6 treatments for a sickly editing or proofreading blog

Some blogs are poorly right from the get-go. If yours is feeling under the weather, here are 6 treatments that can help turn it, and your website, into a vibrant resource centre that drives your business forward.

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Why people come to my blog

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and my blog has been a major driver of traffic to my website. Having a strong web presence has helped prospective clients find me and keep my business busy.

Those visitors end up on my blog for four reasons:
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• They want to hire me because of the job I do (editing fiction books)
• They want help with some aspect of writing
• They want to find out how to do the job I do
• They’re already doing the job I do but need guidance

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The focus of this article

This article doesn’t focus on the technical minutiae of what platform to use, filling in metadata, writing great headlines, breaking up text with pictures, adding in calls to action, SEO keywords, paragraph length and so on.

That’s not because all the micro stuff isn’t important, but because it can only do so much if the macro issues aren’t in order.
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Instead, I focus on six big-picture reasons why blogs become poorly, and offer some medicine that can help turn them, and the websites hosting them, into vibrant resource centres that drive our businesses forward.

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Problem 1: The blog doesn’t solve problems

Some of the blog posts I wrote between 2011 and 2015 are a technical disgrace but they worked because the content was helpful and shareable.

A business blog that doesn’t help its readers risks becoming a written exercise in self-indulgence rather than making us the go-to professionals for our services. At best, we might be instantly forgettable; at worst, people might talk about us for all the wrong reasons.

A colleague once told me about a piece of video content he’d watched: ‘After 10 minutes I’d lost the will to live. After 20, I’d lost the will for the vlogger to live.’ I trusted my colleague, whereas I didn’t know or trust that vlogger. Consequently, I didn’t watch the video.
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There are a ton of online examples of business owners employing attention-seeking methods to get eyes on their content. It can work. But if we rely on shock, surprise, upset or gaining sympathy from our audience, without offering anything useful, our content-marketing successes might be short-lived.

Don’t puke over the reader
We all have problems – that doesn’t mean we have to vomit over our audience with our content. Plus, shock and controversy can have a short shelf life. Audiences can become desensitized and bored, so high-quality problem-solving content is often a better foundation for a business blog than the shock factor alone.

Aim to publish content that helps the reader move forward in some way. And if we can’t yet offer something useful, we can hold off, research and rewrite.

Once we have something helpful to share, we’re in a better position to publish.
When we do solve problems, we make ourselves valuable. People are more likely to talk about, share, like and comment on our blog content.

That can help more people discover our work. Useful content can also support our visibility in search, though social likes and shares don’t directly determine Google rankings.

​Focus on solving the audience’s problems from the get-go and we're well on the way to building a platform that helps people find and remember us.

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Problem 2: The blog is published irregularly

Lack of regularity can undermine a blog. We do it for a bit, then run out of ideas, or time or passion.

If readers expect regular posts, an unexplained silence might leave them wondering:

• Does the blogger still have useful advice to share?
• Is the blogger still committed to this resource?

Those doubts don’t help build trust. If your window cleaner stopped turning up when expected, how quickly would you try to find a replacement? Blogging isn’t quite the same, but setting expectations and following through can help readers know what to expect from us.
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That doesn’t mean older content stops being useful or shareable when we take a break.

Earning the referrals
We have to earn the right to be top of mind for referrals. Helpful content gives our colleagues and clients something they can recommend and share.
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Those recommendations can bring new readers to our websites. Publishing regularly can help us build that body of content, but frequency alone doesn’t guarantee better search rankings.

Build a blog plan
If you don’t have the time or commitment for blogging, that’s absolutely fine. Don’t do it – focus on making your business visible in other ways. Blogging is just one option.
However, if you do want your blog to be your primary content platform, a useful starting point is to build a blog plan beforehand.

4 initial steps for your plan

• Identify your audience. Consider colleagues as well as clients.
• Create 52 draft titles for problem-solving content. If you plan to publish once a week, that’s about a year’s worth of content ideas; twice a month and you’ll have just over two years’ worth.
• Decide on a publication schedule you can sustain.
• Draft your promotion schedule.

