A blog for your business & brand is a great way to speak to your target audience. There are several ways to write a blog post and we have some tips on how to write posts that say quality and get your users engaged.
Understand the Audience
To speak to your audience you need to know who your audience is. A good way to get started figuring out who your audience is requires asking questions. By asking quality questions about your ideal customer you can start to establish who they are with your responses.
For instance, you could ask who is looking for my type of business? For a pressure washing business, you would answer a property owner that needs to clean their driveways. You can establish that a homeowner would be included in your target audience.
Establishing your audience can be done in multiple ways, starting audience to content, or content to audience.
Content to Audience
You can start creating content that fits your brand and message. When you create content that fits your niche you should observe and see what kind of audience you are attracting. Who reads your content and enjoys it & finds value in it?
This is where you can pinpoint who your audience is and better adjust your content to keep that audience engaged or create whole new content to speak to a totally different audience.
Audience to Content
If you know who your audience is, then you need to find out what that audience is looking for. This involves doing research to see what other topics or content ideas you can touch on that will attract your target market & audience.
This is a great way to capitalize on your existing audience to keep them more engaged and have them explore your site for other content they’ll find interesting.
Organize your Post Information
A blog post can have great content & information, but that won’t matter if it’s not easy to read and digest. Keeping your blog post will not only help your reader understand and read your post, it’s also great for SEO (we’ll touch on this later).
Your blog post should be in an outline format, with headings and subheadings. You can also organize information in sections, lists, numbers; whatever works best to present your content.
This can also help in writing your post at the start, organizing main ideas and topics into headings can help you create and gather the information for each heading.
Create a User Friendly Blog Site Layout
Blog pages should be easy to navigate and understand. Your posts should not mix with each other, being kept separate as to not confuse the information. If you plan to use categories it may help to include a menu to help your users sort through the categories to find what applies best to them.
Having blog posts split into sections can also keep the searching user from being intimidated by all the information. They can navigate the sections to see what best pertains to them. A search feature would also benefit a searching user to find information that best fits their needs. On each blog post you should include a “back to blog” option, & other blog posts link, this helps users navigate to find new posts keeping them engaged and on your site.
An easy to use blog layout helps new & existing users find more information and keep searching your site.
Use Content Snippets & Images
Images & visuals can be a great addition to any blog post. Make sure they add value to the post and make sense to the content. Adding captions or headings is a great way to let the reader know what that image is entailing. Images also act as an engagement feature giving the user something other text to look at and review.
Text is also something that can be used to gather attention like content snippets. These could be placed at the beginning of a post, to give the user an idea of the content that is to come. It should also be added to the main blog page, since it provides the users with a sneak peak on what that blog post is about.
These small additions can mean a lot for users that are new to the page, or users that are looking for specific information, helping them sort through your posts.
Optimize for SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for any website and your blog post & page is no exception. Blog posts should be as most SEO optimized as possible since it can have more keywords and information than any other page on your site.
You’ll need to include the following to make sure your blog page and blog post are optimized to the fullest.
Meta Title
The post title is usually automatically used by search engines when looking for keywords a user is searching for. With certain tweaking you can have the real title and Meta Title vary, but the best practice is to have your real title include keywords you want your users to find your post by.
Make sure to keep your title short and sweet (no more than 65 characters), and inform your reader what the post is about.
Meta Description
Search engines use this as the information to inform readers of the link when it appears on their search results. You want this to not be too long or short (150-160 characters) to inform readers with enough info & not be cut off by google.
Correct Headings
A little more technical, headings are used by Search Engines to best understand what your post is about and which search users should find your post. They can vary from H1 (Heading Type 1) to H6 (Heading Type 6).
Search engines look at these headings to see what your post is about, and based on the Heading type rank see the variances of the keywords in each title. Having only H1 Tags can make your post seem like it’s about a lot of different things. Using different levels of headings can show the search engine that a post is about one main topic, then broken into smaller subtopics and so on.
Search engines appreciate this since they can better understand the content and can better match search users to correct information, this is great for the user and your post to find qualified interested viewers.
Mobile Optimized
Search is done heavily on mobile devices, so search engines look at mobile optimization as a metric to determine what to show search users in their results. Make sure that your post & blog page are optimized for any device so you can see your post on search engines regardless of device.
Post and Review
Review your post and make sure it’s ready to go live. Look for any grammatical errors, extra wording, or typos. A good review can also improve your post, finding better ways to display your content or adding new things to better inform the reader.
Then the most important thing to remember about a blog post is that you need to make sure it’s published and live! Nobody can view your post if it sits in your drafts, so make sure to post it.
When you post content you get the benefit of being able to see how your traffic views the post, from there you can better understand your audience to create more content that speaks to them.
Include a Share Option
A finished & published post is great, when your users can enjoy the information and learn about your industry, business, or message. And with your great blog posts, you most likely want more eyes on it, so make sure to include a way to have your viewer share your post.
Too many blog pages or posts do not include a sharing feature, greatly reducing the possibility for a satisfied reader of sharing your post to other readers (that would also enjoy your content).
Writing a blog post can be a lot taken all these steps into considerations, but it’s so worth it. Informing your reader about your business, brand, and industry can set you up for success in the long run.
- Being a recognized leader in your industry
- Educating & informing your target audience about your business
- Having more content for SEO purposes
- More content for potential customers & leads to sift through
- And much more depending on your blog purpose
Getting started is the first step, because content is better than no content. If you’re interested in seeing how your business can get started or see some serious upgrades, get in touch with a VV project manager to help you.
