Writing is personal. Those of us lucky enough to write for a living don’t have as many emotional ties to what we do because it’s a job. But for the founders – or the marketing execs who are starting out with their first few blogs – writing can be terrifying. Putting your writing out into the world can be absolutely nerve-wracking. So I’m sharing some of the best blog tips and tricks to build that blog writing confidence.
In fact, lacking confidence in your blog writing skills can hold you back from even writing a blog in the first place, let alone hitting publish. And that’s a real shame because a blog can do wonders for your business.
It’s often the cornerstone of your content marketing. Blogs build trust in your business. They reach out to people through search engines so they can find out that you exist. And they can do that all-important Q&A work so your potential customer knows what to expect before they buy from you.
Plus, blogs are a great way to show off your brand personality (or your founder personality) without needing to get in front of the camera. And blogs help establish you as a thought leader, an expert in your field. So that you can build the credibility you know you deserve.
And all of this starts with the confidence to write and publish a blog in the first place.
But how do you build up that confidence when you’re not sure that what you’re doing it right in the first place?
As someone who has been writing blogs since the dawn of time (okay, maybe not time but since the word “blog” was invented), I’ve got a few blog tips and tricks that can help you build up your blogging confidence.
1. Start by writing for yourself
It might seem simple but the best way to get more blogging confidence is to write all the time. The more you write, the easier it will be. The good news is that you’re already writing every day. You send emails, text messages, and do social media posts. All of this is writing and it all helps build your confidence.
If you need an extra boost, start with a daily journal. The benefits of journalling are proven. It can help reduce stress, improve your immune system and reduce anxiety. Plus, when you’re writing, it’s just for you. No one else. So you don’t need to worry about what others might think of your words.
This is a great way to warm up before getting into writing a blog for your business. You’re telling your brain that it needs to get into writing mode but without all the pressure of making it think about what to say next. You’ve already done that when you’re doing the free writing in your journal.
Whether you do a single line, paragraph or page, every time you sit down and write makes the process of writing itself become more normalised. Then there is less pressure on making writing a performance.
If you do it every day, then it becomes a natural part of your life. Writing for an audience is simply taking it to the next step.
In fact, you could always start an anonymous blog first before launching your business blog to get used to publishing work in the wider world. Sometimes, having a bit of a passion project can be really inspiring and bring lots of new skills into a business.
2. Read lots of blogs and analyse them
One of the best blog tips and tricks to get more confidence in writing is to read. Reading often is like a bit of magic. You’re soaking up what works because a piece of writing has captured your attention long enough to sit and read it.
Now, the real benefit here is when you’ve found yourself reading something – even if it’s the side of a plant milk carton – to ask yourself what made you want to read it in the first place. What hooked you in? What does that headline or first sentence look like?
And then how did it get you to keep on reading? Especially if you read all the way to the bottom without getting distracted or bored. If you make a note of this every time you get sucked into some text, you’ll soon have a nice guide on how to make your writing more effective.
It’s easy to read a wonderful article or website and think: “I could never do that so I probably shouldn’t try”. I promise you that the person who did write that copy didn’t wake up one morning with some expert writing superpower.
They will no doubt have a back catalogue of copy that makes them cringe and will never see the light of day again. All they’ve done is keep going, honing and improving their craft through a system of writing and reading.
3. Start with what you know
A blog has to do a lot of hard work: attract someone to your site in the first place, build trust, sell a product without explicitly selling a product, and get someone to spend time reading and take another action as a result of that reading.
It’s no wonder that starting a blog can feel overwhelming and result in a spot of writer’s block. Do you start with the SEO? Or explain part of the problem? Maybe you write about how your product is so flipping life-changing but then all the thoughts get jumbled up in your head that nothing comes out in a coherent order.
Instead, start with what you know. Let’s say that’s how your product works. Lots of businesses don’t write any content on how their product actually works. And that’s a shame because usually, we have three questions: what is this? What does it do? And how much is it?
