The 3 biggest challenges in writing a business blog

Writing a blog to promote your business has more benefits than I could care to mention - building relationships with clients and potential partners, getting feedback, learning more about what it is that you do, building your personal brand, getting found easily by the search engines… and so the list goes on.

And by and large - if you stick at it - writing a business blog is easy, rewarding and fun.

But there are some writing challenges that come with the territory and the recent redesign of Confident Writing threw up 3 for me:

#1 The porch pitch

The micro version of the elevator pitch, I spotted this in my travels round the blogosphere looking at approaches to navigation - including navigation with our words. At the same time the need to declutter my sidebar and generate some eye movement meant coming up with a new porch pitch for Confident Writing.

The challenge: describe your blog in 50 words or less

#2 The “about” page

The new navigation bar created the space for the “about” page - which challenged me to come up with the words. Most of us have read how important the “about” page is and of course that makes it harder to write… Plus it forces us to step out from immersion in our own words, move away from our writer’s perspective and take a long hard look at what we’re really blogging about.

The challenge: provide a clear introduction to your blog for new readers

#3 The “work with me” page

One of the reasons for doing the redesign was to make it easier for people to find out how to work with me. Again, the navigation bar created the opportunity and the necessity to do just that. But finding the right words to promote your own business isn’t totally easily in a social media context (and I’m relieved to hear I’m in good company in finding self-promotion a challenge). You need to highlight the benefits and keep it brief without diverging from the tone and style of the rest of your blog.

The challenge: find the words to promote your services without breaking rapport

Over the next week or so I’m going to share:

• how I dealt with these challenges
• the resources that helped me get past them
• the end result (for those of you reading from a feed!)

If I stick to these writing challenges there’ll be 3 posts to add to this one… but maybe there are others that I should be adding to it.

So tell me: what are the biggest challenges that you’ve faced in writing your business blog?

The answers to the challenge:

50 words to pitch your blog: a writing challenge for business bloggers

What’s your blog got to offer? The About Page: a writing challenge for business bloggers

It’s all in the frame: how to promote your services without breaking rapport

For an introduction to the writing lessons from a blog redesign try:

A web designer’s guide to writing well: 10 writing lessons

For the follow up posts in this series make sure you’re subscribed to the feed

Joanna Young, The Confident Writing Coach
Because our words count

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Related posts:

1. 50 words to pitch your blog: a writing challenge for business bloggers
2. What’s your blog got to offer? The About Page: a writing challenge for business bloggers

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