The foolproof way to start a blog for your manufacturing business
5 SECOND SUMMARY
- Accept that your content isn’t going to be great right off the bat.
- Plan ahead and create a schedule you can stick to. Once a month is fine if that’s all you have the resources for – consistency is more important than frequency.
- Forget SEO or trying to game the system – just identify things that will help your customers and write (honestly) about them.
Are you ready to start a business blog?
Excellent!
Writing blogs is an excellent investment in your business that costs you nothing but time, and can pay off BIG in the long run.
However, if you haven’t published a blog before it can seem a little overwhelming.
Here’s a step by step process explaining how to start a manufacturing blog.
What is business blogging?
Blogging is an effective way for you to communicate with your customers, provide helpful information, share your wins, and keep your website current with fresh information.
(*Evergreen blog posts are articles that are not time-bound or related to a specific event, meaning they are always relevant and informative when your customer happens to read them – even years after they were published.)
Business blogging vs personal blogging
Writing a business blog is different to personal blogging, because business blogs have a defined purpose and personal blogs (usually) don’t.
Both types of blogs exist to share thoughts, information, reviews and opinions, however personal blogs are often less focused on ensuring every article has a designated goal or purpose. They are also more likely to contain information that can become stale over time, as personal blogs are usually written with an ‘in the moment’ point of view.
Great bloggers regularly go back and review old content, updating it with more current information, however this takes a bit of time and effort.
If you’re not selling anything or there is no real commercial purpose to your personal blog, there’s little impetus to review old posts.
So, onto business blogs: how are they different?
Business blogs are created primarily to help, inform or entertain the reader, but also to provide a benefit to the business.
This can be in the form of branding (for example positioning your business as an authority on a certain topic), growing your email list (by gathering contact details when people sign up to get notified of new posts), or lead generation (by prompting readers to fill in a quote or enquiry form at the bottom of the post).
In the manufacturing industry, it’s less common to see a blog post result in an immediate order, as sales cycles are typically much longer and more convoluted than in the consumer sector.
However, blogging is a long game: stick with it and you might find a blog post you wrote two years ago is now paying dividends and bringing you lots of leads!
How to start a business blog
Firstly, accept that your initial efforts aren’t going to be as perfectly polished as you’d like. It’s OK to publish a blog that’s 90% of the way there, especially if you are just starting out.
Why?
Because blogging, like many habits, is a skill that can be refined over time, so you’ll find the more you write the better you become!
Being overly critical of your early efforts is really common, but don’t let it prevent you from hitting publish. It’s more important to form a business blogging habit than to be perfect from day one.
Are you ready to commit?
A company blog or news section on your website should be tended like a garden: it should be updated regularly, have old ‘weeds’ removed, and it should tick along looking brilliant for the majority of the time.
The key advantage of having a well-tended business blog is that the information is there 24/7, available for the customer when they are looking for it and in an open frame of mind.
And, you can reach customers that don’t know you exist simply by writing quality blogs on helpful topics.
Side note: there are lots of boxes to tick to ensure your writing is properly structured and formatted to give it the best chance of appearing at the top of a SERP or search engine results page. If SEO or search engine optimisation is high on your list of priorities, it’s best to engage a professional SEO content writer.
How to start a business blog and write for your audience
Google suggests that any information on your site should have a beneficial purpose, and that you follow the EAT acronym when creating any content.
This stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and it’s a good way to sense-check why you’re producing a piece of writing.
If you’re not providing benefit or value to the user, you’re not speaking from a position of authority, and you’re not finding ways to convey that your company can be trusted, it’s unlikely your website will do well in Google’s search rankings as it won’t be seen as ‘quality’.
However, although this is important to keep in mind, you should always write for humans first, then Google.
Here are some tips to help you write great blogs for your manufacturing company:
- Firstly, keep it simple – remember that everyone is busy and has a million other things competing for their attention! If it’s a really long or involved subject, it might work better as a downloadable e-book, guide or white paper.
- Try not to make it too dry, even if you sell a pretty utilitarian product. Use power words to add interest to your writing (but use them sparingly).
- Use bulleted or numbered lists to help keep your readers engaged and add interest to the page.
- Short paragraphs are best – they visually break up big chunks of text on the page and help your reader stay on course.
- It’s OK to write conversationally, even if you are in quite a ‘straight’ industry. Try not to use too much jargon and if you’re using abbreviations or acronyms, write them out long-hand at least once. For example, ‘SEO or search engine optimisation is a critical step in your online content strategy.’ This helps to orient readers that are new to your industry or not familiar with industry-specific terms.
- Lastly – for the love of donuts, use spell check! Nothing looks more amateur than poor spelling. Use a free app like Grammarly that works across multiple platforms and auto corrects as you write.
Topic ideas for your manufacturing blog
Remember, blogging is rarely (if ever) about the ‘hard sell’.
Keep it informative, educational, helpful and relevant to your customers without pushing too hard.
Here are some ideas to help you write blog posts that are relevant for industrial, manufacturing and construction industries:
- Write about a new product, making sure you focus on the benefit to the customer (don’t make it all about the features!)
- Blog about the current hot topic in your niche or industry
- Call a customer for a testimonial and turn it into a longer piece about how you helped them solve a problem
- Write a how-to article
- Debunk a common myth in your industry
- Write an opinion piece: it’s OK to take a stand and show your personality when you’re blogging, providing it’s on brand for your company (and you have the all-clear from your manager!). Write confidently and with conviction so that the reader can tell that you’re an expert on the subject.
- Write a round-up post that links to existing articles with a similar theme. For example, you could write a post covering ten of the hottest new products that were released in your industry this year. Don’t be afraid to include a competitor or two: this can help to position you as an unbiased and trustworthy commentator, building trust with the reader.
- Identify a topic that customers don’t understand about your product: what’s the one question your sales team has to answer over and over? Looking deeper into customer enquiries can be a great source of content ideas.
- Interview one of your colleagues for a ‘meet the team’ post. Keep it work-based but don’t forget to add a few questions that will help their personality shine through.
Get started right now
The best blogging platform is the one you already have.
If you don’t already have a blog section visible on the front end of your website, you might need to get in touch with your web developer to set one up for you.
It’s highly likely that your developer can simply switch on this functionality, especially if the site is built on WordPress or another similar platform.
Having the confidence to access the back end of your website, upload a blog post and publish it might not come naturally, but stick with it!
Just like writing, the more often you log in and add a new post, the more confident you’ll become at blogging for your business.
If you’re not a confident writer, reach out to someone who can help.
See that subtle call to action? It’s not too sales-y. This blog is just providing lots of helpful information with a gentle nudge to get in touch with me if you need a copywriter.
In summary:
- Accept that your content isn’t going to be great right off the bat
- Plan ahead and create a schedule you can stick to
- Forget SEO or trying to game the system – just find things that will help your customers and write (honestly) about them
- Write like you talk: it doesn’t have to be stuffy and overly professional
- Spell check! It takes 10 seconds and stops you from looking like a goose
- Check your stats regularly and see what is resonating with your audience
- Do more of that
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