This is our compacted guide to running a good blog. Good that is, that generates traffic and leads.
So, here are our top tips…
Know your audience
Knowing your target audience means you will be able to:
- Tailor your articles to suit their needs and provide solutions to potential issues,
- Style your writing accordingly: informal/formal, sentence structure etc.
Content, Content, Content…
The reason a reader clicks on your blog post in the first place is most likely to read and digest the content. They will be looking to improve their current situation, find out something they don’t know or, perhaps they’re after a particular solution to a problem.
Be as helpful and as clear as possible. If you say in the title "How to improve your XYZ" – make sure you cover that and don’t get side tracked too much.
Don’t just expect that people know industry specific words or acronyms. Spell them out and explain where applicable.
Use short sentences. They work.
Also, check for errors in spelling and grammar, yes mistakes happen from time to time but they do have a negative impact on your company’s image.
Ease of reading
Use lists where you can. You want to make it as easy for your readers to digest and understand your writing as possible.
Use headings to break up body text. Most people are put off by large paragraphs of text and Google also prefers when body text is broken up with headings.
Ease of use
Consider these questions:
- Is your blog easy to navigate through?
- Is it easy on the eye?
- Once a reader has finished an article, can they move on to other helpful information easily?
- Are your blog posts mobile friendly? – 60% of your traffic will likely be via a mobile or tablet.
These are questions to that contribute to user experience of your blog and will impact the bounce rate and the time on your page & website.
You may need to consult with a web designer on this.
Pictures say a thousand words
For each post, make sure you set a good featured image at the top (before the text) that reflects the article.
This will immediately give the reader a rough idea of what the article is about.
And, if you have long articles, try and break up the text with images.
If you are unsure whether a blog will be good for your business read our previous article here.
If you need help setting up a blog, get in touch!
