Our basic business blog template is designed to get you started fast.
You can find lots of lengthy articles about various writing techniques. But many of them overload the reader with all kinds of blogs: list posts, curated collections, newsjacking posts and so on.
In my conversations with business owners, many of them don’t need a ton of confusing options. They need a clear path to start producing content quickly and easily. More than anything else, they need to get content on their website fast and then get back to the other aspects of their businesses.
With that in mind, I’ve created a simple business blog template to get you moving very quickly even if you aren’t a writer.
Avoiding Option Paralysis and Overwhelm
We’ll give you one piece of advice first and foremost: Keep it simple.
If you’re just starting to produce content, pick low-hanging fruit first.
It would be a mistake to try and write the business blog equivalent of “Moby Dick” right away.
Don’t feel pressure to write definitive, complex or lengthy articles. Don’t get bogged down in the technical aspects of search-engine optimization (SEO). And don’t worry about all the various kinds of posts you’ll read about.
All of that is important down the line. And when you get to that point, it might be wiser to hire an expert who can create what you need very quickly.
Right now, here’s the first box to check: Write something—anything.
The second: Write consistently.
The third: Slowly but surely improve your skills as you get comfortable with writing.
You can scale up later and get into the finer points of business blogging. When you’re learning how to write a blog, start simple.
Write about the things you know well. If you know tools, write about the best tools for any job.
The Quickest Route to a Business Blog
Below, we’ll walk you through a business blog template designed to turn your experiences into content. We’re starting here because we know you have a personal story and stories about clients. That greases the rails.
If we asked you to determine the five most-googled long-tail keywords and then create definitive list posts, you might get overwhelmed.
But if we ask you to tell a story about your favourite client, you’ll be able to do it with ease. Or if we asked you about that last problem you solved for a client, you could tell us.
We’re going to use your personal experiences to fill your blog.
Business Blog Template Part 1: Your Topic
Do this: Pick topics in your area of expertise that are easy for you to talk about.
For example, someone in the fitness industry would have no problem listing 10 reasons why working out will improve your health. A carpenter could easily list the first five tools you should buy. And so on.
Make a list of 10 easy topics, then pick the easiest one in the bunch. Think about what happened at your business yesterday. Anyone tell you that you really helped? Did you make someone’s day? Did you solve a problem with your products or services?
If you’re stumped for topics, read this article: “What to Blog About: 229 Topics for Business Owners.”
For the article below, we’ll create the fictional business John’s Tire Service. Here’s an easy topic for the owner of that business: What to do when you have a flat tire. Regardless of writing skill, the owner of a tire business knows what to do in this situation. We’re right in his or her wheelhouse.
With that easy topic in place, we’ll break a basic business blog into three parts:
- Problem and Intro.
- Solution and Story.
- Call to Action and Takeaway.
Writing can be way more complicated, but this simple business blog template will keep you on track for a long time.
Grandma Sue has a problem. John’s Tire Service has a solution.
Business Blog Template Part 2: Problem and Intro
Your business solves problems for clients.
John’s Tire Service makes sure people get where they need to go. You might help people look great, invest wisely or find the perfect kitchen gadget.
In your blog, focus your efforts on talking about how you solve or have solved problems for your ideal clients. And tell stories. People love those.
In the intro, set up the problem—with bonus points awarded if you can do it with a great first line or paragraph. Here’s an example:
On the morning of her granddaughter’s wedding, Grandma Sue had a three-inch spiral shank deck nail in the tire of her Honda.
Interested? Even if you’re not, you know there’s a story.
Read “How to Write a Great First Line.”
Sweeten the Deal
To flesh the intro idea out, you might provide a bit of detail to create some emotional investment:
She had picked up the nail while running errands all day for her granddaughter. Late and in a hurry to get to the wedding, Sue panicked when she saw the tire was completely flat on the big day.
Then hint at what’s to come: The solution.
Here’s how Grandma Sue made it to the church just before the ceremony to give her granddaughter a sapphire ring that had been in the family for four generations.
Tip: Keep intros short and direct. Imagine you’re blowing a whistle to get everyone’s attention. So blow your whistle loudly. Just a short blast so everyone looks in your direction.
Think of how TV shows never take a break when the president is getting coffee. They break right after he or she receives shocking news. Make sure you give your reader a reason to keep reading.
Could you help someone put these on the fairway? Blog about that and solve duffers’ problems.
Business Blog Template Part 2: Solution and Story
After the intro, you’ve set up a problem. Now you need to offer the solution. Remember, you’re telling a story.
It’s more fun than saying, “We can fix your flat tire.”
We’ll explain how Sue got to the wedding. As you can guess, it involves John’s Tire Service.
Sue’s Story
Desperate, Sue remembered she always saw a light on in the tire shop around the corner early on Saturday mornings. So she click-clacked down the street in her heels and was relieved to see the light even though John’s Tire Service wasn’t open yet.
Sue peered through a window, saw someone and knocked.
I answered the door.
