For many writers the worst part of writing is at the very beginning. They have to sit down to a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen and make something happen. However, people who write frequently have tools and techniques to get unstuck, because it happens to everyone. All writers will have trouble with writer’s block at some point in their lives. It doesn’t matter whether they are trying to write a blog post, a white paper or an essay. Here are a few strategies that can help you never get writer’s block again.

There are many possible reasons for writer’s block. When you know you have to get something done, that debilitating feeling of fear and frustration just seems to make things worse. Fortunately there are as many ways to deal with writer’s block as there are causes.  Let us know in the comments if you have a strategy that works for you.

1. Don’t write.

As a person who writes for a living, there are definitely times when I don’t feel like writing an article even though I have to. If I have the luxury of time, I will simply not work on it until some idea occurs to me to get started. I know my mental wheels are always turning in the background. If I can wait until I have a little seed of inspiration, it flows from there. So generally, if you’re feeling stressed about writing something, take a break from it or ask someone else to take it off your plate for a while.

2. Keep a pocket size notebook or phone app with you at all times.

Whether you’re a pen-and-paper person (like I am) or an app person, find a way to make it convenient to jot down the slightest idea that occurs to you. Sometimes just a single word in a notebook or text message to yourself can help you recall the thought you had. Without documenting our sometimes fleeting ideas they can be gone forever.

3. If you can’t think of a good beginning or end, start writing in the middle.

Maybe you have a great point you want to make but aren’t sure how to start. Write down your main statement that you want to be the “take-away” from your blog post or article and work backwards. Or show it to someone and ask them what information you would need to give them to have them reach the same conclusion you did.

4. Take a walk.

This is tried and true advice because it works. Clear your mind and change your location. Get some fresh air and resolve not to think about your problem for a few minute. Don’t think about it at all.

5. Write often

More tried and true advice. Writing is like any skill that you may be struggling to learn, like playing an instrument or learning how to be a better baker. It gets easier and better with practice.

6. When you’re inspired, write more than one thing.

Try to keep a back-up idea in your pocket so when those days do come along, you’re not stressed about it. Ask an employee to come up with some ideas to write out so you have a couple to pick from if things really get tough.

7. Keep yourself informed.

The best way to make someone think that you are informed is to be informed. Read up on industry news and cultivate your opinions about the developments.  Engage others who are interested in the industry and you can have some very enlightening discussions that can lead to ideas for your own content.

8. Get inspiration from everyday life.

You’re out to dinner and your friend wants to leave a smaller tip than you. Why? This could inspire a blog post about perceived value. You’re at a baseball game and someone is critical of the other team’s player. Why? This could inspire a post about marketing and loyalty. You’re brushing your teeth and you start thinking about that song on the radio or that commercial you saw. Why? This could inspire a post about how to be memorable, understanding your target audience, or making your point in only 30 seconds.

9. Repurpose old content.

If you’ve been in business for a while, or blogging for more than a few months, there’s a good chance that the industry has undergone some dramatic changes since you first got started. Look back at some of your older articles, blog posts, paid online advertisements, or whatever you’ve done, and see what you can find that may have changed.

If your selling point from 2 years ago is no longer relevant, don’t just delete that blog post. Acknowledge it, own it, and describe what has changed in the world. If you’re a florist, for instance, you might have a post about the top 10 flowers to give for birthdays. You might then take each of those 10 flowers and turn them into 10 separate blog posts talking about why you sell them, what colors they are available in, how they are used in bouquets or corsages, and what flowers they work well with. Remember, your content does not have to be long.

10. Hire someone.

Hiring a content producer does not have to be a last resort. The decision to hire a content producer, such as Limelight Department, could be the best decision you make. If you really don’t enjoy writing and aren’t interested in doing it, hire someone! Some people love to write. Hard to believe, I know!

If you have ideas for content you want and no time to do it, let a professional take it off your plate. You spend your time thinking about how you can get more customers, and content producers spend their time thinking about what else they can write about. There’s no reason or rule that every business owner has to create their own content. Professional services exist to be problem solvers just for people like you who need them. You’ll never get writer’s block again because you won’t have to worry about whether you have an idea ready in time to publish or not!

