Have you ever read a business blog article, got all the way to the end, and thought “so what”?
You’re not imagining it. Most business blogs genuinely are boring, and not by accident either. They’re boring because of how they’re made.
We read a lot of this stuff, partly because we have to, partly out of habit. And the same pattern shows up again and again. An article promises to tell you something useful, then spends eight hundred words saying almost nothing, wrapped in language that could belong to literally any company on earth.
This one’s a bit different from our usual posts. Instead of walking through a specific problem, we’re going to talk about why so much business content is such a waste of everyone’s time, and what we’re trying to do differently on this blog instead.
Before We Go Any Further
This is simply our view, and we’ll happily admit it’s a slightly opinionated one.
We’ve read thousands of these articles over the years, across every industry you can think of. Some are genuinely excellent. Most follow a formula that was designed to fill a website, not to help the person reading it.
Have a look around, read a few yourself, and see whether you agree. This is just how we see it.
Why Are So Many Business Blogs So Boring?
Because most of them aren’t actually written for you. They’re written to satisfy a content calendar, tick an SEO box, or give a business something to post on LinkedIn once a week.
The giveaway is usually the opening line. Something along the lines of “In today’s fast-paced business environment…” That sentence tells you nothing, applies to literally any business post written in the last fifteen years, and it’s usually a fairly reliable sign that whoever wrote it didn’t have anything specific to say yet.
Then comes the middle section. “10 Tips for Growing Your Business.” “5 Ways to Boost Productivity.” “The Ultimate Guide to Digital Transformation.” Vague enough to apply to anyone, specific enough to look like advice, useful to almost nobody.
What’s Actually Wrong With “10 Tips” Articles?
Nothing, in principle. The problem is what tends to fill them.
“Tip 3: Communicate clearly with your team.” Thanks. Genuinely, thank you for that.
“Tip 7: Know your target audience.” We’d never have worked that one out ourselves.
These articles aren’t wrong exactly. They’re just so generic that they could sit on the website of a marketing agency, an accountancy firm, a plumber and a pet food company with barely a word changed. If a paragraph could have the company name swapped out and nobody would notice, it hasn’t really said anything.
“If your article could sit on any competitor’s website with the logo changed, it isn’t really advice. It’s wallpaper.”
Why Does So Much of This Content Read the Same?
Partly because a lot of it is churned out at speed, with the goal being volume rather than value. And partly, more recently, because a fair chunk of it is being produced by AI tools without anyone properly editing the result.
We use AI ourselves, so this isn’t an anti-AI point. The issue isn’t the tool. It’s using it to generate a plausible-sounding article and publishing it without adding anything real, an actual opinion, a genuine example, an honest answer to a genuine question.
You can usually spot it. Everything sounds confident. Nothing sounds like it came from someone who has actually sat in the room when things went wrong.
Say You Ran a Small Trades Business and Searched “How to Get More Customers”
We don’t have a real example to hand you here, so let’s be upfront that this is hypothetical, but it’s the kind of thing that happens constantly.
Imagine that search brings back a dozen articles, all roughly the same length, all covering roughly the same five ideas: get a website, use social media, ask for reviews, network locally, offer referral discounts. None of it is wrong. None of it is particularly useful either, because none of it engages with what’s actually stopping that specific business getting more work.
Is the phone ringing but nobody converting the call? Is the website getting visits but no enquiries? Is word of mouth strong but seasonal? Those are three completely different problems with three completely different fixes, and a generic “10 ways to get more customers” article can’t touch any of them properly, because it was never written with a real problem in mind.
Isn’t Some Generic Advice Still Useful?
Fair point, and yes, sometimes it is.
If you’ve genuinely never thought about asking customers for reviews, that basic advice has value the first time you read it. Not every reader has heard it before, and there’s nothing wrong with covering fundamentals clearly.
Our issue isn’t with simple advice existing. It’s with content that never gets past the simple advice, never says anything opinionated, never admits when something is overpriced or oversold, and never risks disagreeing with anybody in case it upsets a potential customer.
So What Should You Actually Look For in Business Content?
A few things worth checking before you trust anything you read.
- Does it say something you could disagree with, or is every sentence safely vague?
- Does it use a real (or clearly marked hypothetical) example, or just abstract statements?
- Does it answer the actual question in the heading, or wander around it?
- Would this paragraph make sense with any company’s name swapped in? If so, be sceptical.
- Does the writer sound like they’ve actually done the thing they’re describing?
That’s roughly the test we try to hold ourselves to whenever we write something for this blog. Not because we think we’ve cracked it, but because we’d rather be genuinely useful to a handful of people than technically present to thousands who close the tab after one paragraph.
“We’d rather write something that annoys one competitor than something that bores every reader.”
Our Final View
Most business blogs read the way they do because they’re built to satisfy a checklist, not a reader.
We think that’s a waste. If you’re going to publish something, it should say something you’d actually be prepared to defend, back up with a real reason, and stand behind if someone pushed back on it.
That doesn’t mean every article needs to be controversial. It means it should be honest, specific, and written by someone who’s actually done the thing, rather than someone filling space until the word count looks respectable.
“At the end of the day, if an article doesn’t leave you knowing something you didn’t know before, what was the point of writing it?”
Fancy Talking It Through Instead of Reading About It?
If you’ve read a hundred generic articles about growing a business and you’re still not any clearer on what to actually do in yours, that’s fairly normal, and it’s not really your fault.
Sometimes it’s quicker just to talk it through with somebody who’s seen a few of these situations before.
Give us a call. We’re always happy to chat, and we promise not to open with “in today’s fast-paced business environment.”