It might take a little creative brainstorming, but we’re here to tell you that there’s always something else to blog about. Here at Hue & Tone, we work with a number of residential building and design pros – including kitchen designers, cabinet reps, general contractors, realtors, and lighting companies – and hear concern from these folks in particular that they have nothing to talk about on their blog. 

Content creation is a common concern – and worries range from being stumped in the initial brainstorming session to long-term stress about running out of things to post about. No matter what industry you’re in, we promise that there’s plenty to post about! 

But don’t just take our word for it, let us demonstrate and help you brainstorm some new ideas. We’re going to start by focusing on generating ideas for our kitchen and bath creatives – but if you’re stumped, we’re here to help! Drop us a comment at the bottom of this post if you want to see us do a brainstorming session for your industry. 

Building + Design Practices

1. Designing a family (and kid) friendly kitchen: What tips can you provide to make the kitchen a more inclusive space for the whole family? 

2. Stain, paint, or replace? What time, budget, and design factors should someone consider when they’re making a decision about a cabinet upgrade? 

3. How to set a remodeling budget: What should clients consider when outlining everything they want in their new dream kitchen? What expenses might they not be thinking about? How much wiggle room should they leave to account for fluctuating expenses and ensure they don’t blow the budget? Pose and answer all these questions for prospective clients to start building trust before you even begin working together.

4. Choosing the right appliances: Introduce people to your favorite appliance brands and let us know what products you would recommend for a variety of budgets. 

5. Biggest renovation mistakes to avoid: What missteps do you see most often? Which design decisions have you been brought back in to correct? 

6. Checklist for your bathroom renovation: Create a free downloadable that homeowners can use to get everything organized for a bathroom renovation. 

7. Finding the right designer: We all have an idea of who our ideal clients is – use this knowledge to write a post explaining who you love to work with. In turn, this will help homeowners determine if you’re the design pro they’re looking for!   

8. Granite vs Quartz: Walk us through the pro and cons of each popular countertop material. Are there less common materials (like butcher block) that a homeowner should consider?

Trends

9. Building Sustainably: What’s the latest in renewable building technology? What should clients consider when aiming for a more sustainable and eco-friendly design? 

10. What do you see as the latest trend in smart technology? What’s the next big thing? Our client, Dream Kitchen Builders, does a great job making these predictions – check out their blog here.

11. How to create a timeless look: Instead of talking about what’s trendy, talk about what will never go out of style. This could be a design feature, paint colors, or fixtures. 

12. Where to splurge vs where to save: Would you suggest spending big money on fixtures or appliances? Cabinets or countertops? Lay out your top tips and suggestions in a post! 

Inspiration 

13. What trends do you see emerging in flooring? Don’t just tell us – show us examples of the latest tile, vinyl, and wood trends. Incorporating visual blogs cuts down on the writing you have to do and can convert to great social media content. 

14. Advise on selecting just the right shade: Picking paint colors is no easy decision, so give clients some guidance on what shades work best. Bonus points for breaking swatch options down by color, mood, or room.

15. Lighting trends: Curate lists of great lighting fixtures for bathrooms, kitchens, hallways, outdoors, and more. 

16. Out of the box design details: Have a wallpaper, light fixture, or unique detail that you’ve been dying to incorporate in a design? Compile these into a blog post and see if you can snag a prospective client that shares your unique design sensibilities. 

17. Small space inspiration: Show and tell us how homeowners can increase the functionality and appearance of a small space. 

Evergreen ideas 

18. Recent jobs: Don’t forget to show off your own work on your blog! Share pictures, quotes, and the story behind your latest renovation or design jobs. This will help prospects get a better idea of your style and how you like to work. 

19. Business updates: Forming a new partnership? Working with a big name client? Attending a kitchen & bath tradeshow? Share updates about your business on the blog to give people an inside look at what’s going on behind the scenes. These posts help build a relationship and your credibility. 

20.  Fun (but related) bonus content: Don’t just stop at designing the kitchen and bathroom – expand your blog topics to include relevant information like hosting tips, recipes, and home organization.  

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Hue & Tone Creative

If you’re stumped during the brainstorming process, we’re here to help. From your very first blog post to learning the latest social platform, we’ll help you with your marketing so you can get back to doing what you do best: running your business. Contact us today to learn more.

Be sure to read to the bottom of this post to learn more about why we’re switching up our blogging frequency!

Here at Hue & Tone Creative, we’re big proponents of blogging. We believe it’s one of the best ways to connect and grow your potential audience…and in turn, your revenue. 

Blogging gives you a regular (and free) platform to discuss your ideas, your business, and your expertise. By amplifying your content on social media (which is also free!) you’ve got the beginnings of a very successful marketing toolkit.  

The most important thing we tell people about blogging is that it’s part of playing the long game – if you don’t see big results immediately, stick with it. Even if you’re doing everything right, it can take months, even years, to see a big return on blogging. 