Blogging can be a good way to achieve a number of goals for your business, but without a significant number of subscribers paying attention to your blog, achieving these goals is a lot more difficult. It can also be difficult to attract more blog subscribers! 1,000 subscribers means you have achieved critical mass. It’s enough to prove your blog’s success and also provide enough traction to keep it growing and improving.

How do you go from 1 subscriber to 1,000? This article provides constructive strategies to help you achieve that number. It also outlines questions to ask yourself to clarify what type of audience you are trying to attract to your blog and why.

Know who you’re trying to reach

You cannot build an audience of 1,000 if you don’t know who you want that audience to be. If you’re starting a juice cart, the target audience will likely be very different from the target audience of a meatball sandwich cart. Where do people who love juice shop? What blogs do they read? What social media outlets do they use? It has been said that good marketing offers solutions to problems that people may not have even known they had. think about how you will solve the problems for your audience and find them where they are.

Prioritize good navigation and search.

Evaluate your blog from the perspective of someone who has never seen it before. In fact, consider asking someone who has never seen it before to go over everything. What does a first-time visitor to your blog see first? Do your blog title and tag lines instantly communicate what your blog is about? Do your theme and colors reflect your brand identity?

Pay attention to navigation. If a reader clicks the search bar the results should immediately take them to something that matches what they were searching for. If nothing matches, consider implementing a “suggested” item. If a reader clicks on an article, it should be easy for them to get back to the main page, or continue on to another article.

Position yourself as the expert.

The visitors to your blog must be convinced that your blog is worth their time. Put your qualifications and testimonials up front. Your About Page should be thorough and personal. Link to places where you have guest posted, or to others who have been mentors to you along the way. Show off your client list. 

Make it worth their while.

Once you have identified your target audience, go after them with an offer they can’t refuse. Offer a freebie, or solve a problem. Maybe a BOGO coupon for your juice cart, or a free download of juice cocktails.

Give your content purpose.

Have a plan and only publish top-notch content. We’ve written before about how a blog post does not have to be the typical three paragraphs and a photo. If photography is your place to shine, tie your Instagram account to your website (you may need a custom plug-in to do this), but then every time you post a beautiful photo it will be right there on your blog. Add more text to describe the photo on your blog when you’re in between customers. 

Embrace social media. 

You do not have to have a productive presence on every social media platform that’s out there. In fact, that’s not recommended. Pick one and do it well, based on the identity of the people you want to attract. Facebook is an obvious choice, because its paid posting options let you target people in certain demographics and geographic regions.

But beyond that, connect with other leaders in your industry and promote their work. They may respond and promote yours. Build relationships with other leaders in your industry through commenting on their blogs, responding to their tweets, and engaging on their Facebook pages. 

Make your content easily shareable by including social media buttons everywhere you can. Posts with images automatically get more attention than those without, so choose good quality stock photos if you’re not taking your own. Work to produce content that people actually want to read.

The deeper your understanding of your target audience, the easier this becomes, as you can know where to find your readers online, know how they interact with other blogs and other online presences, and know what their problems and concerns are and what they need to solve those issues.

Once you know your target audience to the greatest level you can, the type of content that you need to produce becomes more obvious, as do the methods that you can use to promote that content.

One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is to create content that is easily found, easily shared, and useful or instructional. You can pay for advertisements. But creating this content yourself is the best way to get quality content out there. That’s why you should start a business blog! You control the content. You can publish your content in a variety of ways. Blogging helps your business be found. Keep reading for a list of 10 reasons why you should start a business blog.

1. A blog helps with SEO.

Each new blog post you add essentially adds a new page to your website. Search engines love is fresh content. New content, such as new blog posts, that is also relevant, is almost always placed higher up the search engines than older content.

One way that search engines determine relevancy is by the keywords that the user searches for. Let’s say you’re in the business of selling soccer balls and gear. Someone might search for “regulation soccer balls.” Your blog post explaining regulation soccer balls could be one of the first results to come up. Fill your post with photos of regulation soccer balls that you sell, and link readers right to the shopping cart.

