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Keen to contribute an article to Small Business First? First let's go through our guidelines...
Keen to contribute an article to Small Business First? First let's go through our guidelines...
Here are certain elements and strategies to make sure SBF articles are achieving at least one of these goals and will in some way address the audience’s interests, needs, preferences or pain points:
Questions to ask yourself before writing a blog post:
Our target audience is famously time poor and they should know straight away whether an article is going to be useful to them directly or not. Read this guide on how to write headlines that can increase engagement.
Popular headlines on SBF:
Instead of generic tips, the article should have clear, instructional tips, which can be followed to achieve a specific goal. Add step-by-step tips wherever possible and if relevant, give the readers a template they can download and follow.
Example of a good, instructional blog post from HubSpot: Sales Email Template: How to Write Emails People Want to Respond To
Wherever possible, support your findings or arguments with data to increase credibility and trust.
Some ways to do this include incorporating or referencing:
While the structure for posts can vary, it should always be easy to read. This means short paragraphs, proper use of headings, subheadings, lists, bolds and italics, and generally anything that makes the content appear less intimidating to read.
For people who just want to skim through and don’t have the time to read the entire article, it’s good to have a quick snapshot of the post in points. Or, the subheadings should be written in a way that gives the reader the key takeaways from the post.
Here’s a good example of adding a post summary at the top. It’s useful to have a ‘In this guide’ section.
Small business owners form a wide category of readers and it is useful to break them down into sub-categories to increase relevance. Here are examples of categories to focus on:
Add relevant hyperlinks into the copy so readers can access additional information as well as tools or calculators from other sites they might already be looking for.
When you're ready to submit an article, please send it to us at enquiries@smallbusinessfirst.com.au