It’s that time of year when we reflect on our previous year… understand what you did well… and set goals for what we need to do to market ourselves better.
As marketers and small business owners, we all know that content marketing is king, whether that’s video, website updates or social media posts. In 2020, one of my personal goals is to blog more. I say it every year, and like most of you, it’s one of the first things to be put on the back burner when you’re busy.
So, whether you’re an experienced blogger or someone looking to launch your content machine, you might find yourself overwhelmed at times. Here are some things to think about to help you get (or stay) on the right path.
MAKE YOUR BLOG POST EASY TO READ
- Keep things short, keep things relevant. This doesn’t mean to skimp on the content or specific areas, but what it does mean is to keep your sentences and your paragraphs short. SEO analyzers will like that, but more importantly, readers are often intimidated by long paragraphs.
- Often times when starting a blog, people become paralyzed with self-analysis where they feel they need to write for a scholarly journal. Often times, that’s not the case… write for the people who you are intending to reach.
- Strong headline with keywords
- Strong Opening Sentence (20 words or less)
- Google suggests blog posts be a minimum of 300 words. If you’re shorter than that, it’s not a killer, but that’s a typical rule of thumb.
THINK ABOUT THE READER…AND WRITE FOR THEM
- Sounds obvious, right? But too often posts are just written for what the writer wants to say instead of what the reader is/should be interested in learning?
- For the title of your blog, if it’s educational or you think you could get a good amount of views via organic searches, think about what someone would type in a search engine and craft your title around that. For instance, the title of this post is “Tips for Launching a Blog.” That’s not by mistake. Using keywords and using them in the same manner someone might use them in a search, we’re increasing the likely hood of it getting impressions. We could have also used “Blogging Tips” or “Blog Tips for Beginners.” Try to make your title search engine friendly.
- Questions to ask yourself:
- What is the purpose of your entry?
- Educate individuals/teams on a system, process or benefit
- “Soft” selling a product or service
- Get someone to realize “Oh S&%T, we need help!”
- Is the reader likely to be…?
- A current user?
- Someone who’s looking
- Someone completely unfamiliar with zero background
- A very, very niche issue (where you can really drill down)
- What’s their relationship?
- Are they a client of yours?
- Have they never heard of your company before?
- What is the purpose of your entry?