Content is King… or Queen

My experience at Intuit has taught me that talking about doing something and actually doing it are two completely different matters.

One of the jobs I’ve held here involved helping small-business owners to design and create websites. This included writing content for their sites, specifically information about their businesses. I gave them basic guidance about what they might want to consider including (or not including) in their text. I was confused when quite a few people told me, “I don’t know what to write.” I’m not a small-business owner, but I thought that if you built and ran a company, it would be pretty easy for you to write about its history, operations, and staff.

And then recently I was tasked with writing a post for the Intuit Websites blog. I write for a large portion of the day — every day — at work. I thought I was quite knowledgeable about Intuit Websites and our products and services. But I spent what seemed like days trying to figure out what to say.

Suddenly, I understood the dilemma that many small-business owners face. Even when you know a subject inside and out, writing about it is a whole different ball game: What do I say? What if my post is boring or makes no sense? Fortunately, I have the support of a wonderful manager who encouraged me, guided me, and helped me to realize that I just really needed to get started — and the rest would work itself out.

Now I’d like to share what I learned with you. Here are a few tips for novice writers and bloggers:

• Write what you know! No one knows your business like you.
• Use your website’s home page to provide a broad overview. Tell your business’s history on an About Us page, including your personal background and stories about what keeps you going. Put descriptions of products and services on the appropriate pages.
• Do some keyword research and insert those terms into your content. Try to integrate those keywords into your posts without it looking heavy-handed. Link those keywords to other pages on your site.
• Once you really get going, you may want to write a ton. Practice restraint. You can easily overwhelm visitors with too much information.