The SBDC Small Biz Blog Turns 4!

Here at the University of LaVerne SBDC, we have been creating content and teaching small business owners to empower them to help start or grow their small businesses. Our Small Biz Blog turns 4 years old, and it has been an interesting time. In this article, I will reflect on why we started, how we do it, and some tips if you are looking to use content to attract and build an audience over the long term. 

I'm Josh From the University of La Verne Small Business Development Center. SBDCs are local centers funded by the SBA that help small businesses with free one on one consulting and free training like this video. So, let's get started. 

Why a Blog?

We started the University of LaVerne SBDC Small Biz Blog because at the time the world was shut down here in California. Many people were looking to get not only with their existing businesses but looking to start up a small business as well. 

Originally, I decided to create timely guides to help people through COVID and help people in that time. When COVID became a thing of the past people still had questions of how to start up a business. Soon the focus of the articles turned to step by step guides to walk our clients through specific licenses and permits to support our consulting. 

This is mainly unheard of in the economic development world or so I have been told. This information was relegated to homework a client is given by an advisor but a client may not even know how to do this. So we created these step by step guides to build confidence and even help walk clients through the process of filing to make it easier for clients to keep progressing. 

But why a blog? Well technically it is far more than a blog. It’s far more than just articles. It’s videos, curated research, advice and distillation of hours you could do yourself but put into a form so you don’t have to. 

How do we come up with topics?

Initially when we came up with the first few topics, they were questions we got from clients. The article “4 Strategies to Market on Facebook”, was a direct response to how clients could market their business online in the time of COVID. 

Soon after I wrote an article “Pull In Case of Emergency: How to protect your business during a disaster”, to help people mitigate disaster that COVID brought on small businesses before EIDL and PPP became a thing. 

How do I do it now? Like a good blogger I have a system for organizing my topics that you can find in my “Blogging for Business” article that explains my process. But, how do I come up with ideas? 

Well, I have a few different sources, besides listening to our clients, I look at to get inspirations for my articles:

1. Other SBDCs. While I believe what we do at the University of LaVerne SBDC is unique, I am not so arrogant that I think I know everything. I will scope out other SBDCs to see what topics other centers all over the country talk about in webinars or any other content and how to do it better.

2. SCORE. The sister organization to SBDCs, SCORE has a wealth of knowledge curated from thousands of mentors across the country. Tapping into their website has given me a whole new perspective on what people might be looking for to start or run a business. Many of these articles are conversation starters like many of my guides but I want mine to be more informative, relatable and interesting.

  

3. Youtube. This last one might seem odd but let me explain. Youtube is the second largest search engine next to Google and is powered by Google. When it comes to millennials and younger, if you need to know something Google it, but if you need to know how to do something Youtube it! Finding what topics that people are looking for when starting a business can be found on google but even if it’s not on Youtube that is definitely an opportunity to make a video and companion article. 

What have I Learned?

If I were telling myself how to do it again or if I were to teach someone to do what I do, here is what I would tell them.

Have a Goal 

When we started this blog, we had one goal: to help our consultants. We had a clear purpose for creating articles. 

These goals have evolved from supporting our consulting sessions to fueling them. 
What I mean is that the goal now is to create videos that drive traffic to our blog and if the reader needs additional help they can call us or sign up as a client to make an appointment. 

If you are just starting out make sure you know why you are creating content like a blog and even videos. How do you want readers to consume your content and what do you want them to do?

Have a Process

I mentioned before that we have a video of creating blog content. It’s changed slightly but the idea is to create Pillars or buckets of content categories. 

This is where your ideas will fall into making each blog idea in each bucket. How you schedule these buckets is up to you and your customers so you create the right content all the time. 

Make you listen to your customers and have a dedicated process to create content as efficiently as possible. 

Repurpose

My final piece of advice to a newbie would be to think about repurposing. Repurposing is the act of reusing content you have without having to recreate it. 

Here is where I capitalize on my video making. Let me explain: For virtually all of my articles there is a companion video used on youtube. I also create about 4 snippets for the two platforms we use like Facebook and Linkedin. We do post to our Google Business profile and obviously the blog page. Finally we may retool this into an on demand course we will use for clients. 

So by my count, we have approximately 10 different kinds of content that work in several different places in our pipeline. It’s taken nearly 4 years to get to this point, but if you have a simple repurposing plan and a process to easily convert these longer forms into shorter forms. You will increase your SEO and seem to be everywhere, which builds brand awareness. 

Wrap-up

So, that's everything I have for my philosophy about content creation and building an audience. I hope these nuggets help you when you form your own blog or content strategy. This definitely isn’t limited to a blogger but can be use for any kind of content like blogs, vlogs, and podcasts. 

Just make sure you have a goal and plan in place so you understand how customers will find you and how you can turn them into leads or buyers with your content. You definitely want to map out your process for not only creating content efficiently but also to have ways to repurpose it into any form for any platform you are on.