‘Content is king’, they say. ‘Just write a blog’, they say. ‘Demonstrate thought leadership’, they say.

Easier said than done, we say.

But just because there’s more to creating and maintaining a company blog than stringing a few words together and throwing them out into the wild world that is the web, it doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile. On the contrary, a blog can be a hugely useful tool – but there are a few things to consider before you take the plunge. So whether you’re starting from scratch or trying to breathe new life into a semi-abandoned blog that’s gently going to seed, here’s a round-up of advice on how to get blogging with panache.

Know your aims

Before you start drafting up anything, you need to do some careful planning.  What are you hoping to achieve with the blog? Is it for lead generation, or creating visibility of your brand? Are you trying to demonstrate forward-thinking in your industry?

Likewise, you need to hone in on who you are writing for. Is it for existing clients who need to be reminded of all the fabulous stuff that you do? Or is it to appeal to new clients within particular target demographics?

Plan ahead

A key part of planning is figuring out how frequently you want to – or are able to – post. Ad hoc posts are fine every now and then, such as when you’re reporting back on findings from a conference or other event, but creating a schedule will help you stay on track. Whether that means a blog post twice a week, or fortnightly, or once a month, you’ll have clear cut expectations, and will hopefully avoid running the risk of putting things off and putting them off again.

More than just planning the frequency of posts, though, you’ll be best served by plotting out the specific posts that you intend to have on the blog. This doesn’t mean that you need to treat the plan like gospel – sometimes things will come up, and that’s okay! But it gives you a framework to work towards, and it means that things are easier to delegate, when appropriate.

Get the team involved

Group input is always a plus. If you can snag some of the team for a brainstorm of ideas every few months, it’ll likely result in a much broader swathe of topic ideas than one solo blogger could come up with. And even if not everything gets used on the blog itself, it’s still creating great discussion for other marketing opportunities.

It’s good to get these discussions going around thought leadership pieces, innovations in your industry, and perhaps most vitally, some workplace culture to round it all out. Marking yourselves out not just as experts, but as relatable people can do wonders for your appearance and your relationships.

Be digestible

When it comes to blogging, there are two main trends in terms of length – the quick and short read, or the more comprehensive long-form post. Whether you go for one of those, or something somewhere in the middle, you want to make sure that things are broken up into pieces so that nobody feels bogged down when they glance at a giant wad of text.

Studies have shown that people tend to read in an F-pattern – that’s to say, scanning along the horizontal, then down the left hand side of the page looking out for words or points of interest, then reading normally across the horizontal again… and repeating that, the reading pattern looks something like an F, or an E. So make sure that paragraphs start off with something to grab attention and keep people following the horizontal, rather than the vertical, as much as possible!

Platform diving

Not diving from a platform, as you would in the sport, but rather diving into a platform. You may have an existing platform to work on within a greater work website. If not, there are a whole lot of different options out there. WordPress is easy to understand and full of potential for tailoring, so it’s got some pretty global appeal. But there’s also Squarespace (which is growing in popularity every day), old faithful Blogger, Wix, Weebly… even Tumblr, if it suits your audience.

Whatever you do, though, make sure that you pick a platform that’s mobile friendly – significant numbers of people are doing their web browsing on smart phones these days, so you want to make sure that your content is easily readable on smaller screens.

Another option to consider is natively posting content to appropriate social media pages. Blogging on LinkedIn is an excellent way to tap into networks and stay up-to-date on what people are thinking. It’s still definitely worth posting on your own site too, but you’ll reach far more eyeballs with a natively posted blog than you would with a blurb and a link.