Contracting Life

Do I need a blog as a self-employed contractor in 2022?

One of the first things you probably did when you became a contractor was set up your website – detailing…

Author Photo by Kingsbridge

One of the first things you probably did when you became a contractor was set up your website – detailing your experience, services, contact details and everything else about your business. Chances are you made sure it was Google-friendly, with appropriate keywords and search terms, all of the correct meta data, links to social media and links from various listings sites. In short, you did everything you’re advised to.

But did you set up a blog? If not, you could be missing out as it can be a fantastic marketing tool for your limited company. However, before you rush off to add a blog to your website, there are a few things you need to bear in mind.

Do you have the time to maintain a blog?

The real benefits of having a blog come from it being regularly maintained. It tells Google that your site is active, useful and in doing so it can rank it higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). It also gives you original, regular content to share on LinkedIn and other social media.

However, whether you want to post weekly, fortnightly or monthly, this can be a big time investment when you factor in planning as well.

If you decide to have a blog on your site, set time aside periodically to actually write and post your content. This could be producing a batch of them and scheduling them to go live over the course of a few weeks, or simply taking a couple of hours each week or fortnight to write and post one.

If you genuinely don’t have the time, or you have little confidence in your writing skills, it could be worth hiring a freelance copywriter to produce your blogs for you. Then all you have to do is supply a brief and pay their invoice, while reaping the rewards of quality marketing.

What could you write about?

Your chosen blog topics will largely depend on your industry and sector but some ideas include:

  • Industry news
  • Contractor life
  • Client and project case studies
  • Why someone might want to hire a contractor in your field
  • Seasonal blogs

You might also want to include news about yourself and your business – such as new professional memberships, new qualifications, changes to your company etc. Creating a content plan for each month can help you work out when is best to post different topics.

Your content needs to be unique

If you’re writing your blog for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes then each blog has to be unique. If you copy and paste some or all of your content, Google will penalise you with lower search rankings. This means you have to approach each blog as new and write it up properly from scratch.

If creating content in this way is not in your skillset, again, you may want to budget for hiring a copywriter to work on the words for you.

If you really nail the unique, quality content posted regularly, then there are so many benefits to having your contractor blog.

It will create engagement with existing and previous clients

If you are posting regular content, it will keep people visiting your site again and again; keeping you fresh in the mind of previous clients who may wish to re-hire you in the future. It also gives you an invaluable tool – a knowledge base – to refer clients to if you are posting about your industry.

For example, if you want to explain a particular topic to a client and you have a blog that breaks down that topic into easy-to-swallow bites, you just need to share the link.

It can increase traffic to your site

Your blogs, just like other pages on your website, will be crawled by Google and will appear in SERPs for relevant searches, increasing the likelihood of potential clients clicking through.

However, your blog also gives you content for LinkedIn and other social media so, whenever you have a new blog going live, make posts on your LinkedIn and any social media pages you have set up for your limited company.

Any likes and shares will see your blog put in front of a much wider network and will encourage people to click onto your website.

It can generate new leads and clients

Of course, click-throughs don’t always equal new clients, but if someone has gone to the trouble of reading your blog right to the end, there’s a good chance they’re interested in having a chat with you about your services.

Putting a call to action (sometimes called a CTA) at the end of your blog can help make that conversion. You might want people to email you, give you a call or add you on LinkedIn.

Whatever the ‘action’ you want them to take, direct them to it, right at the end.For instance, ‘if you want more information on contractor insurance, contact the expert team at Kingsbridge today.’ Actually, something like that would be spot on!

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