If you run a blog that is particularly focused on your business – or dedicated to assisting other businesses with issues – then you may find yourself in a niche where the word “excitement” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Despite providing valuable information, insight and services, business blogs often see far less engagement, shares and overall reach than niche blogs that cover other topics that enjoy more mainstream interest. Just because this is commonplace, however, doesn’t mean that it has to be this way. In the following article, we’ll discuss several tricks that you can use to boost your business blog’s potential, increase interaction and provide readers from all backgrounds with something to enjoy.

The 12-Hour Rule

Virtually all business blogs cover subjects or topics that aren’t excruciatingly time sensitive. This means that a few hours wait, isn’t going to make or break the performance of a piece like a news story being delayed on a website might cause. Because of this, the “12-Hour Rule” is a good idea to have. We often feel motivated by a variety of ideas bouncing around in our heads, and will rush to our business blogs to start pinging users with them. Unfortunately, many of these concepts can be too technical or uninteresting to the reader. Ask yourself with each post, “will my customers understand?”, “Do others really care about this?” and “Is this information truly relevant to my audience?”. Pondering these questions over a few hours will give you plenty of time to determine if the post is relevant, and therefore worth sharing.

Loosen Up

Many people make the assumption that a business blog needs to be strictly professional, with no sense of humor or informalities. Wrong! Think about it: who is reading your blog? Hopefully, you answered, “human beings”. If you want to boost exposure, increase social shares and ultimately be found easier in search, then loosen up in order to expand your audience. Don’t always worry about following proper syntax and structure if it conflicts with an experimental writing style, and feel free to insert a joke here and there to liven things up. Jargon and overly-technical terms may also be a drag on your potential; use laymen’s terms at times to explain what you mean (as a way to expand your content’s potential to new audiences).

Titles Matter

Think about all the places in which your article or blog post can appear. Now, think about how people will view it at first glance. They won’t first notice a brief summary of the article, or the entire piece at once – they’ll see the title. When it pops up in social media status feeds, RSS feeds and search results, the title matters. A dull, drab title that sounds too generic or overly professional will do nothing when it comes to driving traffic to your site. Use flashy verbs, combine informal elements and you will be pinging users with titles that are both desirable and lead to more shares, likes and comments!