The more you blog, the more traffic you will see – and the more opportunities you will have to connect with your audience. Over time, you’ll get to know what they want and what questions they have.  

Still not convinced you need to make the long-term investment that is blogging? Growing your audience isn’t the only reason should post regularly, you’ll also: 
 

• Earn more exposure/SEO Benefits: As you post more, you gain new opportunities to show up in search queries. Every time you blog you create additional pages. Additional pages tell Google what your site is all about and helps them know who they should serve your site to. 

• Share your knowledge: Your readers might not be ready to hire you yet – but your blog will help keep your name front of mind and you’ll be the first person they call when they are ready to buy. 

• Try out new ideas: While evergreen content provides your blog with longevity, sharing exciting new ideas and concepts on your blog can spark excitement with your audience. 

• Help educate your clients and customers: Save yourself the time of constantly having to explain things by creating an easy to reference database for your audience. 

• Build your professional network: Blogging is a great way to connect with potential clients/customers, other leaders in your industry, and community figures. 

• Get to know your target audience: As your blog audience grows, you’ll get more and more questions from your target audience, which can help you shape and grow your future offerings. 
  

Blogging Frequency 

Once you’ve decided that you want to invest time into blogging, you have to decide how often you’ll be posting. Maintaining a regular frequency is important because it offers your readers consistency, and also helps with your internal organization. 

But, how often you should post is a very personal decision – one that should be informed by your industry, and how much time you have available to write quality content.  

Many businesses experience a boost in their profitability once they’ve amped up their blogging efforts, but other business owners may find they get more leads when they spend their time marketing their posts through social (while blogging less often). 

Ilfusion explains why blogging more is typically considered to be more effective:

“In general, the more blog posts you publish, the better the chances of capturing more traffic. Research shows that companies who blog 3 to 5 times a month, or around once a week, get twice the web traffic than those who don’t blog at all. This doesn’t conclude the ideal number of blog posts per month; rather, it bolsters the fact that, overall, businesses who commit to posting regularly on their blogs tend to reap the biggest rewards in terms of web traffic. The more you post, the more exposure your blog gets—and, over time, the results continue to pay out as your blog builds more traffic and consequently boosting your SEO ranking.”

Blogging frequently (more than once a week) is only a valuable use of your time if you can maintain high-quality content, avoid repetitive topics, and continually appeal to your target audience.  

About four years ago, we started out by blogging twice a week. Once we had built up a valuable backlog of content (after about six months) we moved to posting once a week – and we’ve maintained that frequency for a little over three years. 

Now, we’re planning to make the shift to blogging every other week. We’ll still be bringing you valuable content on everything marketing, graphic design, and social media related – but we’ll only be posting about twice a month. This will allow us to put more time into each post, so you can expect longer, more in-depth posts starting the first week of October, 2019. 

Curious why we’ve made this choice? There are a few big reasons that pushed us to make this decision:

• We need more time to focus on client work: Our calendar is booking a few months out these days, and we want to free up as much time as possible to focus on the projects we’ve got booked. 

• We want our blogs to be the highest quality possible: Less posts means we’ll be able to produce higher quality (and more in-depth) content. 

• We want more time to spend on content promotion: Writing less gives us more time to focus on marketing and promotion for both new and old content.

Now that we’ve explained our rationale behind how often we post, tell us: How often do you blog? What drove the decision behind your posting frequency?  

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Hue & Tone Creative: Marketing, Design, and Beyond

Need help getting your social media and blog calendar on the right track? We’re here for that! We don’t write your copy – we help you develop your strategy. From social media to blogging we’ll help you determine everything from the right posting frequency to the topics you should be posting about. Contact us to get started.

When it comes to business to business (B2B) marketing, blogging can be a valuable tool. Your blog is a great place to showcase your knowledge and dive in-depth on your products, in a way that you wouldn’t able to in a quick tweet or status update. 

The downside is that B2B marketing has a reputation for being boring – and, unfortunately, in our experience a lot of the content we see lives up to that expectation. There’s a common misconception that blogs targeted towards other businesses need to have a straightforward or corporate feel. While we don’t believe you should compromise your professionalism, we believe it’s possible to share your knowledge without putting everyone to sleep. 

If you’re looking to give your business marketing a more approachable feel, we suggest you check out these tips to keep your marketing focused, but fun, for the reader. We believe that B2B marketing done right might even be what helps set you apart from a competitor! 

 

1.  Talk like a human

No matter how interested a potential customer is in your topic, talking like a robot is going to lead to people clicking off your website. Type like you talk, keep it simple, and don’t be afraid to push the conventional boundaries -- i.e. don’t let that red squiggly line stop you from experimenting with your words!

One caveat? Just make sure your meaning and professionalism aren’t lost in too much slang. If you wouldn’t say something in the workplace, don’t type it on the blog. 

2.  Don’t forget the fun factor

Business owners, directors, and managers still have a sense of humor, so don’t sap all the fun out of your blogs. Adding fun anecdotes or playful pictures into your blogs can help them feel more relatable. 

