By , from Chris Lema – http://bit.ly/1v72Til

If you’re a business trying to figure out how to do this “business blogging” thing, there’s likely an untapped resource of content you’ve already developed. That’s right, you’ve likely already developed the content and just haven’t figured out how to use it.

Know what I’m talking about?

That’s right – it’s your email.

Pre-Sales Questions

It’s likely you’ve answered several, if not hundreds, of pre-sales questions over the years. Every one of those was a clear articulation by your target market.

Every question you answered is likely a question someone else in your target market has as well. In fact, today, there’s a good chance they’re not sure about your product or service but haven’t had the courage to ask you about it.

Or they’re not asking you about it. They’re asking others.

Using Google.

And that’s where Google can help you. Once it knows you have an answer.

But the only way it can do that is if you turn that email answer into a blog post.

How to do it

Let’s say you got a question that sounded like this:

Hi there. I have been considering your product but I’m not sure if I need to buy a single license or more than that. My situation is that I want to put it on several servers, not just one. However, they’re all on servers I own. So does that mean I only need one license? Or more than one?

You might have written a response that went something like this:

Thank you so much for the great question.

The reality is that it depends on what you’re doing. If these are all servers that you own and are only doing work for you, then yes, a single license will work.

If, on the other hand, you are managing these servers for others, or re-selling the work on these servers, then you need a license for each.

Now Turn That into a Blog Post

You might have been thinking that your blog posts all need to be epic. That they all have to be stellar or go viral or something.

But that’s not true.

Each post simply needs to be helpful. To someone.

So taking that email response you wrote and turning it into a blog post means you’ll need to do four things.

Shape Your Title

When you think of a title for your post, keep it simple, but make sure it’s using the language your target audience already used in their question.

That’s the text you’ll expect them to use again with Google.

So you might have a title (for our made up illustration above) like any of these:

• Product Name: When you need to purchase multiple licenses
• Will I need more than one license of Product Name?
• Single or Multiple Licenses for Product Name: What you need

Introduce Your Topic

Once you have a title, you simply need to add a single paragraph that introduces your topic.

It can be as simple as:

This week I received a question from a potential customer about licensing. Because our products can be used in so many different ways, it’s a logical question we get often. Today I thought I would try to explain how to know if you need to purchase more than one license of our software.

Give Your Answer

Once you have introduced your topic, you’re free to leverage as much of your email as possible.

Just make sure not to leave in any customer-specific details. Also remove all jargon, and anything that is specific to the person who initially emailed you.

Take the rest and drop it in. Then read it over to see what tweaks you need to make.

Suggest a Next Step

Your last step is simply the call to action (CTA).

What you want to do is make sure you don’t pass up the chance to direct your audience to the logical next step for them.

In this example, you might end with “Check out our pricing page for more details,” and link it to your price chart.

Each article will be different. But if you end each article with a next step, it will make your posts useful to not only your customers (or prospects) but also to you.

Not too bad, huh?

Blogging for business doesn’t have to be super hard.

It doesn’t have to require incredible creativity or massive marketing spend.

And pre-sales questions are just one example of all the different kinds of emails you likely can repurpose for blog posts.