Instantly for Your Blog

Well, maybe not billions. But the chart above only shows you half of Annie’s brainstorming session. She has another level-two topic for occasions. It is further divided into topics for anniversaries, birthdays, and sympathy. When you consider that each rectangle on the graph can represent more than one title, content ideas grow exponentially.

As you make your way down your own chart, you may notice that your blog’s articles move from general to specific. That’s a great thing! Not only will you have a little something for everyone who drops by, but you can link your posts together. Using the org chart, you can easily see which posts are closely related. Add hyperlinks, and you’ve got a veritable Web web for your potential customers to browse.

You can use this process for any business, whether you sell tangible goods or provide a service.

So what are you waiting for?