If you are struggling to attract and retain readers to your blog, the problem could be easily fixable. Check out these five quick tips, and if you’re not already using them on your blog, time to start!
1. Provide relevant information
The number one rule when creating content for marketing purposes is to write and distribute relevant, useful information your readers want.
If you don’t know what your readers might be interested in reading, worry not. It’s actually very easy to find out what information your readers are hungry for: You can either ask them by creating a quick survey, or do a little online research. Take a look around Quora and LinkedIn Answers to see what questions are being asked, or use Google and Twitter to learn what topics are hot.
2. “You,” not “I”
Another content rule that is frequently broken is the emphasis on you and not your audience. While it is oh-so-tempting to write about yourself, resist the urge. In all honesty, we don’t care about you, we only care about ourselves. Frame your blog posts so the emphasis is on your audience and their experience.
Now, there is a slight exception to this rule. It is perfectly OK to use yourself or your company as an example in a blog post. Say you are writing about cloud computing and are comparing several different backup solutions. Your experience using those different solutions is really helpful to your audience, as you will be providing them a service with your critiques and recommendations.
3. Solve problems
Any marketing content you create should also address a problem your reader is having, from trying to figure out how to choose a florist for their wedding to creating the most attention-grabbing Facebook landing page possible. What it really comes down to is education: the more educational your blog content, the better.
4. Stick to one idea per post
This tip is really more common sense than anything else. If you write about multiple topics in one post, chances are no one will read it all the way through. That’s due to the simple fact that you cannot possibly cover each topic thoroughly without making the post super long. If it’s too long, readers will bail on you (or at least your blog post). If no one finishes reading it, no one will share it, either, which isn’t good.
5. Style counts
With blog posts, both your writing and visual styles count for a lot.
For your writing style, focus on short paragraphs, one-sentence paragraphs, bulleted items and mini-headlines—all of these elements make the post quicker to read or skim. Speaking of quick-to-read, leave out the SAT words and complicated sentences—you want to make your audience’s reading experience as pain-free as possible.
Visually, your blog posts should include a great graphic and have a neat and clean layout—lots of white space makes it easier to focus on the words. Too much stuff in the sidebar(s), from ads to blog plug-ins, can be distracting.
Image by Flickr user m kasahara (Creative Commons)
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Tags: blog writing, blogs, content, Marketing, small business
Posted in Marketing, Small Business | 1 Comment »
