There’s no escaping it — your brand needs a blog. Today’s consumers are a picky bunch, and content marketing is one of the best ways to build their trust via information and personal connection.
But you can’t just snag a domain name, bang out a couple of articles a month and call it good. Imagine how many blogs your customers are reading every day. It’s not enough just to have the blog and post on it every now and again. Your blog needs to make a deep impression so that it doesn’t become virtual white noise to your readers. Here’s how to really make an impact with your blog, without letting it consume all your time.
1. Presentation Is Everything
Useful, well-written information keeps people reading your blog, but the initial draw-in comes purely from its looks. You could have incredible content, but if you’re not engaging your readers with graphics and good visual presentation, you won’t see anyone sticking around long enough to read it!
Use a sleek, compelling theme for the overall design of your blog, and customize it with unique traits that express your brand — your logo, a gripping color scheme, anything that helps tell people what you’re all about.
Don’t forget to include graphics in each of your blog posts to give some additional kick and help your audience retain what they’ve read. Creating your own graphics sounds like a daunting task to many, but Easil gives you various professional templates so you can create your own graphics with striking designs, text and photos. In a matter of minutes, you’ll have the perfect visual to go with your post, and you don’t have to have any expertise to do it.
2. Stock Your Blog With Top-Notch Content
Once you’ve gotten people through the doorway of your blog with the presentation, it’s time to keep them reading with high-quality content. If you’re not an experienced writer, that’s OK. You can either find someone in your business who is, or contract your writing out to freelancers or an agency. Whichever you choose, you want to publish your content consistently, at least three times a week in order to gain maximum reach.
Be sure you’re covering a wide range of topics in your blog to gain a diverse readership. Don’t just write about your products: Write about your company background, who you are as a brand and a variety of related industry info. Be wary of an overly sales-oriented writing style. You want to inform and build trust and let this naturally spill over into the sales realm.
3. Use SEO to Your Advantage
We don’t want to get all jargon-y on you, but search engine optimization is an absolute must for every company blog. Good SEO helps you rank higher in search results, so you get more opportunities for people to discover you. Pretty important stuff!
The basics of SEO involve incorporating keywords that are commonly used in internet searches into each post and ensuring that there are outbound and inbound links in your posts to increase your credibility. But you can’t be a cheater and just cram in keywords and unrelated links — that will backfire on you because you’ll be penalized with a drop in ranking! Add your keywords into your writing as organically as possible, and only include quality links to reliable sources. You can even optimize via your images by including keywords in your tags or even in the names of the image files themselves.
4. Personally Engage Your Readers
Don’t let comments pass you by unnoticed — use them as an opportunity to connect with your readers! Respond to comments to let people know you value their feedback and insight. This is another trust-building exercise — your audience gets to know you better and feels more personally connected to your brand.
You can also use your blog as a networking device. Find other brands that share your values and connect with them: Share or re-blog their posts, comment on their articles, or link to them in your own posts. Having allies in the competitive world of content marketing is a huge advantage. When you give other brands exposure, they will reciprocate and help you rack up new readers. This also helps you expand to markets that you may not have reached otherwise.
5. Craft Your Unique Voice
Now that the basic practical concerns are out of the way, get creative! Hone your brand voice so that readers know it’s you as soon as they scan your post. Are you about fun and freedom? Express this with a casual, lighthearted vocabulary and topic range. Is your brand characterized as stylish and classy? A more formal tone with vivid language may suit you better. No matter what your tone, keep it consistent to avoid confusing your readers or sending mixed messages.
Your graphics play a big supporting role in your brand voice. Customize your images so that they become a visual outcropping of your tone, keeping each element (color, fonts, imagery, etc.) in line with your overarching messages and themes.
Get Blogging!
Blogging requires heavy maintenance to give you the impact you’re looking for, but take it in bites and you’ll be a pro in no time. These tips will help you break down the process in a manageable way so that publishing amazing content becomes easy, rewarding and fun.