Most businesses understand that content marketing is a vital part of a successful digital marketing strategy. It should go without saying that it’s essential for any website to having up-to-date and engaging content. And part of this is effectively managing a blog.
If you don’t know how to write a blog, that’s ok. No one is born with this knowledge. But practically everyone has read blog posts online. Heck, you’re reading one right now.
Without your own business blog, you probably won’t experience the online results you want and need. Your SEO efforts will suffer, you won’t have any fresh content to share on social media, and there will be fewer pages on your site with lead-generating calls-to-action (CTAs).
So, if you haven’t made blogging a priority or just don’t know how to approach it, it’s time to make a change. Here are the steps to write a blog, as well as a few Dos and Don’ts for blogging to put on your list.
You know you need to start blogging to get your business more online visibility. But maybe you don’t know how. Here are is a simple step-by-step guide to writing a blog.
You need a place to put your blog on your website and some type of layout or theme. Most businesses choose a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or HubSpot, and host their blog on a subdomain or folder on their existing website. So, your blog might be located at: www.blog.yoursite.com or www.yoursite.com/blog. Once you set up your blog, you can choose a theme that aligns with your main website and overall brand.
Before you write your blog post, make sure you understand who you are writing it for. Specifically, what topics does your target audience care most about? If you haven’t created some buyer personas yet, this is a good time to start.
Your next step will be to choose a topic for your blog. This is where so many people tend to hit a brick wall. But, this isn’t necessary if you’re writing content for your business. Ideally, there should be plenty of topics that you are enthusiastic about that would also be of interest to your customers. What are common questions that you get from potential clients? What’s a common misconception about your product or industry? Start there.
You might wish to come up with several working titles for your blog post unless you’re sure you have a winner right from the start. Sometimes your title won’t take shape until you’ve finished the piece, which is perfectly fine. What you thought would be a listicle (X Top Ways to Work Virtually) might have turned into something else (The Pros and Cons of Virtual Work).
People consume a ton of content online, and they are incredibly picky about who gets their attention. If you want to hold onto your reader’s attention, you’ll need to captivate them in the first few seconds of your blog post. You can tell a story, hit them with a powerful statistic, or evoke some other emotion to achieve this goal.
Some blog posts fail to deliver what they promise in the title and intro. Don’t be that person. Create an outline for your blog and follow it. The key is to be organized from start to finish and use the tried and true formula of: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you just told them.
Every business blog post should have a call to action (CTA) at the end. Specifically, what do you want the reader to do next - contact you for a consultation, subscribe to your blog, download an ebook, read another post? Let them know so that they can take action and you can benefit.
The editing process is just as important as writing when it comes to creating a blog. It impacts your credibility when you post content that is full of spelling and grammatical errors. Use a free grammar checker like Grammarly or the features cooked into your word processing app of choice.
People love visuals in online content. It helps make better sense of the content, and it breaks up that wall of words. Make sure you add some relevant and interesting images, videos, and/or graphics to your post.
When you’ve finished writing your blog, you’ll want to go back and optimize it for on-page SEO. This will help it achieve better search engine rankings. Specifically, make sure your target keyword is in the title whenever possible. Use a unique meta description to describe the page. And use appropriate H2 and H3 headers throughout to organize your content.
Now that you have the basic steps for creating a blog, here are just a few dos and don’ts that can help you get the best possible results:
Blogging is an essential part of an overall digital marketing strategy. It drives traffic to your website, generates leads for your business, and helps you convert those leads into customers. It’s a cost-effective strategy that produces measurable results for your organization.
At Connection Model, we focus on delivering results-driven digital marketing solutions for our clients. Contact us if you would like more information about how we can help you build and maintain a successful business blog.