So, you’re thinking of starting a blog? Good for you! Maybe you already have a bunch of topic ideas. Or, maybe you have a fuzzy idea of what it is you want to blog about.

Well, there’s one thing that you should remember about starting a blog.

“Content is king!”

We’ve all heard that statement at least once before. In the highly-competitive world of blog content authoring and niche influencing, the pressure to consistently post content not only on your blog but across various social platforms can be overwhelming.

Content is important because it can establish you as an expert in your field and shows your customers that they can trust you to provide value. It’s important for the content to be compelling.

It’s the general consensus that creating compelling content for social media is both the most effective (82%) yet challenging (69%) part of social media marketing. There’s more to social media marketing than meets the eye. Posting on behalf of your business can be more complex than simply posting on your personal profile.

Starting a Blog by Outsourcing Content Writing

Should you decide that you need to outsource your content writing when starting a blog, don’t feel defeated. This is a normal thing and in no way betrays any weaknesses in your capabilities. In fact, delegation is the sign of a healthy enterprise. Businesses often outsource content because:

• researching keywords, choosing topics, and writing content may not be the core strength of the business or business owner
• learning the process and navigating blogging and social media can be time-consuming
• posting quality, timely content in a consistent way is a scheduling hassle best left to professionals
• responding to and mediating comments on popular posts can be a full-time job

Businesses Are Run By Humans

Don’t write just for the search engines. There are thousands of articles on the web telling you how to game search engines and SEO. Google is already wise to 99% of the “tricks” that various SEO “experts” are trying to get you to buy into.

Businesses are created by humans for humans. So it stands to reason that business content should follow suit. Writing content that humans will want to read, engage with, save, and share should be front of mind when creating content.

Before asking what your business should post or what your customers want to see, ask yourself—as a human—what kind of content you would find engaging. Since there is a lot of noise online and people get disinterested quickly, it’s imperative for your content to have its own voice and personality.

It’s important to be personal and try to connect with your audience. As a brand, you can promote your business and engage your audience at the same time. You just want to make sure you are focusing more on engaging your audience and solving their problems instead of only focusing on promoting your products.

Apply Keyword Research to Content

After you’ve written for your audience, and your content is as human and as engaging as possible, now you should go back through the content and carefully edit keywords and phrases to match the particular words and phrases you want to rank for in search engines.

I use the word “carefully” here because it’s important to retain the humanness of your content and avoid even the appearance of keyword stuffing. You want search engines to pay attention to what you’ve written when matching your content with user search intent. But, you don’t want the wrong kind of attention that flags and downranks you as someone who is trying to spam the search engines.

Don’t Be Spammy

Speaking of spamming, don’t be that person on Facebook who floods people’s feeds with multiple opinion pieces or “buy-my-product” posts. That isn’t what people want to see from their friends or from a business.

The focus needs to be more on your customers than on your business. Chances are if someone is following your business they already know what products you offer. Therefore, there is no need to constantly post links to your website. If they need to, they can find your website on your profile page.

Conclusion: Content Quality vs. Quantity When Starting a Blog

When starting a blog, the secret of the best content is to focus on the value you are providing your customers. Value is what makes them want to stick around. Don’t feel pressured to post something every day to keep people engaged. You run the risk of posting just to post without offering any value. Quality over quantity wins every time.

Would you like to try out WordPress with a free WordPress “sandbox” site? Need some help starting a blog? Schedule a free consultation and let us help!