4 ideas for how to generate content

• Take inspiration from your job. What do your clients and colleagues struggle with? What have you struggled with? Answer those questions on your blog.
• Take note of the questions people ask in your industry’s forums and at conferences. Answer those questions on your blog.
• Invite questions on your website via a box or pop-out.
• Review products, apps, courses, books, tools, forums and conferences related to your industry.

4 ideas for how to save time

• Write efficiently – create batches of articles around a theme.
• Repurpose existing content (e.g. from slideshows, presentations, case studies, reports, guest articles, books, meetings and conferences) as blog posts.
• Update stale content using your existing knowledge base. Blogging is a journey and it’s perfectly acceptable to revisit old topics; you’re demonstrating your readiness to review and adapt.
• Set aside time in your working week for your blogging.

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Problem 3: The blog is unnavigable

People often search online for solutions rather than for a blog itself. If they click through to our websites, the first place they’ll head for might not be the blog tab. And even if it is, will our visitors find the answers to their problems in the content that’s visible on the first page of the blog?
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If we only have 10 pieces of content, perhaps. What if we have 40? How about 500?

Second homes
One solution is to create second homes for our blog content – libraries, hubs, resource centres ... call them what you will. You can see mine here.

These pages don’t need entirely new articles. They can link to content elsewhere on our sites, with titles and images that show what problems we’re solving.

A resource centre helps my audience find relevant content and see that I’m helpful, knowledgeable and engaged with their problems.

Not funnelling our content through to topic-specific hubs can be a missed opportunity. Do this and you can make it easier for readers to find useful material without having to create it all from scratch.

When we do this, we’re using our blog content to turn our websites into resource centres rather than all-about-me-and-how-great-I-am sites.

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Problem 4: The blog is shallow

Small-business coaches Andrew and Pete have talked about the art of creating content that makes people fall in love with you. I love this idea because it focuses on emotion – on getting under people’s skin and making them feel something.
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This sits nicely with the problem-solving principle discussed above. When we solve problems, we can make people feel something – happy, grateful, relieved, empowered.

Emotion born from solutions
For a business blog, those emotions are most useful when they’re connected to helping our readers. For example, our funnies alone might not be enough to make someone subscribe to and share our content in the long term.

A funny photographer’s blog might entertain people, but readers looking for photography advice will probably want solutions too. If all we want is a laugh, Dara Ó Briain and Rich Hall are strong competition.

Tone on top of solutions
Even if our content is technically good, we have competition. Readers need to hear our voices and our personalities in our posts so that we stand out. I tend to go for warm and friendly.
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Other tone options might include cheeky, funny, blunt, sweary or ranty. All of that stuff can work, but bear in mind that it’s just dressing at the end of the day. It works best when it hangs on a body of useful content.

Going deeper with solutions
​There are already a bajillion blogs covering the basics of just about everything. Repeating the same old stuff can be boring, and boring blogs are a killer. We can bring our blog posts alive with case studies, clearly labelled hypothetical examples, and stories based on our own experiences, so that our readers have gravy on the meat and two veg.

That kind of deeper detail can draw people in and make them feel like we’re really talking to them, not just stuffing our websites with keywords. That is not to say we shouldn’t aim our content at beginners or focus on the basics – far from it. Rather, our content benefits from personality and detail.
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When we go deep, we can make an old subject sound fresh because it’s rich with our voices and our experiences.

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Problem 5: The blog doesn’t fulfil audience expectations

I don’t visit a dentist’s website expecting to find a treatment for the verruca on my foot. I’m there to sort out my teeth. A blog needs to have a recognizable and understandable raison d’être too.

We’re busy and none of us has time to read everything, join every group, watch every vlog, listen to every podcast, do our jobs, and have a life. Blogs that don’t give people a good reason to be there are less likely to be bookmarked, subscribed to or shared. If a reader doesn’t understand why they should bother, they might quickly lose patience and go elsewhere.

