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Usama Ejaz
Usama Ejaz

Posted on Originally published at justblogged.com

Business Blog Examples: Five Small Companies and the One Habit Worth Copying From Each

Most "business blog examples" lists are HubSpot, Shopify and Airbnb. Those blogs are run by content teams bigger than most companies, so they show what a finished media operation looks like and say very little about what to publish next week.

So I looked at five smaller ones instead: an appliance store with showrooms in Massachusetts, an analytics company with 11 people, a second small analytics company, an online grooming brand and a paid search engine. On 9 November 2026 I measured how long each took to publish its last ten posts, from its public RSS or Atom feed. The answers ranged from 35 days to more than two and a half years. All five still do a clear job for the business.

The five side by side

Blog What the business sells Days to publish last 10 posts What those 10 posts were
Yale Appliance Kitchen and laundry appliances, showrooms in Massachusetts 35 8 buying guides, reviews and comparisons, 1 opinion piece, 1 company update
Plausible Analytics Website analytics 133 6 explainers and how-tos, 3 comparisons with other tools, 1 product question
Beardbrand Beard and hair care, sold online 163 9 how-to and style guides, 1 community event
Kagi Paid search engine and web browser 349 7 product announcements, 2 opinion pieces, 1 company update
Fathom Analytics Website analytics 967 5 stories about building the product, 4 company news posts, 1 how-to

Post types are my own reading of the titles. A feed can leave posts out, so a blog may publish a bit more often than its feed shows.

Pace matters less than it looks. Each of these blogs mostly publishes one kind of post, and that kind matches how its customers decide to buy.

Yale Appliance: answer the questions people ask in the showroom

Yale's blog reads like the conversations its salespeople have every day. Its own description: "honest reviews, brand comparisons, and reliability data from the team that sells, installs, and services what it recommends." The topic filters start at How to Buy and end at Most Reliable.

Eight of the last ten posts help someone choose a product: best dishwashers, counter-depth versus integrated fridges, whether black stainless steel is worth buying. One of the other two explains why repairs take weeks and why they're hiring technicians, which turns a common complaint into an explanation.

The habit: one question you answer by phone, email or in person becomes one post. A roofer gets asked what a replacement costs, whether metal is worth the extra money and how long the job takes. That's three posts.

Someone in a small business forum asked whether a plumber or dentist "can only publish so many '5 tips' articles" before it's busywork. Yale is the answer to that... stop writing general tips, write about the specific products, prices and trade-offs customers ask you to explain.

Plausible: organize around what the reader is trying to do

Plausible's about page says the team is 11 people and that it has never paid for advertising. Most of the people it wants to reach already use Google Analytics, so the blog meets them there.

Before any list of recent posts, the blog asks "What are you trying to do?" and groups posts by the reader's goal. Under Leaving Google Analytics sit a side-by-side comparison, a migration guide and a post on importing old data. Recent posts follow the same pattern: what Google Analytics costs, what the analytics built into Shopify, Squarespace and Webflow can't track.

The habit: write for the reader comparing you with the better-known option they already use. A bookkeeping firm can explain what a client gives up by staying on spreadsheets. An independent gym can compare its classes with a big-chain membership. A SaaS founder in the same forum put it bluntly: "The only posts that brought real customers were all the same type: direct comparisons with competitors."

Once there are five or six posts on one decision, group them on one page. A heading and a short list of links is enough.

Beardbrand: teach people to use what you sell

Beardbrand's blog, Urban Beardsman, says it has "over 1,000 articles" in nine categories, and nine of the last ten are how-to or style guides.

Most sit one step away from a product without being about it: how to choose a beard comb, ways to use beard balm, dealing with coarse hair. Someone searching for help finds the answer, and the products show up because they're part of it.

The habit: if the product takes some skill to use well, write about using it. A coffee roaster writes about grind size per brew method. A garden center writes about what to plant in a north-facing bed.

Kagi: the blog as the company's public record

Seven of Kagi's last ten posts are product announcements or updates, like Kagi Translate coming back and an update on Orion for Linux and Windows.

Filters at the top separate post types, so a customer looking for a product change doesn't scroll past opinion pieces. Those sit under Perspectives, like Education Shouldn't Be Held for Ransom, on how Google bundles search and AI features in its tools for schools.

The habit: publish changes on your own blog first, then share that link everywhere else. A menu change, new Saturday hours, a price increase... each needs a page you can point people to. A social post scrolls away in a day, a blog post stays at the same address.

Fathom Analytics: few posts, each one only you could write

Fathom's last ten posts go back to March 2024. The blog page says it publishes "every few weeks", the feed shows slower. It also carries a line you rarely see on a company blog: "Written by humans, for humans. Every post is written by hand, without AI."

Half of those ten are stories from inside the company, with titles like Two database migrations and a divorce and I made a mistake. No competitor can write those.

The habit: with time for only a few posts a year, make them first-hand accounts. A landscaper writes up a job that went wrong and what changed after. A two-person agency explains why it turned down a big client. These earn trust from people already weighing you up, though alone they bring few new visitors from search.

What doesn't carry over to a small team

Yale's two posts a week takes staff time most small businesses don't have. Copy the kind of post, not the pace.

Fathom and Kagi can publish rarely because customers already know them and come looking for news. A new business with no audience needs posts people find through search before stories and announcements have anyone to read them. I think that means starting with Yale's or Plausible's kind of post and adding the others later.

Beardbrand's 1,000 articles took years. The size of the archive isn't the part to copy.

Picking the habit

  • Customers ask a lot before buying (contractors, clinics, shops, professional services): Yale, one question per post.
  • Customers compare you with a better-known option: Plausible, comparison and cost posts grouped by decision.
  • The product takes skill to use well: Beardbrand, how-tos one step from what you sell.
  • You change things customers need to hear about: add Kagi's habit and post every change on the blog first.
  • You have stories nobody else can tell and very little time: Fathom, if you accept that search traffic will be slow.

None of these five companies has any relationship with me or with JustBlogged, the blogging platform I build. I picked them because they're small, publish on their own domain, and had posted in the last 90 days.

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