“Content is King” you hear digital marketers cry. It lets us communicate with our customers to gain their loyalty. It’s also a great way to build your online brand and become an expert in something. This can all be done in one fell swoop with blogging.
No. It’s not just a fad but a proven method that adds to your digital marketing success. It not only gives you something to promote and share on social media to build your company brand but also presents many SEO opportunities to gain traffic to your website and improve your page ranking.
That is all well and good, but how do you go about writing a blog post? Follow these foolproof blogging tips of course:
#1 Establish Your Audience
It is important to know your audience and reach out and speak to that specific audience with your articles. Before you begin writing ask yourself what makes that audience happy, what makes them sad and what problems might they have. Addressing answers to these questions with your subject matter will make the content real, compelling and interesting to the reader. Content that is too generalised will cause your reader to become bored, which will result in them bouncing right off your page.
#2 Choose Your Subject
Think about your content idea in broad terms and research where it is used in other industries, in the media and what the discussion topics are around it. There is always something to blog about, but if you find yourself with writer’s block try using one of these:
A list post – 8 Instagram Marketing Tips for Business
The way to do something – How to setup up Facebook Lead Generation Ads
A question that a customer has asked you – What is a Good AdWords Click Through Rate
A news item in your industry – What we Know about the Next Google Penguin Update
#3 Structure Your Post
When writing your post it is important to create interest with an attention grabbing heading, section headings, bullet points and holding text.
We are all short on time and overloaded with content in its many forms. As a result, most people won’t read more than a few sentences before they start scanning the text, so it is important to present your text to deal with this.
Forget a little bit of what you learnt in English to write well for the internet – this is one of the best blogging tips!
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Make It Snappy
- Present your content in a portion-controlled manner that is easy for the reader to digest.
- Keep sentences short and your paragraphs to one idea three to four sentences long. If you must use a long sentence it is a good tactic to split it with a dash.
- Avoid superfluous adjectives, they don’t add information and are better placed in a chick lit novel.
The Headline
Headlines make the reader decide whether to read a blog or not, this makes it the most crucial element of your article. It won’t matter how compelling or informative the article is if the reader is not drawn in by the headline the article will not get read. End of story.
What about putting a strategically placed emoji or image in your title? Although not commonly seen in headlines for blogs this is a very effective and common practice in email marketing. In fact, it is proven that a cleverly placed snowman, for example, can improve your email open rates and likewise could attract attention to a blog headline and a renewed interest into what the article is about.
#4 Include Valuable Links
Good content should include both internal and external links to expand your reader’s understanding as well as adding value and authority to your piece.
- Internal links should link to your own content, which will keep people on your site and reading your best material.
- External links demonstrate that you’ve researched the topic and want to highlight other experts.
#5 Remember a Call to Action
Don’t forget to tell the reader what you want them to do. Once you have hooked your audience they need to know what to do next. Do you want them to call, fill out a contact form or enquire now for example? Think of your call to action as a trail of breadcrumbs that can lead your potential customers right to the front door of your business.
In Summary
Blogging isn’t a waste of time, the internet isn’t going anywhere and what you have to say isn’t boring. It is time to stop making excuses and get blogging. Can you afford not to? Digest these blogging tips and get writing.
Have you found these blogging tips useful? Do you have a question about blogging? Let us know in the comments.
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2 Responses
Great tips and helpful reminders for every blogger!
Some very useful information here, especially #2. Thanks for posting.