Entries Tagged 'blog' ↓

Are you fed up hearing about the wonders of blogging?

Yes, we all know that it boosts your credibility, visibility and drives traffic to your website, but it’s such hard work constantly coming up with new ideas.

And sometimes it feels as though you’re writing for an empty room because no one shares or comments on your posts.

So what’s the point?

The point is the credibility, visibility and traffic thing mentioned earlier. And if you find you’re not getting any shares or comments it says more about your blog posts than your lack of audience.

Every post you write has to be aimed at your readers and that means writing stuff they want to read about, which probably isn’t going to be what a God awful journey into work you had.

So before you start typing, think carefully about what you’re writing and ask yourself these questions:

1. Does it target my audience?

Every blogger has a niche; their area of expertise. Because every blogger is an expert in their field people are drawn to them to learn and get tips. So is the blog you’re writing related to that niche? Is it answering the questions your audience is asking?

2. Credibility

If you’re using statistics, facts and figures in your post, are you sure they’re right? There’s nothing worse than using incorrect information because some bright spark will notice and shout it from the rooftops, damaging your reputation.

Always check and double check before using them.

3. Is it unique?

Obviously your content will be (won’t it?), but I’m thinking more about the way you write. Even if you have a favourite blogger, the worse thing you can do is try to emulate them.

Your audience want something different, they want to get to know you and that means developing your own style, writing personality and voice. That way your work will stand out and be instantly recognisable.

4. Useful?

Is it, really?

Think carefully about what you’re writing – is it worth reading? Will it add value to your audience? If they find it useful they’ll share it, but if it’s a load of pointless ramblings they may well look elsewhere for the information they need.

5. Simple

When writing your blog (or anything for that matter), always keep your language and sentence structure simple. People don’t want to be faced with complex words and dense swathes of text; they want something that’s quick and easy to read and that’s useful.

6. Shareability

This one really is a combination of everything that I’ve mentioned so far. If you tick all the boxes from 1 – 5 your content will be shared, widening your audience.

7. Your goals?

Although you are primarily writing for your audience, your blogs also have to achieve your own goals.

Whether that’s to drive traffic to your website, build links, promote your name and business etc.

So next time you write a blog post, bear these points in mind and make sure both you and your audience get something out of it.

Author: Sally Ormond, Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd and blogger.

In today’s search driven world it’s a given that you should be blogging.

After all, Google has an insatiable appetite for fresh, quality content so if you want to keep in its good books you have to give it what it wants.

But blogging just for you isn’t going to cut it. Even if you blog religiously you need to widen your reach to be a success and that means guest blogging.

By persuading other bloggers to take your posts you’ll increase your web presence and reinforce your status as an expert in your field. This is especially true if you approach websites that are prominent in your particular industry.

I know what you’re thinking, guest blogging is hard work – that’s true, but if done well it will pay dividends in more ways than you can imagine.

Expose yourself

Please don’t take that literally.

Writing for other people will widen your reach as an expert, as with anything, the more often you’re seen the better. It’s just like adverts – consumers have to be exposed to a brand several times before they are ready to buy. So the more people who see your name (and in the more places it’s seen) the better. It will become lodged in their brain, so when they need your particular service they’ll call you.

Web cred

This is street cred for online marketers.

The chances of you being accepted by a big hitter in your field immediately are slim, so start off with some smaller sites to build a portfolio of guest posts. Then you can approach the big players.

Let’s face it, the bigger the website the more credibility you’ll get.

Incoming!

The beauty of guest blogging, other than getting your name plastered all over the web, is that it will generate valuable inbound links to your website.

Now, admittedly, not all websites will allow you to place self-serving links in the body of your article, but they usually allow an author’s bio that can contain a link back to your website.

Of course the bigger the fish you land, the more kudos the link will give.

Social media

How will guest blogging widen your social media audience?

Simple, just about every blog out there offers social sharing buttons. So when your article is read and loved (as it obviously will) the reader will probably share it through social media. It will then be seen by others, generating more Google+ and Twitter followers for you.

So as you can see, guest blogging isn’t just about getting links. It’s about gaining the right kind of exposure online and in the social world.

It takes a lot of time, but the rewards speak for themselves.

Author:

Sally Ormond is an international copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd

This is a guest post written by Jenn Greenleaf. The views expressed in this post are entirely the author’s own and may not reflect those of Freelance Copywriter’s Blog. If you are interested in submitting a guest post, please get in touch with your ideas

To some, building an audience is second nature. It seems like no matter what these business owners say or do online, they have a genuine following. How does this happen, you wonder? Before getting into that, let’s talk about why they are so

engaged with their audience. The main reason is business. There’s a secret I’m going to let you in on when it comes to building an audience – your business will grow proportionally in size. Here are some tips about how to build an audience.

