A blog is an outstanding tool to grow your business. It expands your market reach, builds your credibility, presents your expertise, and shapes your brand awareness. Plus, it’s a cost-effective tactic for driving more traffic to your website…once the common blogging challenges are unscrambled.

Before we can consider growing blog traffic and encouraging reader interaction, most of us need to conquer the most common blogging challenges of topics, time, and talent.
 
A Blogging State of Mind is Messy
 
Those who blog – whether labeled a blogger or not – face the same issues as any writer.  Finding the time to blog is stressful. Waiting for the inspiration to blog is excruciating. Awaiting the confidence to blog is nerve-racking. Pinpointing topics is painful.

In January of 2013, I was challenged to a 30-day blogging challenge. It felt more like a dual than a challenge. It was agonizing for all the same reasons most entrepreneurs don’t blog often enough. Drudging the self-assurance and focus to meet the challenge took determination and guts.

I won’t lie! There were many days I wanted to wind up my commitment. Growing a small business is stressful enough without this, I thought. Luckily, it’s difficult to pull the plug on a promise made when held accountable by others. Ack! So I toiled.

I don’t consider myself a gifted writer, like Carolynn Aristone, who can sit at the keyboard and effortlessly pound out pearls of wisdom.  My blogging was one of spits, sputters, stops, and starts…until I discovered a method.

It was a process that eliminated the ambiguity, calmed the nerves, and nudged me into action. It was an approach to blogging that ensured that blogging was a delight rather than annoyance.

Download the Step-by-Step Blogging Process here to thwart “blog jams” and “bloggers block”.

More importantly, I learned that blogging is a form of discovery. It helps you understand what you know…and what you don’t.

As with any skill, blogging takes practice. The more you blog, the better you get and the easier it becomes.

What has been most helpful to your blogging process?

There’s much more to blogging than selecting a few topics and banging some words out on your keyboard. In addition to the process used to produce top-notch posts on a regular basis, there are also tools that make it easier to blog. For us non-journalist, professional-writer types wanting to share our thoughts, a collection of tools creates a better blog.

A Bloggers Arsenal of Tools

Feedly is a news aggregator app.  It’s the simplest, least distracting way to gather blog content ideas. Feedly is the one-stop location for your routine sources of information and research.

Evernote, a digital filing system, collects and organizes topics of information and inspiration for your blog content. The Premium version has a robust automated search and discover feature within the app that we highly recommended to aid your research and drafting efforts.

Don’t forget to download Evernote Web Clipper. Clipping, saving, and storing articles of interest from the web to the notebook of your choice has never been easier.

At a loss for compelling blog titles? No worries. Tap into Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator to stimulate your inner journalist. Amazon is also a powerful title generator to kindle blog title ideas – not plagiarize book titles.

Not sure what title will grab your audience? You’ll love this nifty free tool from the Advanced Marketing Institute. The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer evaluates your headline to determine the EMV (Emotional Marketing Value) of the title. The higher the EMV, the better it grabs your audience’s attention and draws them in.

Need a blogging platform? Oy! That’s a conversation to have with your web developer/designer! We’re fortunate to be on the Hubspot marketing software – and highly recommend it for small business owners. The marketing software from Hubspot provides a plethora of marketing tools that make your blog sing.

WordPress is a common platform used by most bloggers. With an abundance of plugins at your fingertips, WordPress is a powerful blogging tool.

“A picture is worth a thousands words,” so the saying goes. Visuals are gaining popularity in attracting and enticing your reader. Death to the Stock Photo, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, and iStock are a few of our favorite hangouts for jpegs.

A timer – who can ink a blog without the use of a timer? You’ve heard the saying, “work expands to fill the time it has to complete,” right?  So goes the blog. A timer keeps you focused and on track to avoid your entire day being decimated by blogging.

A content or editorial calendar is a must-have planning tool when scheduling topics for your blog. Organized in advance, an editorial calendar enhances lead generation through strategically designed marketing campaigns. (Stay tuned. A sample content calendar is available for download soon!)

Although we don’t take advantage of this tool nearly enough, Click to Tweet is a fun and easy way for your readers to share key points within your blog on twitter. (Click to Tweet)

Bloggers needs to channel their inner graphic designer to compete in the visually rich world of online content. For those of us with two left brains, Canva makes designing simple for everyone with a simple drag-and-drop functionality.

As it is with all things online, it’s loaded with tools to make the process of blogging less painful and, if you’re lucky, more fun!

What tools make your small business blogging a treat?

One of the challenges expressed by most new small business bloggers is coming up with enough content to satisfy the content calendar and rally around timelines. Content ideas are everywhere. Once you tune into the circumstances that frame your day, the number of ideas that bubble up for your blog is astounding.  Sourcing content of value to your reader is easier than you think.

5 Sources + 5 Days = 50 Blog Topics

1. Start with your buyer persona. “Dress up” your buyer persona with a better understanding of their wants, desires, and challenges. Content deemed valuable to your audience will spill from your brain!

Number of blog topics = 10

2. Subscribe to an industry blog. Andria Taylor of Talent Agent Group did just that.  Andria’s specialty is growing talent for the wine industry. She understands the challenges – and the opportunities – that exist for her clients. By following industry trends, Andria creates content that provides real solutions for developing talent so her readers – those in the wine industry – can retain their competitive edge in the marketplace.

Number of topics = 10

3. Keep a log of client situations. Every client conversation presents an opportunity to solve a problem, or an opening to advance their goals…and lots of themes for your blog! Keep Evernote handy to record these flashes of insight for subjects your reader values.

Number of topics = 10

4. Draw topics from social media. Comments, questions, and responses on social media platforms are excellent resources of subjects for your blog. In fact, Can Finding Your Market Tier Spark Your Small Business Growth? is the sequel to a Linkedin conversation.

A recent comment about the market’s inability to afford his/her product triggered an avalanche of topics that, if known by small business entrepreneurs, would save them from the struggle.

Number of topics = 10

5. Gather subjects from your learning channels. Whether it’s reading after the kids are in bed or listening to the latest podcast during your morning jog, thought leaders are a catalyst for areas of interest to your readers.

Number of topics = 10

Ta Dah! 5 sources + 5 days = 50 blog topics. Give yourself a round of applause!

The best part?  These sourcing channels are a routine part of your day. There’s nothing more to add to your already eventful calendar. We like that! You?

As my Dad would say, “you’ll have more blog posts than you can shake a stick at.”

What other channels do you use to spark topics for your blog?