You may think writing a blog is easy. You just sit at a computer, pick a topic and write. But for a successful business or promotional blog, there are some key steps you can take to ensure your information is organized and readers keep coming back for more.
1. Organize your thoughts
If this is a personal blog, pick a topic and think through the message. Is it a blog about fall dinner recipes? If so, come up with a catchy title for each post that describes what it will be about while catching readers’ attention. If you plan to include bullet points, or steps as in a recipe, start with an introductory paragraph that leads into the main content of the blog. localmilkblog.com combines country recipes, beautiful photos and clever writing about how each recipe came to be and a personal narrative about the food. It’s inviting, warm and informative.
2. Organize your content
If you are promoting a skill, such as carpentry or cake decorating, use headers that include a story about yourself, your expertise, products you offer, videos or media clips and a link to order. Include videos. A blog can be arranged like a mini website and if the content is well organized, people will come back for new information. Ana-White.com is a good example of how information and her carpentry services is well organized and well written. She posts excellent how to videos that explain each project step by step. She keeps the tone light and friendly so readers feel as though they know her, her work and her family. A blog is different from an editorial in the New York Times and should have a friendlier tone.
3. Use proper grammar
You could write a blog with lower case and text abbreviations that is meant just for your inner circle, but for any kind of business or professional blog, correct sentence structure and grammar are a must. Grammarly.com is a good website to check your grammar. You can find spell check, which will raise red flags about improper grammar in Microsoft Word. Also, try to find your voice and be consistent. Find your audience and fine tune your voice.
For example, if you’re blogging for a ballet barre company, you should be familiar with ballet terminology and identify your audience. Is it ballet teachers? Ballet studios? Ballet companies? Become familiar with your product and your audience and people will come back to read what you have to say.
4. Give your blog a name that is memorable
You want readers to remember whom you and what you have to say. The blog drillbitsharpener.com is exactly what it says it is. It provides information on drill bits and how to sharpen them. Coming up with a blog name that describes exactly what someone will find on your blog is a great way for people to remember who you are.
If you are a cake decorator try to attach your name to the blog, such as Joannesuniquecakes, for example. Since there are so many domains with generic names, having your name, or the name of your company attached to the web address, will help you and your blog to stand out.
5. Rely on the experts
Utilize blog writing websites such as Writerswrite.com, that offers information on how to start a blog, how to write and organize content and how to use SEO text that will help people find you on a Google search. This is key if you blog for a business or any organization that you want readers to know about.
The website rankingcoach.com provides software that will optimize your blog text through SEO portals. It’s a valuable investment if you want your product or brand to come up at the top of search engine lists.
6. Utilize social media on your blog
Be sure to include badges for all of your social media platforms, especially Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Vimeo or YouTube. They should be placed right up front on your blog-landing page so people can easily link to them. If you don’t have social media platforms, it is a wise investment in time and money.
If you don’t have time to post on social media, you can find a college student to post your social media if you provide them with the content. Keep the content fresh and announce special sales, or new items if you’re selling a product. Hootsuite is a great and easy-to-use tool to link and manage your social media. This way you’re not posting the same content on different platforms. Hootsuite manages it for you.
7. Hire a pro
If you need help writing content, there are plenty of quality blog writing services that are cost efficient. Many businesses do not have the staff to write daily blog posts and outsourcing is a good idea. How it works is you post the topics you want blog content for along with guidelines and timeframes and these companies have a list of freelancers on hand that write them. You pay the company and they pay the writers. If there is one writer you really like, you can request that specific writer.
godotmedia.com, blogmutt.com, and solidessay.com are just some highly-rated writing services. Better yet, post a message on your blog’s social media that you’re looking for a writer. This means you may find a good writer who is also familiar with your brand or product.
Your blog can stand out from the thousands of others. Organizing your thoughts and content, creating visual content that is engaging and writing in a style that addresses your audience will surely help your message and brand.
Author bio: Ben Russel is a content marketer who writes for godotmedia.com and solidessay.com. In addition, Ben also works as an academic writing expert at several educational websites.