Here are two reasons why an audience could become confused and disengage:

• The content is coherent but isn’t aligned with the business creating it. This can happen when the blogger has misunderstood the audience’s expectations even though there are myriad specialist solutions that could be offered.
  
• The content is incoherent and there are too many audiences. This can happen when a business can’t sustain long-term content creation around the product alone. To compensate, the blogger covers multiple topics for multiple audiences whose problems are already being solved in depth by relevant specialist bloggers elsewhere.

​Here are two examples of how to avoid those problems.

Coherent and aligned: The pro presenter
There’s plenty one can write about presenting, and that content can be targeted at non-presenters who need to tackle the process, and those who want to run a presentations business.

Relevant content might cover the following: dealing with stress, introversion, lack of confidence, speech impediments, organization and planning, which software to use, which venues are best, managing acoustics, scheduling, equipment, payment terms, contract problems, learning resources, apps and plugins to aid preparation, training opportunities, marketing a presentations business, getting published, creating engaging slides, finding and retaining clients, and so on.
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The presenter is blogging about topics aligned to their core service and targeting an audience with problems related directly to it. The blog is therefore coherent and aligned.

Coherent and side-aligned: The condom company
A blog focused only on condom specifications might struggle to sustain every reader’s interest in latex and lube, flavours and colours. However, the audience’s interests can extend beyond the product itself to sex, relationships and sexual health.

Durex’s blog offers content about dating, relationships, sexual health, orgasms and positions, alongside articles about condoms and lube. It’s a clever way of creating content about related issues that might interest the audience.

If you can’t sustain long-term content creation around your product or service, shift your thinking sideways but make sure it’s focused on your audience’s problems.

Durex isn’t blogging only about condoms, but it’s still focusing on content that’s related to its core products. Its blog is therefore coherent and side-aligned.

Nudging with a name
Naming our blogs can help signal purpose. Mine’s called The Editing Blog, which should be an indication that my focus is on words.
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I also publish a lot of content about marketing and training for editors and proofreaders. And I offer content about fiction line craft for indie authors, especially crime and thriller writers. It might not be as interesting as the Durex blog, but it helps solve my clients’ and colleagues’ problems, and that’s what matters!

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Problem 6: The blog is invisible

Blogging without thinking about how readers will find our content can mean a lot of wasted effort. It matters little that we’ve nailed all of the above if our blog’s invisible. We could spend hours crafting beautiful content for our target audience, but if it doesn’t reach them, its business value will be limited.

Superhero delivery
There are numerous ways to promote a blog, and what works for you might not work for me. Social media can be a superhero when it comes to content delivery.

Platforms such as LinkedIn, X and Facebook give us ways to get seen out there. If your audience is hanging out somewhere else, use that channel.

What’s clear is that it’s about more than just posting links and pretty pictures. These are busy platforms with ever-shifting algorithms.
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Persistence can pay, and social media can help get your blog content, and your business, in front of people. It’s one option alongside search, newsletters and referrals.

Automating to make space for crafting
Consider scheduling content regularly where that suits your audience and the platform. On fast-moving feeds, blog-post links can easily be missed.
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Automate your evergreen posts where you can, reviewing them first to make sure they’re still accurate and useful. That can free up time for posting manually on your core platforms. Manual posting allows us to tailor our posts to the audience and join the conversations they generate.

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Six-tip summary

• Be purposeful with problem-solving
• Build trust with regular publishing
• Spotlight your best content in second homes
• Infuse the key takeaways with deeper stories and case studies
• Align or side-align your content with your business so that it makes sense for your audience to bother with it
• Commit to promotion so that your hard work is visible

If you're ready to dig even deeper, take a look at my course Blogging for Business Growth.

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​About Louise Harnby

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
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She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

• Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Crime Fiction & Thriller Editor
• Connect: X @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Learn: Books and courses
• Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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