3.  Don’t baffle them with jargon

Getting lost in the jargon of a blog is never productive. Ever. Even though you’re addressing to other experts in your field, you’ll want to talk in simple terms and only use jargon when it’s needed. You never want to assume every reader knows what you do, so be sure to explain terms on the first instance you use them.

4.  Don’t publish a wall of text

Stay away from clunky chunks of text -- they’re not enjoyable to look at or read. Use subheadings, pull quotes, and succinct paragraphs to make your text easier to browse. Even if you’re publishing a whitepaper, there’s no reason not to give your readers a pleasant and intuitive experience. 

5.  Mix up your mediums

Remember, blogs don’t always have to be written like an article. Try out creating an infographic or recording a video blog. You can also consider publishing presentations or papers – it’s content you’ve already created, and chances are if it was worth presenting about it’s a relevant topic. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to, just share the work you’ve already done! 

6.  Use images creatively

In need of some fresh photos? We’ve complied a list of FREE stock photo sites. 

If your blog is long, add a few images in along the way so that it’s not too text heavy. Be creative with your choice of images, and try to refrain from using the same handful of stock photos repeatedly. 

7.  Keep it concise

Business owners are busy people, so the last thing they want is to have to read through three paragraphs of mumbo jumbo before actually getting to the relevant information. Get to the point early on and it’ll be a more enjoyable read all round.

8.  Use examples

Examples can be a great way to show off how you can help. Using real life scenarios are often more relatable to potential customers and give you a chance to show off your results and solutions. So, instead of explaining, start showing what you can do!

9. Sentence structures

Writing is a craft. Not everyone’s good at it -- nor are they expected to be. But when you’ve got a good writer on board, they can make even dullest topics enjoyable. Something as simple as mixing up sentence structures can quickly ramp up the readability-factor.

10.  Reader participation

Whether it’s adding a quick poll half way through a post or inviting readers to leave a comment at the end, getting your audience involved with your blog is another way to get them more invested in the content. 

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Hue & Tone: Your partner in B2B Content Creation 

Need a helping hand to elevate your blogs to the next level? Here at Hue & Tone Creative, we’ve got you covered from the right words right to the perfect picture. Contact us today to learn more about our design and marketing services.

When business is booming, it’s easy to put blogging on the back burner. If you blog frequently, it can seem logical to cut back on something that can require a lot of your thought, time, resources, and skill. However, investing all that time and skill has a very real payoff -- 74% of businesses say that engaging blog content increases their quality and quantity of leads. Surely worth the investment, right?

There are umpteen reasons you need to be blogging, but for the purpose of this post we’ll focus our attention solely on some of the top SEO and brand authority benefits.
 

Blogging is a staple part of your SEO strategy

Linking

First and foremost, blogging gives you significantly more opportunity to link internally. The logic is simple -- the more quality content you have on your site, the more relevant pages you can point visitors to.

The second opportunity comes in the form of external links. If you’re pushing out engaging, authoritative, and useful content, other sites will want to link to it, so that they can add value to their audience, too. Evergreen content (timeless content that attracts both first time and repeat readers) is especially great for this, because it can earn you links until the end of time - for free!
 

Enhance your engagement

Blogging not only helps to get visitors landing on your site, but it helps to retain them too. So, why does this matter? Low bounce rates and longer session durations are signs that you’re providing people with quality content, which is exactly what search engines look for when serving people search results. 

Long-term, this will boost your rankings and help you come up higher in a Google search. 
 

Target your keywords

Blogging is the perfect platform to target all your keywords – as long as you’re incorporating them organically, of course. It allows you to answer the questions your audience is asking, to engineer your content strategy towards what’s being searched for, and to produce intent-based blogs that help to convert.

The end result? Higher rankings, greater organic visibility, more traffic and an increase in sales.

Blogging build your brand’s authority

Become an industry leader

By pushing out timely, high-quality, accurate, and interesting content on a regular basis, you’ll prove yourself as a leader in your arena. People will trust you. When they’ve got a question, they’ll come directly to you. They’ll recommend you to others. And they’ll build a rapport with you without a single word being spoken.
 

They’ll keep on coming back

Great quality content wins lasting relationships. Poor quality content turns people away. One less than interesting article can lose you a visitor for life - it sounds extreme, but it’s true. Cast your mind back to a time when you landed on a poorly put together piece of content: what impression did it leave? And, how fast did you click away from that site? 
 

Get your name out there

Having a regular flow of posts helps you get your business out there. Whether it gets traction from external sites, is shared on social media, included in your weekly newsletter or promoted in paid ads, it gives you something to shout about. Without it, you’ll soon run out of things to say.

So, that’s it for our handpicked pros of blogging. What else do you need to know? Leave us a comment below! 

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GRAPHIC DESIGN FOR GREENSBORO, NC AND BEYOND

Let us take the headaches out of managing your blog. Whether you need help developing keywords, creating fresh content, or moderating comments, Hue & Tone Creative has you covered. Contact us today.