Blog posts

What a blog post is

A blog post is a short article on your website that answers one question a buyer asks before they decide to spend money with you. Not a subject; a question. "What does a bathroom renovation cost in the Okanagan" is a post. "Bathroom renovations" is not, and it is the reason most business blogs are ignored.

It is not a news bulletin about your company, and it is not a longer piece that tries to settle a whole subject. That second thing is a long-form article, and it is a different job with a different price.

Who this is for

An owner or manager whose blog has gone quiet, or has never started, and who has noticed that the same eight questions come up on every sales call. Answering those eight in writing means the next prospect arrives having read the answers, and the call is shorter and warmer. It also suits a business with a marketing person who can publish but has no time to write.

It is not for a business that has forty existing posts and has never checked which of them are still true. Start with blog updating: bringing an old post back to life is usually cheaper than a new one and earns sooner. And if you cannot yet say which questions your buyers ask, the post will be aimed at a guess; a short round of buyer question research fixes that.

What goes in it

Every post I write has the same bones, because the reader is on a phone and wants the answer first.

The answer, in the first two sentences. If the question is what something costs, the first sentence gives a range with the currency stated and the date it was true. The rest of the post justifies it. Nobody has to scroll to find out whether the piece was worth opening.

What decides it. The three or four factors that move the answer up or down, each with an example from your own work. This is where your knowledge goes, and it is the part no competitor can copy.

What to do next. One instruction, tied to the question, pointing at one page: the contact form, a service page, or the next post in the sequence. One, not a menu.

Each post also carries a headline that is the question in full, a title tag and a meta description written for a human, two to five internal links to pages that deserve them, and real alt text on any image. Those are not extras. They are the difference between a post that gets found and one that gets filed.

What you get

Per post: a finished article of 700 to 1,200 words, in a shared document you own, with the headline, title tag, meta description and suggested internal links in a box at the top. One round of revisions is included; a second is quoted if the brief changed. If you want it placed on the site rather than handed over, that is CMS content entry, and it is a small fixed addition.

Before the first post, you also get a one-page list of the questions I propose to answer, in the order buyers ask them, for you to strike out or reorder. The list is yours whether or not the posts get written.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A two-truck plumbing firm has a blog with eleven posts, the newest four years old, all announcements about new vans and staff. The owner says every call starts with the same questions: whether a leaking hot water tank needs replacing or repairing, what a replacement costs, how long the water is off, and whether the old tank gets taken away.

The plan is six posts, one every two weeks. The first is "Repair or replace: how to tell what a leaking hot water tank needs", with the four signs the plumber actually checks. The second gives the replacement cost range in CAD as of the month it is published, with the three things that move it. The third covers the day of the job, hour by hour. Each post ends with one line pointing at the booking page. The owner spends forty minutes on a recorded call for each post and reads one draft. After six posts, the blog answers the questions the phone used to, and the eleven van announcements are deleted.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, who buys it, and the questions you hear most. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per post or per batch, with the number of revision rounds stated.
3. The question list. Within a week, the proposed questions in order. You edit it.
4. A recorded call per post. Twenty to forty minutes, in which you answer the question the way you would for a customer. That recording is the source.
5. The draft. Seven to ten working days after the call. You mark it up; I revise once.
6. Handover. The final post, ready to publish, or published for you if that was agreed.

What it costs

Blog posts are quoted as a fixed price after the half-hour call. The price depends on three things: the length, whether the material comes from a call with you or from research I do alone, and how many posts are commissioned at once, because a batch of six shares one setup. A post that needs interviews with your customers or suppliers is quoted separately. Every price is in CAD and is agreed in writing before the first call is recorded. The pricing page shows the monthly band if you would rather the whole blog were run for you.

What happens next

Once the first batch is live, three things usually follow. The posts go out in an email newsletter, because an article nobody is told about is a filing cabinet. The one question that could not be answered in a thousand words becomes a how-to guide. And if the batch worked, the question list becomes an editorial calendar and the blog gets a rhythm rather than a burst.