If there is a formula behind great blogs - and we're not sure there is - then these businesses have successfully nailed it. The interesting thing we found is that many of these are written by small businesses, which goes to show that you don't need squillions of dollars in your marketing budget to create a great blog that connects with people. Narrowing our selection down to seven was hard, but here are our current favourites:
1. Kate Toon
URL: https://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/blog/
Industry: Copywriting and SEO
Why we love it: When you're a copywriter the pressure is really on to make your own blog sing. And the verdict here? Kate Toon is the Adele of copywriters. A brief look through some of her most recent posts is like taking a masterclass in "How To Write Headlines That Make People Want to Click Through", and her writing style is a winning combination of warm, witty and wise. We love this blog because it manages to educate about otherwise dry topics like SEO and copywriting while being fun and wildly entertaining. No surprise that her posts get a lot of enagement and are widely shared.
2. Flying Solo
URL: http://www.flyingsolo.com.au
Industry: Small business
Why we love it: Flying Solo is an online community for small and micro businesses in Australia, and their blog is chock-full of awesome content on topics like marketing, productivity, wellbeing, money and technology. They post daily and share articles from a wide range of bloggers and industry players, so there is always variety of interesting headlines to choose from. Flying Solo have nailed their target market and the site has a vibrant community of over 96 000 members - this is reflected in the healthy enagement. We love this blog because it takes a holistic approach to business, and the people running them.
3. The Spoilt Stylist
URL: http://www.thespoiltstylist.com/blog/
Industry: Health and beauty
Why we love it: The Spoilt Stylist is the blog of West Australian hair boutique, the Spoilt Hair Retreat, and it's hilarious. Most beauty blogs are serious to the point of earnestness, but Elsa (yes, like the Frozen character) has injected a quirky sense of humour into the proceedings. Titles like "Pregnancy Turned Me Ginger" and "Dear Dyson, It's About Your Silent Hair Dryer" hint as to what you can expect, but it was a post called "What Happened When I Started Blogging For My Business" that really caught our attention. Spoiler alert: Google fell in love with her and profits increased by 40%.
4. Talk About Creative
URL: http://www.talkaboutcreative.com.au/blog/
Industry: Digital marketing
Why we love it: Talk About Creative is passionate about all things marketing, and their cheeky tagline announces their team as "Professional Attention Seekers". One of the reasons we love their blog because it seeks to solve the mystery of the different social media platforms and how they all operate, allowing business owners to walk away from their blog with clever, actionable tips to use. Their blog also covers related industry topics like branding, marketing copywriting and SEO - always with a sense of fun and a wicked sense of humour.
5. Finlee and Me
URL: http://www.finleeandme.com.au/blog/
Industry: Baby and children's products
Why we love it: If it wasn't for the sidebar you wouldn't even know that Finlee and Me was an online children's boutique. Their blog is effective because it focuses less on hard-selling its products and more on offering a wide range of informative and entertaining articles about parenting. Product reviews are peppered in between useful content like "5 Gentle Ways to Respond to a Tantrum" and opinion pieces about motherhood, so it never feels like you are being "sold to". This is a great example of a business blog expanding its reach by offering useful content that is not specifically related to selling products.
6. Copywrite Matters
URL: http://copywritematters.com/blog/
Industry: Copywriting
Why we love it: Yes, we realise that this is another blog by a copywriter who runs their own business, but it's a brilliant illustration of the power of well-written copy to capture people's attention. You don't have to be a copywriter to have a successful blog but it certainly helps, and this one is all-killer no-filler. We love this and think that all business owners should follow their feed, with handy tips on writing effective marketing emails, composing "non-cheesy" sales copy and advice on how to polish your business communications.
7. Adriano Zumbo
URL: http://zumbo.com.au/blog/
Industry: Food
Why we love it: Why do we love Adriano Zumbo's blog? One word: zonuts. Half crossaint, half donut, the zonut is just one of the culinary delights to be found on this swoonworthy blog. Food is such a feast for the senses that it can be hard to reduce that experience to written and visual content alone, but the photography on this blog is truly exceptional and does justice to the amazing sweet treats that Zumbo creates, which are more like art than food. It's fairly new - only having started this year - but we are already hanging out for more.
