Blogging often ends up at the bottom of your to do list when you’re a reseller without much time on your hands. However, we’ve been seeing an increase in the number of our resellers utilising blogs recently, and they’re great for injecting personality and fresh content into any business site.

Running a blog for your hosting business also provides search engine benefits, helps you position yourself as an authority, works well with social media and encourages trust and links to your site.

Getting inspired

When you’re thinking about what to write about, consider what you’re interested in if you’re having difficulty coming up with ideas. Websites you’ve bookmarked recently, tech articles that have interested you, and projects you’re working on can all provide inspiration, as can blogs you find interesting and visit regularly. Again, social media plays a part here as you can ask your visitors what kind of blog posts they are interested in reading, if they have any suggestions for topics, and how useful they find your blog.

The power of lists

Blogs don’t have to take a lot of time, and you don’t have to be great at writing to get an entry out.List based posts are fantastic resources for bloggers who don’t have much time to write and readers who want fast reads and plenty of useful resources to bookmark. Some of our most popular lists on the blog include:

•  15 of the most inspirational UK web designers

•  9 free software alternatives to keep your business IT costs down

•  8 blogs you should read if you want to be a WordPress developer (or a better one)

•  18 unmissable articles and resources for web professionals

For further inspiration, see our Top 40 List of Lists 2011.

Lists of tools and resources are often shared and bookmarked, so they’re a great way to get your content passed around and your business known. If you use social media to promote your reseller business, they are a good way to get retweets, shares, and additional traffic to your website.

Short blog posts

Even a post of 300 words can benefit your business. As well as pleasing the search engines, it shows visitors that your business is active and you update your website regularly. This is particularly important when your business is new or relatively unknown as it gives potential customers more confidence.

Short posts are great for telling customers about your latest updates, sharing one or two useful links with screenshots, posting videos or announcing special offers.

In-depth posts and series

Meatier posts take a lot longer, so are inevitably going to appear less frequently on your blog; even one longer post a month can make a difference. If you find posts are getting too long, try dividing them into series. People will come back to read the next part in the series, they will attract multiple backlinks to your website, and you don’t have to think of new ideas for a while!

As well as having ‘How to’ guides and related topics as a series, you can also create links between posts and form a series via a themed marketing campaign. Examples of series and multi-part blog entries we’ve done include:

• Top Twitter Tools and Resources : Part one and Part two.

• Science of Hosting: What is the science of hosting?, Web hosting periodic table,

Science of hosting visualised.

• WordPress Week: How to reduce the bounce rate of your WordPress site, 13 tasks for a new WordPress install, Resellers: Targeting the WordPress hosting niche, 10 awesome WordPress galleries to find inspiration, WordPress blog sneeze.

Guest posting and interviews

Guest posts and interviews have a lot of benefits for both parties, and they’re a great way to get entries up on your blog in return for a link or two.

A quick search of Google or visit to myblogguest.com throws up plenty of opportunities to grab a guest poster for your website. Make sure you have clear ideas and guidelines about what you want from a post and what the guest author will get in return.

Interviewees are a little harder to get hold of, but if you don’t have many industry contacts, try asking friends or customers, or simply emailing people you’d like to interview.

Ideas for blog entries

• One-click install themed posts: With information such as the benefits, examples of good websites using them, how to install them etc. You could also group one-click installs, for example e-commerce one-clicks, analytics one-clicks and so on and create a post for each group.

• The benefits of other reseller add-ons, such as Microsoft Exchange hosting.

• Comparing the different types of hosting you offer and explaining who each package is targeted at.

• When (and why) you need to upgrade your hosting or consider a server.

• Behind the scenes: looking at how different aspects of your reselling/business works behind the scenes (for example with photos, staff interviews, a timeline of a typical day and so on).

• If your hosting services are offered alongside other things such design, development or SEO, explore ways to mention your hosting services in these posts and how it’s beneficial to have a one-stop shop for your web needs.

• With the current economy money and budgeting posts are always useful, so topics such as how to start a website on a budget, how to cheaply build an ecommerce store for your business, resources for saving money, small business discounts etc. go down well.

• Unsurprisingly, social media themed posts tend to get shared a lot more on Twitter, Facebook and similar, so if you actively use social networking sites for your business, put together a few posts on making the most of social media, saving time, useful tools and so on.

Final tips

 

Stay on top of blogging by writing and scheduling posts in advance. Aim for a couple of posts per week if possible; if you’re really pushed for time then weekly is fine. If you take a morning or a day to schedule a month’s worth of posts, you can concentrate on other areas of your business without worrying about your blog.

• Know who your customers are so you can write entries that appeal to them. If you mainly host small businesses for example, then advice on time management, marketing on a budget and best practice tips for getting traffic to your website will all be helpful entries.

• Repurpose titles. If you’ve ever been drawn to an article with an interesting title and then been disappointed by the content, write your own based on what you were expecting to read.

• Stick to topics which interest you as that will come through in your writing. Know why you’re blogging, and blog with a clear purpose for the best effect on your business.