Sue told me about the flat, the wedding, the sapphire and her granddaughter. And she told me she didn’t have a spare. Or a lot of time.
I’ve probably changed 10,000 tires, but even I couldn’t do it in the time Sue had before the ceremony. So I grabbed a few clean towels, chucked them over the passenger seat of the tow truck and asked her where the church was.
After I dropped off a grateful Sue and her sapphire, I went back to her driveway and changed her tire. Then I had an employee drive her car to the church and leave the keys with an usher who knew Sue well.
Getting to Know Your Brand
That story tells how Grandma got to the wedding, but it also says a lot about the tire store and its owner.
Here’s what John is really saying: I will earn your business as I solve your problems with incredible customer service.
In the middle section of your blog, tell stories and offer solutions.
A lot of people can’t grow these very well. If you know how, blog about it.
Business Blog Template Part 3: Calls to Action and Takeaways
You’re not just writing to tell stories. You’re also building a brand and ultimately trying to get a reader to buy your product or service.
To do that, you need to put the story in context and lay out the next part of the story—the part where the reader is involved.
In business media, it’s trendy right now to talk about making the reader the “hero of the story,” but there’s nothing new about that. Readers always need to know why they should care about what they’re reading. You must provide the answer. That’s just good storytelling.
Imagine the reader says this: “Cute story about Grandma. So what?”
Here’s what: a concluding section that makes a connection and says, “That’s what!”
Why You Should Care
You might be wondering why Sue didn’t use a mobile phone to call an Uber. Well, her granddaughter got married in 2005, and Sue didn’t have a phone. And Uber didn’t exist.
But I still see Sue regularly. She’s still a client. So’s her granddaughter, who’s always wearing that blue ring. And her granddaughter’s husband.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve sold the family six sets of new tires and repaired four more flats. And every winter, I swap Sue’s all-season tires out for winter tires so she can drive to visit her great-granddaughter.
Every time I see her, she thanks me for getting her to the wedding on time.
I thank her for helping me create our most popular service. After I got Sue to the wedding, I realized that flat tires always come at the very worst times. So we created a solution: On-call tire changing available anywhere in town seven days a week.
Dear, Reader: Please Do This
Color-coded full text of John’s blog: Click the link at the bottom of this section to download a PDF of this business blog template.
And here’s the call to action:
You’ll never know when you’re going to need tire repair. But when you do, it will be because you need to go somewhere. When you’re standing in a driveway looking at a flat, remember Grandma Sue. Then call John’s Tire Service.
We’ve been getting people where they need to go for over 15 years, and we’ll get you to your destination on time.
That’s just one example of a call to action. In business blogs, you can use a call to action to ask a person to buy a product or service—“Book an appointment,” “Take advantage of this great deal,” and so on.
But you can also use a call to action to build a relationship with a client that doesn’t involve direct sales. “Follow us on Instagram,” “Subscribe to our newsletter,” and similar calls to action create touch points between businesses and clients—all part of a sales process called “lead warming.”
In this case, John isn’t asking you to buy tires today. You might not need them.
But he’d like you to know the name of his business so it pops into your mind when you’re staring at a flat tire and the clock is ticking. He knows your next flat will come at a really bad time.
Click here to download a PDF diagram of the John’s Tire Service blog.
“Let’s Talk Some More”
In your conclusion, you want to connect with your reader by answering “so what?” and giving him or her something to do.
We also recommend you link to something else you’ve written. In the case of the tire owner, you might include a button like this: “Click here to learn how long your tires will last.”
As you build your blog, you’ll have lots of great content you can link to so you can keep the conversation going.
Always include a call to action. In this case, it’s “never run out of this.”
Build Momentum, Then Experiment
The simple business blog template above leaves a few things out.
We didn’t talk about grammar, spelling, punctuation, voice and tone, language, perspective, literary techniques and all the finer points of writing. Nor did we talk about search-engine optimization, layout and publishing.
We only covered the most important aspect of blogging: writing something.
Remember the second thing you absolutely must do? Write consistently.
If you’ve decided to blog, you have to make a commitment to producing content. If you write one blog, then take three months off, it won’t have an effect. But if you consistently crank out blogs, you’ll build momentum.
Our sister company, Two-Brain Business, was born out of a small blog. More than 10 years later, it’s a multi-million-dollar enterprise—and its owner still blogs every day.
So start blogging and do it consistently.
After you’ve done that for a while, you’ll probably want to start thinking about all the other aspects of writing—especially as your business grows. That’s when we start looking at different kinds of blogs, different writing techniques, SEO and so on.
When you’re ready for that, come back here and check out a few more articles we’ve written on blogging:
“Why Start a Blog? Our Top 5 Reasons for Writing.”
“Building Business Through Your Blog One Click at a Time”
“Content ROI: What’s a Blog Really Worth”
Right now, close your browser and write a blog for your business. When you publish it, leave a link in the comments. We’d love to read it!
Mike Warkentin is the co-founder of Two-Brain Media and the founder of CrossFit 204.
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