Blogging has been around since the 1990s. And, perhaps inevitably, grand claims are periodically made about ‘the death of the blog’. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of their death are premature.
Blogs continue to play an important role in a company’s digital marketing strategy. They are a great storytelling tool. As human beings, we respond naturally to stories, and blogs are a powerful way of setting out your stall and engaging with your audience.
The value of consistent blogging
They allow you to add depth to your online presence. Demonstrate that you are on top of an ever-changing business landscape. Not least as you respond and adapt to Covid-19. And help you build trust with your customers, through high-quality content that they find useful.
Developing brand awareness is a hugely important element of your marketing activity. A blog will help you demonstrate the personality of your business. And underpin the authenticity that is increasingly important in today’s business environment.
Blogs provide opportunities to stand out from the crowd, enhance inbound marketing efforts and cover topics in greater detail than possible elsewhere on your website.
They generate extra traffic to your site. And, because search engines love fresh content, will help boost your Google rankings.
Getting started
So how do you go about setting up a new blog on your website? Or even refreshing a blog that has become stale?
First off, linked to the benefits outlined above, you need to consider your goals. Clarifying what you are trying to achieve with the blog will help drive the content creation process. It will also help you measure the success of your blog.
This links to the need to identify your audience. Whether your business operates on a B2B, B2C or B2M (business-to-many) basis, customer relationships are everything.
Once you’ve identified your audience you can work out what they’re interested in and what they might want to know.
Creating good content
This leads you to the development of a content strategy. This doesn’t have to be complicated. And brainstorming a few ideas with colleagues can be a useful first step.
In a nutshell, it boils down to identifying the hot topics, new developments and changes in the business environment that you need to address. Whilst also covering the evergreen problems that you can solve for people.
If you’re struggling to come up with new ideas, try the following suggestions:
- Think about the questions your customers ask you on a regular basis.
- Create educational posts about topical issues that feature in your sector.
- Stimulate demand for a product or service that your readers didn’t know they might benefit from.
- Write in-depth features about emerging technical, operational or policy developments in your field.
- Describe how you deliver your services and what goes on behind the scenes.
- Shine a light on a new challenge via ‘explainer’ posts that set out the background to an issue.
Each blog post should focus on one or two key messages and tell a story about some element of what you do. Underpinning everything is the commitment to the publication of high-quality content that provides practical value to your audience.
If possible, consider enriching the text by including photos, infographics or video/audio clips.
And finish posts with a call to action, encouraging the reader to get a quote, make a purchase, sign up to a newsletter or contact you to set up a consultation.
A few thoughts on keywords
Search engine optimisation (SEO) experts will tell you that it’s essential to deploy the right keywords for your blog posts. For sure, writing great content is only part of the battle. Using the right keywords – the words and phrases that people use when looking for something online – will help move you up search engine rankings.
They work because phrases get picked up by Google algorithms which then know what your post is about. And the idea is to use them in the main title and subtitles, the first sentence, elsewhere in the text and in the metadata to increase your visibility. There are a variety of free online tools available to help you find the right keywords.
But don’t go overboard. It takes a lot of research to find the right ones. And overdoing it will be treated by search engines as ‘keyword stuffing’. They may then penalise the offending page by demoting it on search engine results pages.
It can also give your posts an artificial feel, steering you away from a natural approach to creating and telling your story.
It’s far better to write about what you know, in a way that suits the topic. Focusing on posts that meet your readers’ needs.
Ultimately, search engines reward good user experience and keywords are no substitute for good quality content.
Getting the length right
There’s a lot of advice online about the optimum length for a blog post. But this is one of those ‘how long is a piece of string’ questions. Certainly, typical blog posts have got longer since blogging was first invented. When around 300 to 500 words was the norm. These days it’s not uncommon to see posts running to 3,000 or 4,000 words or even longer.
The ideal length really depends on the type and purpose of the post. As well as the industry you’re writing about. Some sectors, such as finance, have a preference for longer posts. Others, for example, fashion, keep them much shorter.
In general, longer posts tend to perform better on Google than shorter posts. This is because long-form writing lends itself to the modern-day habit of scanning content as our attention spans get shorter.
Research suggests that, overall, the sweet spot lies somewhere in the 1,800 to 2,500-word range.
But that’s not to say that every single post you publish has to conform to this spread. If you feel you’ve covered your topic well enough in 500 or 700 words, then so be it. And if you want to go longer than the standard range, your efforts are likely to be rewarded by increased uptake.
Unsurprisingly, in the final analysis, the quality of the content is of more importance than the length.
Posting frequency
There are no hard and fast rules here, but research shows that organisations that blog regularly receive significantly more web traffic than those that don’t. Similarly, once you have a good set of posts under your belt, you can also expect to see numbers of web visitors increase significantly.
Posting frequency relates to your goals. And larger businesses are likely to have greater resources to devote to the process than smaller ones. But aiming to post at least monthly – and preferably weekly – is a good place to start.
If this feels like a tall order, remember, it’s better to go for quality over quantity. A smaller number of posts that really hit the spot, rather than a lot of posts that simply don’t make the grade.
And, don’t forget, once you’ve published your posts, promote them via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Measuring your success
Finally, you need to measure the impact of your blogging. Find out what your readers like (or don’t like). Identify a simple set of metrics based on the numbers of visits to your posts and what visitors do once they’re on the website. And use the data to inform future content decisions and decide upon any changes of direction that might be required.
There you have it. A well-crafted blog will help convey your company’s personality, values, and goals. It will help you engage better with your customers. Which is particularly important in these turbulent times as we continue to deal with the impact of Covid-19.
Drop me a line if you would like to have a chat about how I can help you get started.
Contact details: 07854 129732 | chris@wealdenwordsmith.co.uk | www.wealdenwordsmith.co.uk
(Photo by Trent Erwin on Unsplash)