Guided Business Blogging with a Prompts-Based Approach is Here and It's Spectacular
Simplifying Business Blogging for everyone
The word "Blog" elicits feelings of terror, anxiety, and stress in nearly every small business owner I talk with. During Marketing 3-4-5™ Workshops, there's generally an audible groan from attendees when I tell them they should, "Blog for their business."
Once we get past the initial assumptions they have, they come around and can see that that content is critical and that Business Blogging is different - it's based on the activities within their business and it's not a creative or time-consuming endeavor, they tend to come around.
Guided Business Blogging using our prompts-based approach is a new feature that incorporates simple questions (included in our Build Plan and up).
Business Blogging is your most important marketing activity (usually)
Business Blogging can include a lot of topics but we try to keep things simple with a focus on your products, services, and relationships so that you can complete your marketing activities in 15-minutes or less - we introduce a lot of this in our book aptly name "Marketing 3-4-5™: The Business Owner's Guide to Effective Local Marketing in 15-Minutes or Less."
Content helps you differentiate yourself and highlight your authenticity and relationships, your two unfair advantages.
The content lives on your website and it is distributed through social media, your email newsletter, your Local Connections™, and Google sees which helps you rank higher and more broadly on search.
Content aka blog posts is a terrific resource to support your sales activities as well.
Prompt-based Business Blogging templates
At the heart of simplifying marketing are prompts - simple questions that every business owner or manager knows the answers to without really having to think.
As a result, creating content is fast, efficient, and doesn't require any creativity.
We've built out 12 initial templates, each has its own set of prompts that you simply answer. These templates can be used by any industry and, at the time of publishing, include:
- Highlight a Creation
- Product Overview & Unboxings
- Staff Pick
- Spotlight an Experience
- Event Preview
- Event Recap
- Profile a Cause or Nonprofit
- Profile a Partner or Vendor
- Employee Recognition
- Volunteer Recognition
- Customer Spotlight
- FAQ Post
Once done, you publish your post and your blog is created (the prompts are not shown publicly).
You can add your own prompts or sections, skip prompts that aren't relevant, add pictures or a gallery, upload a video, include a Call-to-Action or inline form, and much more.
We're now using Guided Business Blogging at Locable to create our own content - like this post which is using the Product Overview & Unboxings template.
Who is Guided Business Blogging for?
Everything we do at Locable is to make the busy, distracted, not-terribly-technical small business owner more effective. We want to help you reach your goals, whatever they may be.
The tools in general, and Guided Business Blogging in particular, are also incredibly well suited for a range of organizations including:
- Nonprofits
- Clubs
- Main Street & Downtown Associations
- Chambers of Commerce
- Tourism, Visitor's Bureaus and other destination marketers
- Local Marketing Agencies and service providers (for their business and as a tool to use for their clients)
- Local franchise businesses and branches
- and more.
Oh, you're busy? You still have enough time to create content now
People are surprised at how quickly they can create content with a prompt-based approach.
With it built into your Locable account, you can now do this on your computer, tablet, or phone. You can even use your device's voice-to-text to answer questions for your initial draft - you should probably give it a read thru though ;)
