When your business blog seems to be lacking, it can really affect your small business. Your business blog is what attracts visitors to check out more about your company so it’s really important to keep it up to date, relevant and interesting. Even with the most updated content, a blog that doesn’t have anything interesting to read might bore your readers.
People want to see blogs that are not only useful but interesting and hopefully entertaining. Even in serious fields like insurance and manufacturing, you can still take the time to come up with interesting and entertaining content. Here is a look at how to spice up the blog a bit so that your readers will find your blog interesting yet useful.
When you Find your Work Interesting but others don’t
Sometimes you can light up talking about your industry to others but they look like they want to fall asleep hearing about it. This can translate into your blog too which may cause fewer readers to find your website. There is a way to spark interest in readers talking about almost any industry; it just requires the right tools and skills to make the blog more entertaining.
If you’re afraid the blog is coming off too boring, try to spice it up by being extremely useful to readers, use images or videos to engage the user, bring in fresh voices through interviews and add a bit of humor.
Bringing in Images and Videos
Did you know that multimedia will get more noticed with a picture, video or infographic across the web? If you post a Facebook photo, you’ll get 53% more “likes” than something that is a text only. Videos get more engagement on social media and you’ll find that infographics are “liked” and shared more than content. This might be because people remember a small percentage of what they read but remember about 80% of what they see.
One company using this information to their advantage is General Electric whose blog incorporates large, beautiful photos which get shared on social media. Other examples would be Infusionsoft, a company that incorporates cartoon graphics in their blog posts, an insurance company called Unum who uses cartoons and infographics on their blog, and an international specialist bank and asset manager Investec who keeps a section of the blog set up with infographics and cartoons.
Have Extremely Useful Blogs
When people find your blog really useful to their lives, they are going to want to come back for more. Are there common questions that your customers often ask or is there an obvious reason why customers need your services? By being really useful to readers, you’ll become exciting to follow regularly even if the business is somewhat boring. Insurance companies use this to their advantage by offering useful advice on their blogs about planning for moves or recovering from a natural disaster.
Post Interviews to Add a Fresh Voice
Sometimes you just need to bring in a fresh voice here and there. Conduct interviews with experts in the industry to have a chance for someone else to contribute to your audience. Another route is to interview your customers and readers so that you can engage the audience and show that their voices are being heard. It’s a nice way to produce a video testimonial for your page. Dropbox is using this strategy by showing how users benefit from the service in their lives.
Be Funny and Transparent
Keep your blog interesting by being humorous. Provide some lighthearted entertainment like Airconco, an air conditioning manufacturing company that writes blog posts like “Unusual ways to stay warm” and “Virgin Mary found on air conditioning unit.” Try to be transparent and relatable so readers don’t feel disconnected.
This is a great way to build a relationship with trust and you can do this by talking about challenges your company has faced, showing behind-the-scenes of your workplace or sharing company “secrets.” NinjaOutreach does this by writing about their success and challenges being a startup.
Use these tips to make sure you aren’t boring your readers but rather you are making them want to come back for more. If you spice up your business blog correctly, you may just find that you have so much traffic you have to upgrade to better website hosting.
