[Marketing Tip] Are you using these 3 things wisely to build your marketing?
September 12, 2016
Are you appealing to an “always-on” customer?
October 25, 2016
Are your blogging efforts not producing results or engagement as you expected? Are you losing motivation to keep blogging, don’t know where to start, or what to write? Hang in there, these feelings are common and there are ways to tweak your posts for better results.
In this article I am going to give you 6 actionable tips for effective blog posts – tips that will get your posts more exposure and better engagement from your readers.
What’s the Point of Blogging?
Whether you have never written a single blog post or you have written many, I’m willing to bet that this question has crossed your mind at some point…What’s the point of blogging?
I am a HUGE proponent of incorporating effective blog posts into an online marketing plan. However, before you can start getting results from your blogging efforts you need to believe in the opportunities that exist from a solid strategy. To get you thinking positively about blogging I would like to share some of the personal experiences I have had with my efforts and those of some of my most active blogging clients.
Top Reasons to Blog
Blogging can….
- Build trust and respect with your prospects and customers
- Build trust and respect with your peers and competitors
- Help your website / blog rank higher in the organic results
- Retain your current customers by providing free online resources
- Give you content that can be re-purposed many times over …all of which WILL lead to more business – if you stick with it!
6 TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE BLOG POSTS
If you’ve read this far, then you obviously understand the benefits of effective blogging. To keep you motivated – and to help you start seeing results from your blog – I would like to share some actionable tips for effective blog posts. All of the tips listed below are ones that have made up some of the elements of my most effective blog posts – posts that have also helped to build my business.
Top Tips for Effective Blog Posts
1. Use a Great Title
The title of your blog post plays an unbelievably crucial role in its effectiveness. People love to scan titles – whether on Twitter, in search results or via their RSS reader – to select which articles they want to take time to read. If your title is too long, too vague or not something that people would search for, then the chance of it being seen or read diminishes tremendously.
TIP: Treat your blog title like your title tag – include a primary key phrase and something actionable to increase click through rates.
2. Start with a Simple Introduction
If your title is the hook that initially grabs your readers, then your introduction is that first crank on the reel that starts to draw them in. A short, but well-written introduction can mean the difference between someone bouncing from your article within seconds of landing on it. Keep your introduction short, sweet and simple.
TIP: Treat your blog’s introduction like your meta description – work in your primary key phrase(s) and something actionable to encourage readers to continue reading.
3. Provide Useful Content
The title and the introduction are essential to bring readers in, but the body of your article will determine whether or not your blog will actually deliver any results. If you cannot deliver content that provides solutions, useful information or creative angles on existing information, then your blog post will probably not be shared or commented on.
TIP: Use images, videos, block quotes, charts and infographics to break up monotonous bodies of text and give readers multiple pieces of your content to share and comment on.
4. Optimize it for Visibility
Great content usually needs very little help to be seen and ranked by the search engines. However, with on-page optimization being so simple, there’s no reason why you can’t take a few minutes to improve your post to help search engines properly index and rank your article.
TIP: Use alt and title tags on all images, use header tags for all headlines and sub-headlines, and use internal links (to promote other posts and pages of yours) and external links (to support your information).
5. Make it Easy to Read
Even the best information will get missed if you do not make it easy for your readers to consume. Well-formatted posts will allow your readers to make it through your entire article and not miss those little gems that you almost buried in blocks of text.
TIP: Use bullets, sub-headings, bold and italic text and line breaks or rules to create a good reading experience for your visitors.
6. End with a Strong Conclusion
Most poorly written blogs fail to properly conclude articles, which leaves the reader with little enticement to engage with it. Ending an article with a recap of the main takeaways will encourage the reader to save, share or comment on the article.
TIP: Use a call to action at the end of every post to increase engagement – especially if you’re looking to get more comments, shares or inquiries from your posts.
BONUS TIPS
These may be common sense to many of you, but you’d be surprised by how many bloggers forget these little, but effective elements…
- Make it easy for readers to save and share your posts with social media action buttons (at the beginning and/or end of each post).
- Allow readers to leave comments easily with a commenting feature.
Blog Your Way to More Business
There you have it….6 tips to effective blog posts. You don’t need to be an SEO expert, a web developer or a best-selling author (although these things never hurt) to start getting results from your blogging efforts.
Post consistently (2-3 times a week), implement the 6 tips provided above and talk passionately about your business and you WILL see results.
If you’re a slow starter, have hit a road block or just need some help jump starting your blogging efforts, consider The Social Voice Box [PLUS], we will take all this off your plate and do the work for you!
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Let The Social Voice Box take care of your blogging and social media marketing.
At Sandy Hibbard Creative, we offer blogging and social media marketing programs that will help drive traffic, create awareness, and garner more leads for your business. The Social Voice Box program and the Social Voice Box [PLUS] programs work together to create compelling content for your blog and publish it to the web to your social media outlets.
About Sandy Hibbard Creative
Sandy Hibbard Creative, Inc. is a strategic branding and design studio that will be YOUR “Social Voice Box”. Using creative design along with laser focused digital, social and content marketing, Sandy and her team will work to develop your online voice – garnering preference and selection of your business services. We bring great ideas to life and deliver them to the market to get you the results you want.
What We Do:
- Planning
- Creative Design
- Implementation
- Social Voice Box
- Blogging
- Web Design
- Content Creation
