Don’t Be SAD: Use Blog Content to Turn Around Blue Monday For Small Businesses and Agencies

Blue Monday this year is today, January 18th.

It doesn’t get the hype of other colorful days. It doesn’t have the consumer appeal of Black Friday, the historic significance of Red Monday, or the punk sensibility of Green Day. 

But it’s a real thing. Well, mostly.

It’s the day that “experts” tell us is most likely to be the most depressed day of the year.

• It’s a Monday, so there’s that.
• The holiday euphoria is long since worn off and all the bills are now due.
• The days are short, nights are long, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere.
• Chances are your favorite football team has been eliminated and the coach fired.
• And pitchers and catchers don’t report for spring training for another month.

Now, there may not be much to it. In fact, Blue Monday, according to this piece by Science Alert probably results in more media hype than actual sadness.

One thing is known for sure, and that’s that small business operators and entrepreneurs do face issues of depression in greater numbers than many other groups. 

In some ways, Blue Monday is a chance for the rest of the world to get a glimpse of what it’s like to run a business every day.

So, how to beat it?

Well, if you are facing real depression you should follow all the mental health advice. Part of that is just health advice: Eat right, get enough sleep and plenty of exercise.

How does that pertain to your business? Well, maybe your business needs a similar infusion of good healthy habits.

Your website is just a start

We often say that blogging is the business world equivalent of eating right and getting exercise. Online advertising is more like Red Bull, it can work while you are on it, but as soon as you stop, you crash. Blogging regularly is the best way to let the world (and the search engines) know that your business is strong and healthy.

Don’t panic, though. You don’t have to pay someone to redesign your website to do that. Also, forget about all that fancy SEO and search algorithm stuff you read about. All you need to get over the hump is good, fresh content. You want a periodic and timely blog–which is nothing more than quality writing with ingredients of value to the reader and ever-so-subtle self-promotion.

Our 5 suggestions for stirring up good content

Here are five suggestions for what you can do to turn around your Blue-Monday-stalled website:

1. Make a list of 5 attributes (qualities, really) of your business service or product that you believe make your business a standout. (Example: Our customers say they love our service after the sale.) Note: You could also make this a repeating agenda item for brainstorming with your employees.
2. Compress each of those attributes into three or fewer keywords. (Example: Service after sale.) There is help available online. Practice with this free keyword tool from WordStream.com.
3. Take those key words and do a quick web search. (Microsoft’s Bing Browser’s top hit is the Business Dictionary definition of “after-sales service.”)
4. The foregoing definition is now your first great idea for a blog. Your goal is to write 250 words on what service after the sale means in your business niche. Go for a qualitative, value-added description, which shows that you know what you’re talking about. The reader must come to the conclusion that service after the sale is what your company is all about. The content should be more about the former–service–than the latter–your company. The result and impression are more valuable than drum beating, and each “brands your brand” with a reputation that you are an industry thought leader.
5. Repeat the foregoing process until the aforementioned attributes blossom into 5 key word blog ideas. For your next round you could change your orientation to goals or ideas for increasing sales. You might also come up with shameless self-promotion ideas for seasonal pushes–maybe your own Blue Monday annual sale.

Harnessing all that creativity

You may have noted that the above exercise gets those creative juices flowing. You also know that those juices are what got your business up and running. Entrepreneurism and thought leadership arise from creative thinking, and one idea always leads to another better one.

Channeling those ideas into continuous content–i.e., blogs–will bring more readers, who will remember their visit and become present fans and future customers. 

BlogMutt writers bust their hump for you

So the way to get past (or completely ignore) Blue Monday is to inject the cyber equivalent of endorphins into your website with great blog content.

On the other hand, you just might be a tad busy separating the wolves at the door from the alligators in the swamp. Or maybe you would rather face the latter two barehanded, rather than face a weekly writing task.

In either case, you should consider being an underwriter, rather than an actual writer of blog content for your website. That would be through hiring a blogging service like BlogMutt. Contact us if you’d like to talk about it. You can subscribe and receive weekly 250-, 600-, 900- or 1200-word blogs from our experienced writers, who will bust their humps to make you look good.

Give us those keywords and ideas you came up with and let our writers do the rest.