During last week’s LBU: Secrets to Wholesale Success Office Hours call, we were mulling over the challenges of blogging. We all agreed on the numerous benefits of blogging for small businesses:

1. Blogging provides a steady stream of fresh content, which encourages Google’s spiders to crawl your site more often, boosting your organic search engine rankings.

2. Blogging creates an opportunity for those all-important inbound links. If you create high-quality content, others will link to it, expanding your audience and increasing site rankings.

3. Blogging gives your customers a reason to come back to your site more regularly than they would simply to place orders.

4. Blogging serves as an extension of your brand personality and builds loyalty among your customer base.

Despite the agreed value of blogging, several students conceded that they hadn’t yet taken the plunge because they simply didn’t know what to blog about. Several more confessed that though they’ve established a company blog, they didn’t update regularly because their well of inspiration for blog topics ran woefully low. At some point, inspired by the lively dialogue and passion on the call, I *might* have boasted that there were no shortage of possible blog topics for makers.

Next thing I know, I had pulled a number right out of thin air. “Oh, it’s not that hard! I bet I could come up with 50 good blog topics!” Oops… Did I just say that out loud? Indeed. I waited for someone to say, “I can do 51!” And then I was going to counter “52!” and then they would have countered “53!” and I then I would have called their bluff, accepted their challenge and be let off the hook. Anyone remember the show Name That Tune from when we were kids? Well, that didn’t happen, so guess how I spent my Friday night?

Click here to download my list of 50 Blog Post Ideas for Beauty Entrepreneurs!

One idea that we hatched together  during that LBU call was to snap a quick picture each day that captures something we’re working on for our business.  On Friday, we can post all 5 images from the week, along with simple one-sentence descriptions. Readers enjoy visual-heavy, behind-the-scenes posts and this type of blog is blissfully simple (and quick!) to create. Several of LBU Summer Semester students have agreed to join me in a one-week challenge to create one post of this type and we’re all posting on Friday.  I’d love to have you join us! Leave a comment if you’re joining in the fun and please return back again on Friday to post a link to the finished post!

P.S. Although the “50 Blog Ideas” is written with one of my LBU students (who is a beauty entrepreneur) in mind, virtually every idea on that list can be tailored to reflect your industry!