So, right now I’m blogging :)
I’m blogging to give you some ideas and to guide you with some ‘best practice’ tips for getting your company out there.
Blog posts are a type of content creation, which is extremely useful for any company in any industry; Services vs. Product, B2B vs. B2C, Small Vs. Large.
Blog articles are an extremely powerful marketing tool that allows you to inform and educate your audience, showcase your expertise and build healthy SEO.
Whilst we may not all be copywriters or journalists, writing a good blog article can be made painless by following a few simple steps.
Step 1: Build a foundation
If you are just starting out, you will need to begin by building articles that are directly relevant to your product or service. This way you can build a foundation and attract the right audience for you. This is the loyal audience base you hope to maintain throughout your communication efforts.
Step 2: Structure
Like any good article (or even book) a blog article needs clear structure and focus. Your main topic should be clear and each of your subcategories must then cater and feed back to your main communication message. So, outline your subcategories from the beginning, perhaps with a couple of bullet points for each, to ensure you won’t lose focus.
A blog post should be short, sweet & interesting. The tone of your blog posts will be determined by you and how you want to portray and position your company. A few good rules are:
- A range of 400-700 words usually gets the point across.
- Keep an overall ‘smart-casual’ tone.
- Segment your paragraphs frequently or use bullet points.
- Use images either as visual aids or visual breaks.
Step 4: Accuracy & Research
We all remember what our Univesity years were like. We read paper after paper, book after book and submitted assignment after assignment. In the end, all our hard work paid off best when we did proper and solid research.
When you’re producing content for the masses and representing your brand or company, the responsibility to create accurate content becomes of utmost importance. Good research produces solid content and it renders you a trustworthy source as well as an expert in your field.
Bonus Tip: Add hyperlinks in your articles to further validate your content.
Step 5: Enhance your SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doesn’t happen overnight and can take some time to build. SEO should be in the back of your mind with all types of content you’re creating, be it visible content blocks on your website or more technical things like page load speed, schema, XML sitemap, H1’s & H2’s- and the list goes on.
Blog content is an excellent way to frequently build your SEO efforts and can help speed up the process. The more content you’re pumping out, the more you’re supporting and working in harmony with the rest of your SEO activities.
Start with your title.
Your title appears in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) so make sure your title includes keywords that directly link to your product or service and website.
Keep it catchy & short. 60-70 characters are usually a safe bet.
Check your image descriptions.
We’ve already talked about the use of images, but make sure they’re titled with a relevant alt text. This helps search engines and users alike.
Create a meta-description.
A meta description appears right under your title in search results and gives the user an understanding of the topic to follow. This should be on point and include keywords.
Blog content is often seen as ‘secondary’ in our marketing efforts and can easily be overlooked compared to bigger marketing activities. But why?
It’s a great channel of communication, simple to do, always available, builds your SEO and builds your reputation as the expert you are. And now you have a step-by-step guide!
If you feel this guide isn’t enough or you don’t have the time, we’re always here to help. Check out our services in the following links:
