It’s 2018 and everyone should know by now that the greatest driving force behind digital marketing is quality content. Branded blogging certainly plays a major role, coupled with a loyal online community. To grow a community around your content, your marketing plan should encourage customer interaction via social media and your blog.

Billions of people across the globe access the internet every day whether for online shopping, staying updated or just to be entertained. Good quality content means people want to engage with their favourite brands and blogging is of the utmost importance. A well-written blog can bring a host of advantages to your business.

Get Blogging With Social Media

As you can imagine, there is so much content out there and you need to figure out a way to stand out. You don’t want to sound repetitive by writing the same blog post as 100 other companies. Use hashtags to do a quick search on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Pinterest. This way you will see what’s trending and possibly identify ways you can add a unique twist.

Finding unique and interesting topics on a regular basis can be challenging but there are some very handy online tools. Buzzsumo is a great place to start where even the free version tells you about the most popular topics. Other tools that can help your business include Google Trends, Portent and Answer the Public.

Remember to use the most appropriate social media channels for your business. On its own, social media is a great marketing tool for brand awareness but it needs more. Social media partnered with consistently good blog content and effective SEO is a recipe for online success. A strong social media presence helps people trust your business and keeping them engaged means you’ll stay top of mind.

Evergreen Blogging Content Is Key

Whatever format your content takes, quality is paramount. Set aside time on a regular basis to review resources that can help you plan your own blog content. Some examples include news sources or other blogs. The name ‘evergreen content’ says it all. The topics remain relevant so it’s not time sensitive and continues to drive traffic long after publishing.

Write about a topic in depth every few months but remember that blogging does have length limitations. If you have too much content for a blog post, consider a blog series, whitepapers, guides or even an ebook.

Become An Expert In Your Field

Blogging gives your business a voice where the primary goal is to attract and nurture customers, not sell them something. Creating quality and useful content on a regular basis shows your audience that you know what you’re talking about. It’s useful to write extensively on one topic and spread it out over a few weeks or months. This type of insight gradually builds up for the readers and should win over more than a few new followers.

Immersing yourself in a specific topic results in your online reputation being one of authority and expertise. Your blog should be about your industry, your customers and their questions, problems and issues, not just about you. The idea is to answer any customer questions by providing them with the content they want. A blog essentially gives you access to a big, relevant content library to use across all your social media accounts.

Match Your Audience With Deliverability

It’s not just about knowing your target audience but also where they can be found. Digital marketing provides information to users through a number of devices meaning your content simply must be adaptive. If your customers predominantly use mobile devices, your content should be mobile-friendly.

Unless you’re blogging about aerospace engineering or nuclear fusion, use words that are easy to understand. Remember to add sufficient breaks, use clear headings, sub headings and bullet points. The better your content is written and structured, the easier it is for readers to scan, understand and engage. Infographics, podcasts and ebooks have proved particularly popular.

What Not To Do When Blogging (and what to do instead)

Don’t use acronyms and jargon people won’t understand. Instead, use terms that people will be familiar with and keep sentences short, grammatically simple and easy to read.

Never focus solely on your products or services. Provide readers with useful information that they can use, like new digital marketing trends or new a new mobile app. Blog articles should be interesting, informative and not overly sales orientated.

Delay posts and updates at your own peril. Although your readers want new content regularly, it’s also about search engines. They crawl sites looking for new and updated content so blogging regularly ensures fresh content which could result in better rankings.

Never use other people’s content without crediting them. Most people don’t mind if you refer to or re-post some of their content as long as you credit the writer. Where possible, create a link to the original article as sometimes they will start referring readers to your posts and articles.

Final Thoughts

Blog content needs to be clear, relevant to your audience and updated regularly to give readers a reason to return. Engage with your readers as much as possible. Use a good spam filter and moderate if necessary but encourage comments, views and opinions. Don’t forget to respond to questions or comments as soon as possible. Never leave your readers waiting for an answer.

Include links in your posts that take readers back to other important pages on your website. This can greatly help increase your search engine rankings. Although you can’t optimise for every long tail search term, you can target unique keywords or phrases. Best practice is to feature each one as early in your blog post as possible.

If you already have a business blog, please share your ideas with our readers in the comments section below. Tell us how you use your blog and what type of content works best for you?

Give us a call on 01453 542761 or get in touch through our website if you need help getting your business blog started.

 

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