2. It helps position you as the expert in your field.

Writing informative posts about your field helps create the image of you as the expert. Your information and experience becomes more valuable than just anybody else on the web. Your blog is a great place to make a clear connection between your brand and your knowledge.

3. It’s easy.

The hardest part about blogging is coming up with ideas. (We plan more posts about coming up with ideas and get the most mileage out of them!) Once you know what you’re going to write about, the WordPress platform is easy to use. Scheduling platforms and plug-ins help make SEO of your post and social media promotions also easy. Good website development companies (such as Limelight Department!) can help with training you to make sure that you know how to use the technology you have signed up for.

4. A blog offers you a lot of media options, which also helps with SEO (See #1.)

Blogging doesn’t have to mean three paragraphs of text published each day. If you’re more of a video person, record yourself as you walk around your office and post it on YouTube. Take photos and publish them with Instagram. Do your blogging in short bits on Twitter. Use the tools and technology that work for you, because all of them are searchable by search engines and all will get you an audience.

5. It’s free. 

A basic WordPress site is free! Customization and some themes cost money, but their cost is fairly small. A hosting fee is a minimal annual expense. Your audience is out there and it doesn’t cost much other than time to meet them where they are.

6. It helps drive traffic to your website.

Each blog post can lead your readers to take some action. That could be downloading your resources, making an appointment, or visiting your website to take advantage of a sale. Lead your visitors to take the action you want with a call to action placed at the end of each post that links back to your website.

7. It helps convert that traffic into leads. 

How can a bunch of strangers reading your blog posts translate to sales? Let me answer this question with a question…How is it better to have a bunch of strangers reading your paid AdWords advertisement and then trying to send them to your website?

When people read your blog they are getting a sense of your personality, your authority, and why your products or services are better than anyone else’s. The people reading your blog are already searching or information related to what you have to offer, because otherwise they wouldn’t have found the blog post or taken the time to read it. Traffic to your website from content that is useful and informative is more valuable than anything else you can do. And, other than the time you spend creating the content, it’s free.

8. Blogging is a long-term strategy.

Other than a paid advertisement, there is very little in the world of online marketing that is done for immediate gratification. It takes time for search engines to “recognize” a site’s authority, and part of the way that happens is by having the search engines visit your site on a regular basis. Sites that are not updated frequently do not get visited by search engines very often. The more you update your site, the more the search engines will visit you. The longer this goes on, the more authority a search engine places on your site, and they will start to return your site higher up in the search results.

Publishing on a blog over a long period of time, on a regular basis, about topics that are keyword appropriate and related to your business is an excellent way to build authority for your site.

9. You’ll get better with practice. 

Writing is just like anything else in that it does get easier with practice. If you’re doubting your ability to create ongoing content that people will actually want to read, you can always consider hiring out the service to copywriters. (Limelight Department provides this service on a regular basis for a variety of clients.) Otherwise, keep a notebook or electronic notetaker app with you at all times, and whenever the smallest idea occurs to you, jot it down so it’s not lost. Allow yourself the freedom to write short posts (or tweets) when you don’t feel like it, and trust that the more you practice blog writing the easier it will get.

10. You can gather other useful resources to your own site.

You don’t have to come up with every single new idea on your own. Curate groups of the best resources that are out there on other sites or cool stuff that you find. For instance, if you sell soccer balls, one of your blog posts each week can be a “highlights post” of the soccer games for the past week, or how the soccer stars stats changed at the end of each new game. You can collect news items or tips from others in your niche. (Just make sure you always attribute where you are getting the information from.) Next time someone is looking for
“the best explanation of soccer rules on the web,” for instance, they’ll go to your post first. You can even invite some of those other experts to contribute to your blog as a guest poster.

Get started with a business blog

And it doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started with your business or you’ve been in business for 10 years and never blogged before. I can’t think of any industry or business where a blog filled with content of some sort wouldn’t be helpful. So whether you’re a florist or a restaurant or a lawyer, there’s room in the blogosphere for you, so go ahead and start a business blog!

If you’re not sure how to start a business blog with a WordPress site, just get in touch. As we mentioned above, basic themes are free and so are most of the plug-ins. However, customization lets you make your blog just right for you, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help or if you have questions on why to start a business blog and how it might help your particular business.