Have your cake and eat it with your small business blog
Do you have a small business that you are trying to grow? There are a lot of balls to keep in the air when you’re just starting out, or when you are in the first couple of years of running a business. You need to market yourself, get the leads coming in, keep existing customers happy, have an eye on the finances, and of course try to enjoy yourself! After all, that’s probably the reason you set up a small business in the first place! But as the business grows, it can become more and more difficult to keep all those balls in the air.
The tipping point
There is often a tipping point that is reached and sometimes breached, before we accept we need help. Sometimes because we want to keep every aspect of the business under our own control, or sometimes because we don’t realise how much we’re struggling, until it gets so bad our body or mind give us away.
Perhaps you’ve realised you need help, but you can’t really afford to take someone else on a sustained full-time salary just yet. Perhaps it just feels like too big a task to let anything go. If this sounds like you, this is where outsourcing to freelancers can allow you to have your cake and eat it!
Changing priorities
Marketing is a common outsourced discipline. Some larger companies use big agencies to take care of all their marketing needs, but a lot of smaller businesses retain control of managing the overall strategy, while outsourcing some of the ‘doing’ to a freelance writer, social media expert or marketeer.
Company blogs are a good example of how things can start to slip as business gets busier. A new start-up sets up a blog to gain new business. They grow awareness, position themselves, and achieve their search engine ranking and then as the leads start coming in, the blog diminishes. It’s not a criticism, it’s a time-consuming aspect of any marketing campaign that can be incredibly hard to stay on top of once the business is doing well. And your priority must be focussing on the customers that need something from you day to day. However, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If you have a business blog that was bringing you inbound leads and improving your SEO, you don’t have to let it go.
The business blog you want, without the work
The aim of the Blog Write Blog is to be a source of tips and advice for small to medium businesses who want to build and maintain a blog. However, I completely acknowledge that once your blog is up and running and doing what you wanted it to do, it can be difficult to stay on top of it for the long term. Particularly as your venture grows. Small businesses or start-up companies that want to grow an online presence, but don’t have the time to do it themselves may be able to find an affordable helping hand from a local freelance copywriter.
Find the best fit
Different copywriters will work with you in different ways, so take the time up front to find the best fit for your business. For example, you may be ready to hand everything over from the beginning, in which case you’ll need someone who once briefed, can come up with topics and write the blog for you to sign off. Or, if you would like to keep a little more control, plenty of freelancers will happily take a list of topics you would like to cover and a brief for each one and work their way through the list.
A good copywriter won’t be precious about their writing either, so just because they’ve submitted a blog post to you doesn’t mean you’re obligated to post it immediately with no changes. Particularly in the beginning you should expect to make a few changes while your new copywriter learns your voice. But, if you are prepared to build a working relationship with one person, they will soon be producing content that you would have been proud to write yourself.
If you have a small business that’s gathering pace to the point you don’t know which way to turn, drop me an e-mail today at [email protected] for more information about my blog copywriting services.
Writer of smart, engaging copy for businesses that understand the importance of great copy, but struggle to find the time to give it the attention it needs. I offer a proactive approach to deliver fresh content.
