What is Blogging?
A blog is a place to publish and promote new content related to your industry. A blog composed with the reader in mind will attract new visitors and for that reason alone convert those visitors into leads.
But in what way can a blog attract new visitors?
A well-optimized blog post looks to draw attention to itself. There are a few ways to ensure you do this and we will get into that a bit later in this blog. Suffice to say that if a blogger takes the time to discover what pain and pleasure points dominate current trends, that blogger will be able to address those concerns.
Bloggers who do the research and write for the customer will be further ahead of those who only want to talk about the greatness of their product or service.
Many small businesses do not place enough value on blogging because they lack the time or have not recognized the importance of creating new pages for their website.
Every time you create a new page for your website you increase the chance of:
-
- Appearing and ranking higher in search results
- Attracting other websites link to your site
- Increased exposure to social media
New pages create greater exposure which results in greater traffic to your website. In fact, the more you blog, the more you appear as someone people can trust as an expert in your field. It will take time and diligence but eventually even search engines will recognize you as an authority and as a result your search engine results page (SERP’s) will move up in rank.
When trying to attract new users to your website, blogging becomes an integral and important element in the inbound methodology.
A great deal of whether or not someone has any interest in your proffered solution to their problem may depend on the topic and more importantly the title of each blog.
How to Pick a Great Topic, Irresistible to Open
Remember: The purpose of any content, especially blog content, is to inform, educate, and entertain. Those are the three main reasons why anyone would look for anything on the internet. There are no other reasons to consider.
Therefore, write educational content relating to your niche. But do this without trying to sell. Sales follow great content. Be prepared to know the answers to the questions people want to know.
Is there any way to predict beforehand what keeps consumers awake at night? Glad you asked because there most certainly is. You can find the latest and greatest conditions that are driving people nuts on forum sites such as Quora, Reddit, and, now check this out, even on your competitor’s blogosphere.
Quora and Reddit members ask thousands of questions on hundreds of topics every day. Forum users filter down to a topic of their choice where they discover a variety of pain points by those who need answers to the juxtaposition of their problems and offered solutions. The benefit this gives to marketers has no parallel in the history of marketing.
Remember: Write about your industry, not about your particular business.
Where to Brainstorm a List of Topics
-
- Check out Frequently Asked Question pages and discover another area to find people interested in your niche
- Ask what do your buyer persona’s need help with
- What 5, 10, 15 or any number of things do you want people to know about your industry
- What are authoritative bloggers, social media marketers, and competitors talking about as related to your niche
Keyword Research
-
- What keywords do your buyer persona’s use
- Which keywords are associated with your brand
- Don’t forget to consider longtail keywords as another resource
You now have another rich resource to find topics for blog posts once you know what keywords consumers and competitors use. Writing about those topics will help searchers find your site and as a result, your site will rank higher in search results. But be warned: Only write one topic per blog post. Anything more will come off as confusing.
How to Compose Compelling Blog Titles
The most important part of a blog is the headline. It’s the first thing viewers will see. It needs to clearly point to the content which is to follow and needs to be interesting enough that your audience will find it irresistible to open and read. Journalists of all types state that writers should write to the title. But sometimes the title is the hardest thing to come up with. So what is a writer to do if they cannot come up with a title for the content they want to write?
Compose a working title that is specific to one topic. For example, the working title for this content is How to Write a Blog Post. That may end up becoming the final title for a couple of reasons. First, viewers crack open a “How To” blog at a greater rate than other blogs that don’t express how to do something. Second, the title is simple; it contains 6 one-syllable words that seem to naturally roll off the tongue. The title does not have a hidden agenda; the reader knows exactly what to expect. And this post is all about how to write a blog post. It’s not about anything else. It’s not trying to sell anything. It’s simply offering some original content with bits and pieces of other content that has been delivered before in other formats. Depending on the type of writer you are, it may be that you will begin with a working title to keep the content focused and then at some point during the writing process, the title may completely change but still remain faithful to the content just as the content should remain faithful to the title. We might say the relationship between the title and the content is much like a marriage.
What else is there to say? Not much in this blog post so let’s wrap things up here with a few more points and then you can go lock yourself in your office and create blog content to your heart’s delight.
-
- Remember to include longtail keywords in the title
- Ask what anyone will get out of this post
- Shorten the title to 50-60 characters which are a vital search algorithm for SEO. Keeping the title around 60 characters avoids having the end of the title hacked off in the search results
- Format and optimize the post – How? Keep reading! Everything in this blog post has something to do with optimizing your post!
- Make the post readable by creating a lot of white space and short paragraphs
- Use headers – H1 for the title. H2 for headings and H3 for subheadings. This is a good SEO practice
- Use bullet points and numbering
- Highlight important points
- Use images to break up the text
- Place an image near the top of your post to stimulate interest
- Don’t keyword stuff – One or two keywords per page although there is no agreement other then it is possible to overdo it. Shoot for a good user experience and you should do alright with the Google crawlers
- Generate leads with blog posts by promoting current offers be it webinars, eBooks, or whatever
- Consider including passive CTA’s in the body of text. It help’s break up the text and gives the reader something to act on
- And don’t forget to add all your social media buttons on every blog post as well as on every single page of your website.
- Write consistently and frequently and eventually, you’ll become a blogging wizard!
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
