Blogging is a great way for your business to drive organic traffic to your website, educate your readers about your products and services, build brand awareness, and position your company as a trusted source for valuable content in the marketplace. While the benefits of blogging are vast, you’ll need to write with intention and develop a strategy in order for them to be successful.
Focus on writing blogs with the intention of providing value to your readers. Consider content that inspires, educates, and informs your readers first and foremost. If this isn’t the primary objective of your content, then your blogs will sound too much like an advertisement and not enough like a solution to an answer the reader may be seeking.
Check out these useful tips on how to make the most out of your blog.
Begin by Setting Yourself up for Success
Before you start your blog, it’s best to determine what you’ll be writing about, who you are writing for, and why you’re writing it in the first place. This information will help you create your target persona, the ideal reader that will benefit from your content.
Use your target persona’s pain points as topics for your blogs. For example, a nonprofit may write a blog post on how they are running programs to help underprivileged children in their community to acquire more volunteers, donors, or to raise funds. A healthcare organization might write about what health screenings and tests obtain as you age with the goal of scheduling new and existing patient visits.
Next, you’ll want to determine the goals of your blog, such as:
- Grow your email list
- Engage existing customers
- Capture leads
- Grow your brand’s presence online
- Establish your brand’s voice as a more trusted and authoritative leader in your field
Whatever the goal, your blog should always add value to your audience first. Don’t sell or push your products and services too soon in your blog, your product and services should sell themselves if you’re writing with value in mind. The more your readers can gain from your post, the more likely they will do business with you and return to your blog when they have other questions they seek answers for.
You’re Ready to Start Blogging!
Once you’re clear on the purpose of your blog and the different topics you plan to write about, you’re ready to start blogging! Make sure you write compelling content that includes the following elements:
- Intriguing and catchy headline
- Useful subheadings
- A narrative approach that will transform your blog from sounding like a lecture or an ad, to sounding like a story.
- A powerful and engaging message that resonates with your audience
- Appealing graphics or video
- Clear call-to-action
- Relevant internal and/or external links
By including all the key elements listed above in each of your blog posts, you will produce high-quality content that will attract readers and drive engagement with your brand.
Bonus tip!
Once you’ve created a few articles, consider dropping the links of your past blogs into your new content when it makes sense to do so. This helps to show how your organization’s products and services fit into the readers’ lives by leveraging what is interesting to them.
Including a Clear Call-to-Action
Last, but not least, don’t forget to end your blogs with a clear and powerful call-to-action. This provides an opportunity for your readers to take action, and apply their newfound knowledge from your blog to their lives.
While stating your call to action, embed a link to a service, product, or promotion you provide that’s relevant to your blog and available for them to purchase. Use this opportunity as a time to capture their email and other contact information, so you can turn your readers into leads.
Blogging takes time, so be sure to put in the extra effort to develop a thoughtful strategy for your content, and use the tips we provided in this article to make your blog a success.
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