Make Your Business More Personal and Interesting with a Blog

man sitting at laptop creating a blog to make his business more personal and interesting

In today’s Make Your Business More Personal and Interesting with a Blog post, I’m going to share how you can use your blog to capture the attention of your target customer even if you’re business falls into a category considered by some to be “dry” or “stuffy”, for example, skip hire, IT, or accountancy.

Or your business is one where there’s perhaps an element of public suspicion or distrust, for example, estate agencies, loan companies, chartered surveying, or legal profession.

Would a blog still help? Absolutely.

So, Let’s Look at How to Use Your Blog to Make Your Business More Personal and Interesting

Introduce Your Team

You can include a team section with photos, both off-duty and at award shows or industry events. You could also include personal stories related to your team’s hobbies and family life.

While this may seem irrelevant for your target customer, it’s all designed to increase trust and create a lasting relationship. Qualifications, professionalism, and track record are essential. However, if someone also feels like they have a human connection with you they’re more likely to feel comfortable. Even if it’s just through relating to a few stories and photos.

It’s a good idea to mix news of awards and industry developments into these personal stories. This helps to build credibility as a business that is both successful and knowledgeable.

Share Helpful Hints

Remember, your customers are focused mainly on themselves and their success. Therefore, it’s vital that you regularly share helpful advice, useful tips, and important reminders that will be of value to them.

Call to Action (CTA)

You should also include a call to action on your blog post. For example, include a form for readers to subscribe to your email newsletter. This will help your blog to drive conversions. In addition, it will help build you that all important database of prospects. To encourage people to sign up you can set your forms to follow them as they scroll up and down the page.

Allow Comments

Ensure you give your readers the opportunity to comment so that you can get some discussions started. It’s a good idea to also add social media sharing buttons beneath your posts. The more interaction and eyeballs you can get on your blog the better.

Free tools you can use to add social media sharing buttons are:

ShareThis.com
AddThis.com

Using a blog on this type of website, where most of your competition are boring or reliant on jargon and business-speak, will really help you stand out.

Special Interest Businesses:

If you’re in a highly targeted niche, e.g., golf tuition, personal trainer, canoeing instructor, you can use a blog to build an audience for your products and courses.

Your blog should feature high-quality images and videos to show that this is a real business, with real personalities. In addition, add lots of action shots to engage your target audience and show your business in action.

The aim of your blog could be to get people to come to an offline event. Therefore, photos of people and places are essential. At the top of your blog, place phone numbers and an email address so people can easily contact you.

Always take steps to hide your email address in the underlying code on your site. Visitors will still see it, but automated email harvesters won’t, thus protecting you from being bombarded with irritating spam messages. This is quite simple to do and there are many plugins available such as Email Address Encoder.

It goes without saying that you should also have links to all your active social network accounts.

The style of blog for these types of businesses should be warm, informal, and conversational. However, they should also show your high level of knowledge and enthusiasm. If you’re able to include anything about social issues, then great. This demonstrates that your company is ethical and responsible.

You can do posts where you’re selling directly, e.g., if there’s a special event coming up. However, make sure most of your blog posts contain news about your specialized field. In addition, add stories and experiences of your team.

This kind of blog is ideal for:

Hobbies and special interest websites (model trains, cosplay, DIY).

Outdoor pursuits (trekking, camping, cycling).

Family and friends’ businesses (any business where you’re a close-knit team of big personalities who know each other socially).

Authority websites where you are influential or successful in your field.

Offline events and courses where you need to get people to come for an offline experience.

Offline Businesses:

If you’ve got a “brick and mortar” business like a shop, restaurant, or gym then you can use your blog to show how passionate you are about your business. Moreover, you can highlight any upcoming events and offers you might have.

This type of blog would be ideal to showcase awards and achievements and also display video demonstrations. In addition, it would work well for feature stories about the personalities who work in your organisation.

You could also run promotions and competitions, putting the emphasis on social sharing each time. In this case, of course, you want to encourage people to visit your premises.

The main thing is that you show that you’ve got a unique, credible offline business. One that’s passionate about what it does.

Your blog might be online, but it should constantly push offline “happenings”. Make a point of using photos to make the events real and show that they’re popular and well-attended.

Direct selling can be used occasionally when promoting an event or maybe selling tickets.

This kind of blog is ideal for:

Offline businesses like shops, pubs, breweries, restaurants who want to find an audience online who they can attract to their premises.

Crafts, hobbies, and special interests (baking, gardening, knitting).

Specialist online food and drink businesses (craft beer, gourmet food products, cheese).

Family and friends’ businesses (any business where you’re a close-knit team of big personalities who know each other socially).

Authority websites where you are influential and successful in your field.

“Campaigning” Businesses:

An example of a campaigning-style blog would be where you’re trying to persuade, enlighten and change minds. For example, your blog might focus on green issues and the benefits of living more in tune with nature. You could sell affiliate products such as solar powered lighting or organic gardening kits to make an income.

You can make your post serious, warm, humorous or a mix of all three.

These types of issues strike a chord with certain groups of people. The result being that your site is likely to attract a lot of interaction and consequent social sharing.

Case studies of people/families adopting these lifestyle changes would work well here as would “of interest” posts, e.g., “7 Quick and Easy Vegan Recipes for Busy Families”.

This kind of blog is ideal for:

Charities trying to raise money and awareness for a cause.

Environmental, social, and political campaigners (or businesses with strong ethical principles).

Health businesses – anything in which you have a strong opinion, unusual attitude, or specific approach that you believe others should know about (diet, nutrition, complementary medicine).

Guru-led websites where you’re on a crusade, you’re a known personality or an authority in your field.

Motivation and success businesses where you’re trying to communicate passion, drive, and ambition.

“Seeker” businesses where you’re on a mission to achieve a certain goal and your readers are coming along with you.

man focused on his laptop reading blog on make your business more personal and interesting with a blog

I hope you found my Make Your Business More Personal and Interesting with a Blog post of value and that you can include some of the ideas I mentioned in your future blog posts. Any business can be made to look more personal and interesting by using a blog especially if you connect with your readers and give them relevant and helpful information that appeals to them.