That seems to be the question for many to whom this concept is new.
At Epiphany, we encourage our clients to blog. Or, at the least, give it a try. It’s a fascinating art form in and of itself. When blogging, here are a few tips to help you with catching your audience’s attention, tracking metrics, and even a few items that will assist you in building your SEO plan.
1: Understand your audience.
- Have a clear understanding of who they are.
- What do they want to know about?
- What will resonate with them?
2: Start with a topic and working title.
- Brainstorm a few topic ideas to get you started.
- Choose one.
- Create a working title that grabs the reader.
3: Write an intro (and make it captivating).
- Work to keep their attention within the first two lines or you loose them.
- Show the purpose of the post and explain how it helps readers solve a problem. (Remove or ease their pain point. Teach them something new.)
4: Organize your content.
- Avoid too much information — for the reader and the writer.
- The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content.
- Ideas: sections, lists, tips, whatever’s most appropriate. But it must be organized! Don’t just ramble and wax eloquent. It doesn’t work!
- Outline your post.
5: Write the content.
- Take your outline and just fill in the blanks.
- Use your outline as the guide.
- Expand on all of your points as needed.
- Write about what you feel comfortable talking about, and do additional research, if necessary, to gather more information.
6: Make it look great/easy to read. Visual Appearance
- Pictures don’t make a post visually appealing – it’s the formatting and organization of the post.
- Keep titles and subtitles in the post consistent.
- Do pictures always have a similar border?
- Keep style consistent from post to post.
7: Include a CTA (Call-to-Action) at the end.
- What do you want them to do? Why are you doing this? (Conversion)
- At the end of every blog post, add your CTA.
- They will click on the CTA if they enjoyed your blog post and want more information on that particular topic.
8: Optimize for on-page SEO.
- Incorporate keywords but don’t impact reader experience.
- Make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly. Don’t overdo keywords or attempt arbitrary keyword density — Google’s knows!
9: Pick a catchy title.
- Keep the title accurate and clear.
- Make it sexy — whether it’s through strong language, alliteration or another literary tactic.
- Optimize for SEO by sneaking some keywords in there.
- Shorten it up. No one likes a long, overwhelming title.
10: Add a great image!
- Put additional visuals to complement the different sections of your post.
- Add data or statistics to back up any claims you made in your post.
We know that’s a lot to swallow. That’s why some folks simply ask us to handle this for them. But you can learn and do this, too.Remember: statistics show that blogs do affect purchasing decisions. It may seem like a lot of work, and it is, blogs, however, are the hub of a good inbound based Social Media strategy.
If you’d like assistance with blogging for you or your business, we’d love to come alongside. Give us a call. It’s what we do, and we enjoy doing it.
– Stephanie and the Team at Epiphany
We’ll send our latest blogs to your inbox…simply click here and sign up today!
Follow us on: