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When I first started blogging professionally, it was just starting to shift from novelty to necessity. Today, blogging for your business is 100% a necessity--it helps you develop a stronger relationship with your customers, positions you as an expert in your field, provides more opportunities for your business to populate in a search, and can showcase your unique point of view as a brand.
I have many clients who love to write, but don't realize that the way they organize the content on the page can have implications for how successful it will ultimately be. I also have many clients who think that blogging for their business will be easy, but as soon as they try to manage the process themselves, they realize how much it takes to create truly effective content.
Tips For Creating Better Blog Content
Use these simple tips below can not only optimize your post for SEO purposes, but they can also help you create a more user-friendly experience for visitors to your page.
Make It Skim-able
People are busy. They have access to the world at their fingertips, which means that your content is competing with a lot of others to win over their attention. If they show up to a page filled with words and nothing else, they'll feel overwhelmed and leave your page. In order to make it easier for them to decide whether or not your content is worth reading in the first 30 seconds of arriving on your page, organize your content in a way that makes sense and allows a reader to visually skim the page and get the basic gist of what your article is about.
By breaking up blog content into identifiable sections, you not only make it more skim-able--which is ideal in our oversaturated digital age--but also help boost SEO efforts. You can do this by creating well-worded H2 title tags (headlines) for each section, ideally that include a keyword phrase that you are hoping to rank for. Yoast, the SEO plugin for Wordpress, explains it like this: "Use them to add structure and signposts to your content, and to describe what each section is about. If your headings let users know what your article is about, they’ll help Google to understand, too."
Make It Fun
Not everyone sells a sexy product, but that doesn't mean that their content has to be boring. There are ways to get creative when it comes to dry content topics, like crafting a brand voice that is funny, sarcastic, educational, or hip. Your brand voice is essentially the personality that your brand takes on in the way it communicates with the outside world. Think about what it is exactly that you want to convey
You can also get more visually creative with your content, like incorporating images, infographics, and video in the body of your post. Playing with other mediums aside from the written word, can keep an audience on their toes and help create a little more excitement around an otherwise flat topic or product.
Make It Consistent
Creating a strong brand voice is essential to any successful business, but the key to great content is to be consistent with that voice throughout everything you do, on every platform. Striking the right tone with the right audience is beyond valuable when it comes to building a blog following. If you are constantly changing your tone between platforms and mediums, it can be confusing for customers and potential customers.
For example, if you are dry and serious on your website, but snarky and sarcastic on your Twitter feed, it creates a bit of a disconnect for anyone who engages with your brand in both places. The goal is to really stay true to your core beliefs as a business and ensure that is executed across all of your content.
Know When To Hire A Content Expert
Even with these tips in mind, creating consistent, high-quality content can be a challenge for many businesses, big or small. Instead of giving up on the concept of having a blog for your business, consider bringing in a content expert to help you with both strategy and execution. Through Hilary Young Creative, I have helped many businesses gain clarity about their business blog and successfully leverage their content to grow their business.
Contact me today for a free 30-minute discovery call about your business' content needs. I'd love to work with you!