We might get to a website because we’ve looked for the answer to a question, but when we get there, we’re pretty impatient and just want a quick answer to one of those questions.
Let’s say you make some lovely herbal tea. You know that your tea has a unique drying process which maintains more flavour and that your customers can get more than one mug from the same bag.
You’ve probably put a lot of love and passion into creating your tea. You know loads about it and why this method is better than anything else out there.
Make that into a blog.
That thing you’re passionate about, the reason you started your business, that’s the seed from which your blogs should grow. Your curiosity and enthusiasm will shine through.
Of course, you’ll need to consider why your reader should care about this but for now, pop that to one side. You don’t want to overthink it, you just need to write.
4. Get some support
Okay, so when you’re writing a blog for a business its purpose is to market the business. So you can’t forget about all that other stuff and only write about what you fancy. You do also need to answer potential customer questions and consider how you might appear in their world.
If this side of things feels overwhelming, then get some help.
I run a blogging course for founders and marketing execs who are taking up the blogging mantle in their teams. It takes you through eight weeks of live group classes where you get a rock-solid foundation in writing blogs that builds up your confidence.
At the end, you’ll know that you can write an awesome blog because I’ll have walked you through the process. And you get feedback on eight blogs which means you’ll know what you need to focus on.
Doing a course in blogging is one of the best things you can do for your business. The skills you have will go beyond the writing and get you thinking about how you approach creativity in other parts of your business as well.
But ultimately, getting support is a fast track to building real blogging confidence.
5. Get the right kind of feedback
Let’s say you don’t fancy support or don’t have the capacity for it. In this case, get someone to give you feedback on your blogs.
It’s really tempting to get a friend, partner or your mum to have a read-through and tell you what they think.
But these people love you and unless they are:
a. Trained to give proper feedback
b. Your target audience or
c. Have a background in marketing, you’re not going to get what you need to build your blog confidence and write kick-ass blogs.
Instead, you need a trusted person who will give you helpful feedback without just saying everything looks great. Ideally, this should be a trained professional but if you don’t have that budget, get someone who is either likely to buy your product or works in marketing to have a read-through.
They will give you feedback that you can use. As with writing lots, the more you do this the easier it will get. Then before you know it, you’re happily taking on feedback and writing better blogs. And your confidence gets a boost because you can see where you’re going to write as much as where you need to give it another go.
6. Use the tools available to you
One of the main worries I hear founders talk about is the structure of the blog and grammar. You can use tools like Hemingway and Grammarly to help you with your writing. There is nothing wrong with getting AI tools to create that first draft for you either. Just remember these are tools to support you and nothing will create a blog quite like one that is written from the heart.
Making use of writing tools can really help you formulate and improve your ideas. It’s daft to struggle along alone when you have some help you can call on. It simple blog tips and tricks like using tools that are sometimes overlooked.
7. Close your eyes and hit publish
Finally, the hardest part of writing any blog is setting it free into the world. Like ripping off a plaster, it’s best to just get it done. Remember, you can always come back and edit it later.
And I recommend that’s what you do. Publish your blog, come back and improve it. Add some bits and tidy up the language. You’ll find that this way your blog writing process is much faster, less overwhelming and gives you a better end blog in the long run.
If you look back at early blogs and cringe, then simply archive them or rewrite them. As I said before, the more you write, the better your work will be so it makes sense that your blogs from a year or two ago are not as great as the one you wrote last week.
Blogs aren’t permanent. You can update them as often as you want. And you don’t need permission to do so.
Blog tips and tricks to build confidence
Having confidence is most of the hard work for lots of things in life, not least writing a blog for your business. Being at a point where you can write, edit and publish without feeling anxious is essential to any founder who needs to write their own content.
Often this is a stopgap until you have the funds to hire a professional writer but to make the sales to create those funds, blogging is a part of the process. Getting that confidence in what you write is therefore crucial to building up your business.
Find out more about how I help people build their blog confidence here.