How To Write a Quality Blog Article

As a managed service provider, you know that there are tons of people out there who have no clue how to manage their IT. That’s your niche in the business. You manage their technology, but your business also plays another vital role. You’re responsible for educating your clients about the numerous aspects of their IT infrastructure, as well as informing them about how managed services are helping them accomplish their business’s goals.

That’s where blogs come into play. It’s no secret that effective blogging can help your business achieve greater success and web visibility. In fact, according to an infographic titled The BlogConomy: Blogging Statistics, blogging is one of the single largest influences when an individual decides they want to invest in something. 

In the meantime, here are some statistics to chew on:

• 77% of Internet users read blogs.
• Small businesses which blog regularly generate 126% more leads than those who don’t.
• 81% of US consumers trust the content delivered in blogs.
• 61% of all US consumers have made a purchase from reading a blog.
• 82% of consumers enjoy reading related content from brands.

So, not only is blogging good for attracting website traffic, it is also good for gathering leads (the above statistics predict that blogging can potentially more than double your current leads). Of course, none of this really helps if you don’t have a blog; and the number one goal of a blog is to provide useful content to the reader.

The Writing Process

Remember your college days when you had to write paper after paper in a proper educational, scholarly fashion? The same writing process which helped you write your thesis or that massive research paper can help you create quality content for your business.

This should obviously be scaled down for the appropriate medium. For instance, a blog article doesn’t need to be several pages long to be effective. However, the same overall process is useful when writing a blog article. Here are the basics steps of the writing process that bring the best result:

• Brainstorming. Ask yourself what are you writing about? Why do you think this is a good topic? Is this something that you have your own thoughts and ideas about? Is it something that your target audience will enjoy reading or learning about? Are you the right person to write about this topic?
• Research. Now that you have an idea on what you’d like to write about, you need to learn more about it. For more formal writing, you’ll be looking for supporting evidence that comes from a reliable source that you’ll be able to site. Often for blogs, learning more about your topic and combining it with your own ideas and experience tend to be the best fodder for blogs.
• Writing. Okay, it’s time to write. You’ve gotten an idea about what you’d like to say, now it’s time to say it. Bloggers have the luxury of some flexibility when it comes to length and context. Basically, when you’re done with what you want to say, you stop writing.
• Proofreading and Editing. Then, it’s time to re-read your masterpiece. Regardless of who your audience is, or how many people you think will see your blog, making sure that it's been proofed enough so any reader is able to interpret what you’re trying to say is very important. You should, at the very least, proof your own work. Having another party read it over and make suggestions, is a good idea as well.
• Publication. Whether your work is going to be published on a widely read blog or you’ve just started a blog whose audience is primarily your family, once you’ve published the article for the world to see, it’s out there. There is no taking it back. The internet is forever. Make sure that publication is something that you don’t mind becoming viral.

The process might seem long and arduous, but it’s really not that difficult. Your biggest concern as a business professional might be finding the time to produce your own content. All it takes is a couple hours, here and there, to put something together. Heck, a blog article could even be your business simply sharing something you found on the Internet and providing your own commentary on it. So long as it’s informative, your reader will find it useful, and it will therefore be a success.

Your ultimate goal is to provide the reader with something they can use and share with others. Don’t lose sight of this goal, and you’ll be writing like a professional blogger before you know it.