This month we are giving you sneak peak at our pin board…read our tips on how to keep your blogs fresh and informative or how to create one from start to finish.
Irrespective of what service you are providing or what product you are selling, blogging is integral to your online content marketing strategy. Blogging will drive traffic to your website, increase your SEO and develop better customer relationships.
Your blog gives you the opportunity to provide your customers with relevant, fresh and helpful content. Use your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest to drive customers to your website by promoting your blog with relevant links and visuals on these social platforms.
“Well written articles demonstrate your company as an industry leader. By posting topics which resonate with your market and show your knowledge, you are marketing your skills for your business, service or product too”
– Krista Bunskoek, PR and Content Marketer at Wishpond
Blogging is a great way to showcase your business and an opportunity to share your knowledge. Below are some blogging tips to develop your blogs for maximum exposure.
The basics:
- The ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes or 1600 words.
- The ideal width of a paragraph is 40-55 characters.
FONT:
Consider that shorter lines appear as less work for the reader; they make it easier to focus and to jump quickly from one line to the next. Opening paragraphs with larger fonts help to draw your reader in. See the example below:
TECHNIQUES TO MAKE YOUR BLOG “SCANNABLE”
- LISTS
- FORMATTING – Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, It’s not the pictures that make your post more visually appealing, it’s the formatting and organization of the post!
- HEADINGS AND SUB HEADINGS
- PICTURES- Place them cleverly by your key points
- BORDERS or BLOCKQUOTES – boxes around quotes and key points
- GET TO THE POINT – don’t ramble on for too long about one topic
- DON’T INTRODUCE TOO MANY NEW IDEAS IN ONE POST
13 Types of Blog Posts
- Instructional – Instructional posts tell your customers how to do something…like the one you are currently reading.
- Informational – Simply give information on a topic.
- Reviews – give your review on a place you have visited or somewhere you have eaten.
- Lists – Posts with content like ‘The Top Ten ways to….’ or ’5 Reasons why….’
- Interviews – Interviews or guest posts.
- Profiles – Pick an interesting personality in your niche and do some research on them to present to your readers.
- Link Posts – The more original content the better but don’t be afraid to bounce off others in this way.
- Contrasting two options – Decisions between 2/more options. Write a post contrasting two products, services or approaches that outlines the positives and negatives of each choice.
- Inspirational – Tell a story of success or paint a picture of ‘what could be’.
- Prediction and Review Posts – Use the end & start of the New Year.
- Hypothetical Posts –a ‘what if’ post. Pick a something that ‘could’ happen down the track in your industry and begin to unpack what the implications of it would be.
- Satirical – Well written satire or parody can be incredibly powerful and is brilliant for generating links for your blog.
- Memes and Projects – write a post that somehow involves your readers and gets them to replicate it in some way. Start a poll, an award, ask your readers to submit a post or link or run a survey or quiz.
Draw the Eye to CTA’s (Calls to Action)
Ensure your readers see your CTA’s. This can be done in a number of ways including; putting a heading above them, using an image near them, making the call to action a striking image itself, using text formatting (bold, italics, capitals), using colored backgrounds and borders around the calls to action etc.
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