Have you ever wondered why should CEOs blog? Well, in that case, you must know writing helps CEOs become thought leaders by sharing their knowledge and insights. In other words, it helps you to be considered a thought leader in your industry.
Your website (either your company’s or your personal one) and the information your potential clients may find on it, it’s important to transform them into actual clients. The blogs and articles you write will be an essential part of this journey, and will most likely mark the difference between a new client and someone who never contacts you or your team.
Writing long-form pieces of content is key during the process of strengthening your personal brand and making your income grow.
Doing so makes your audience feel more connected to you, your content, and your services. By giving them valuable information without asking anything in return, you build trust and interest without making it obvious.
Another advantage of writing blogs is that you can transform them into small pieces of content for your social platforms. Repurposing the long-form content into micro-content will allow you to consistently share insights without requiring extra time to create and think through every piece of content.
Of course you could write your own articles, and we encourage you to do so! There are many CEOs out there, from different industries, who keep their own personal blogs to share their thoughts and reflection.
A couple of examples are Richard Branson’s and Caterina Fake’s blogs. Branson is the founder and owner of Virgin Group, a conglomerate with more than 360 companies to this date. Meanwhile, Fake is the cofounder of Flickr, the famous platform to post and share photos and videos.
The content of both of their blogs is written by them, and time has proven it is a great tool for their own brands, as well as their corporate brands.
However, a CEO’s life can get pretty busy, so it’s normal if you don’t have the time to sit and consistently write blogs.
That’s when writing services come in handy!
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Why Should CEOs Blog and Hire Writing Services
This is a service which consists of making your life as a CEO easier, but also more productive. You explain your ideas and your writers create articles based on those ideas.
By doing so, you can benefit from sharing your ideas and your knowledge without sacrificing your time.
In this article, I will explain to you why writing services could be a valuable component to add into your budget, by explaining the step-by-step the process required to work with writers who can write these long-form articles for you.
Choosing Topics to Specialize In
For this step, you need to think about the topics you specialize in, the ones related to your personal brand, your products or services, and your professional path. These blogs will be, in a way, long-form pieces of information you will be giving out “for free”, but will help create growth for your brand and revenue.
Brainstorming and Building a Bank of Ideas
When thinking about those possible topics, you may find yourself with a lot of ideas, and then you won’t quite know where to start. To prevent this situation, you should take note of every idea you have, build a “bank” or a list of ideas, and then prioritize them.
For this last step, you may also want to ask for help from your marketing team. The topics that will generate more interest should have your attention, while the ones that do not seem so striking at first sight, could wait a little bit and be re-conceptualized.
Reading Similar Blogs
Once you have decided what will be your first blog, it is recommended you read similar blogs. This will help you understand what’s out there and how to differentiate yourself. This step will also be done by the member (or members) of your team that will be writing your blogs, but doing it yourself may help you build a strong outline and have a clearer idea of what you want your writers to make.
Building an Outline
Depending on the workflow dynamics you have in your team, this could be done by you or your writers. However, an outline is your blog’s “foundation”, it is where the main ideas can be found and put in order. This will help the writer understand where to start, which are the important points to talk about, and how to close your ideas.
A classic outline contains ideas for the blog’s introduction, body and conclusion, typically in the form of bullet points. If you prefer stronger and longer outlines, you may add details about how those ideas can be supported, specific sentences you think about, possible keywords, and any other detail you consider necessary.
Doing Keyword Research
At Latinpresarios, we like to add keyword research to our outlines. By doing so, the writer will know the positioning you’re looking for and will have the opportunity to add those keywords in a more organic way.
As a CEO, chances are you won’t be in charge of doing keyword research. However, it consists of doing a little investigation on how people are searching on Google the topics you talk about in your articles.
This will allow your blog to show up in the first Google pages when users look for those keywords, which means more visits and more chances of readers becoming new clients.
Writing a First Draft
The first draft will be written based on what’s in the outline. Your writer will keep your main ideas, make them longer, add examples, anecdotes, quotes, and any other pieces of information they find of interest, or information that you directly suggest.
Even though the outline will already give an idea for how long the article it’s going to be, it would be good if you previously discussed its length with the writers. This way, they will extend just as much as you want them to, and you will prevent making lots of changes.
After the first draft is ready, you must check it out, give feedback to make the adjustments you see necessary, and wait for the second draft.
Writing a Second Draft
There are very few cases where a second draft is written from zero. Most of the time, the second draft is an improved and longer version of the first one. Your writer will take into account your corrections, add heading tags and deliver a draft that is also SEO-optimized and ready to go online!
Uploading it to Your Blog
To make it public, all you need to do is upload it to your website. Here’s a list of some details you or your team may add in order to make it look more professional:
- A featured image (it can be yours or a copyright free one)
- A table of contents (this becomes necessary if the article is too long)
- Embed quotes, images, infographics, etc
After you’ve done all of this, you should share the blog’s link in your social media, put it in your bio, and promote it so your followers can read it.
Once the article has been online for some months, it’s good to check its statistics and metrics. This gives insights about what can be changed, what could have been better from the start, and what are the things you should keep doing for your next blogs.
Creating Micro Content Based On Your Blog
By creating a long-form piece of content as an article for your website, you’re actually saving a lot of time. This is because it will allow you to break it into little pieces and create micro content for your social media or any other platform you have in mind.
For example: you could extract a sentence from your blog that’s understandable without context, and turn it into a simple quote to post. It could be as simple as that, or as elaborated as an infographic of a video of yourself explaining one of the main ideas in your article.
If you want your micro content (and your blog in general) to be effective, you need to understand where that information fits within your customer’s journey. This way, you can CTAs to guide your followers and readers through the process of becoming your client.
Some different CTAs are:
- Filling out a form
- Downloading a free e-book
- Visiting an online store/catalogue
- Book a call
- Send an email to receive more information
- Another piece of content
- And much more!
How to Become a Successful CEO by Writing Blogs
Summing up, if you want to write and publish an article in your website and at the same time, be able to take advantage of it, these are the steps you and team need to follow:
- Choose topics you specialize in
- Understand how the content aligns with your customer’s journey
- Brainstorm
- Read similar blogs
- Build an outline
- Do keyword research
- Write a first draft
- Write a second draft
- Upload the blog to the website
- Create micro content
Even though it may seem like a lot of work, as a CEO, you will only be in charge of coming up with the ideas, perhaps building the outlines, approving the work your writers do, and giving feedback to them. And the more you work with the team, the less time this process will require.
At Latinpresarios, we know by heart the steps we just explained and we’re ready to transform your knowledge into blogs people will read and learn from. We are ready to help your personal brand and help you know why should CEOs blog and how to achieve great goals by writing.
Learn more about the services we provide to help you leverage your social media and become a thought leader in this page. Finally, if you are ready to take the next step, you can book a complimentary discovery and strategy call here.