Keep your blog updated frequently
(source:www.sxc.hu/photo/1165446)

Deliver Content Consistently

Avoid generalizations when writing on your website; instead write as though you were talking to them directly. Develop content that is specific to your niche, especially if you’re selling a specialized product or providing a particular service. Content can be in a variety of forms including blog posts, articles, newsletters, interviews with other experts in the field, product reviews. Visitors to your website want fresh material delivered regularly covering topics relating to their interests.

Offer Freebies

Everyone loves to get something for free, as long as it has perceived value. It’s a perfect way to gain a following for any blog or business. To maximize your benefit, make sure the recipient provides their email address so you can maintain contact. Provide mechanisms for your audience to share these freebies with their own audience on social media. It can be as simple as placing a request to share on the front cover of an e-book or employing a “pay with a tweet” deal, where the person only get the product if they tweet about it. Ebooks are an obvious candidate for free products, but there are many other possibilities including free Kindle books, White Papers, companion guides and webinars. Offer substantial value in the product and avoid using it as an opportunity to sell.

Your audience should never wonder if they are important enough to talk to
(source:www.sxc.hu/photo/948294)

Stay Engaged

Visitors are discouraged when a business owner spends little time posting quality content and rarely engages with readers. The lack of interaction makes the site feel barren and neglected. Provide an immediate and positive response for every blog comment, Facebook post, or tweet. This attention to detail builds respect and garners trust among your audience. As this trust continues to build so does your reputation and ultimately your business, because everyone like to do business with people they can trust.

The Bottom Line

Whether you use social media, search engine marketing or SEO to attract visitors, be as human as possible. Search engines don’t read your blog, people do. There is a fundamental shift occurring in the online world, away from writing for SEO to creating content for human beings. Building your audience is the best way to build a business and insulate yourself from any changes in the major search engines. Great content inspires people to share and gives your business yet more exposure.

Author: Jenn Greenleaf writes about a number of topics including gardening, parenting, and legal matters. You can find out more on reputation.com

As an online marketer you understand the need for a constant stream of content.

Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C business (i.e. whether you sell to other businesses or direct to consumers), to gain a strong foothold in the search results you must produce lots of high quality content.

The problem is, the time needed to produce that amount of content is rather hard to come by. We are all over worked and finding a few extra hours a week to write can be tough.

Of course, you can lighten the load by encouraging key staff members to produce content for you – many hands and all that – but there are also some other tricks you can use to help generate content and make the most of the stuff that’s already out there.

Recycle your content

We’re not talking about spinning articles for multiple sites, but rather taking a look at the content you have and making the most of it.

If you have a long article, why not break it down into bite-sized chunks – you may get 2 or 3 articles out of one.

Another great tip is to reuse white papers and reports. They will be full of useful information that can easily be broken down into smaller articles and re-written in a more informal style suitable for your blog or website.

Moving away from text, why not re-create the information in a more visual style such as an infographic? That way you can also make use of social sites such as Pinterest. Or you could create videos from the text for your YouTube channel. Everyone likes to take in information differently so by having it in a text, visual and video format there’s something for everyone.

Optimise

This one is more to do with making the most of your content through optimisation.

Everything you produce should be in line with your current SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy utilising one keyword/phrase per article.

It’s also a good idea to make sure that keyword also appears in the URL of your article and in the Alt tags for the images you use.

Standing out

The whole purpose of content marketing is to make it stand out and get it read. If you go for a wishy-washy format that’s pretty boring to look at, no one’s going to take the time to read it.

Make sure you use a strong headline and social sharing icons that indicate how many people have shared your material. Bulleted lists, charts and diagrams all help to add interest and, by keeping your article relatively short, you’ll encourage readers.

Call to action

These are not just for websites and sales materials.

They can be visual cues such as the social share buttons. If you want people to share your stuff or become a fan on Facebook, have markers to show how many people follow you or ‘Like’ you – they won’t want to be left out.

You can use your call to action to get people to sign up to your newsletter, go to a landing page, make a comment, in fact almost anything you can think of.

Get social

If you want people to read your stuff you’ve got to let them know it’s there. Tweet about it, link to it from Facebook, put it on your website and mention it in your newsletters.

Interact with your readers by encouraging comments and responding to them and, as already mentioned, make sure the social share buttons are present to encourage readers to share it with others.

You see, content marketing is not just about generating a constant stream of fresh material; you also need to think about what you already have that can reused in a different format.

By looking at it that way, you should be able to keep up with the demands of your marketing strategy.

Once upon a time, commenting on blogs was a great way to build links and drive traffic. Today, that’s not the case and as a result many who once were prolific commenters have written off the practice.

After all, if they’re not going to get any benefit from doing it, what’s the point?

But is that true?

Is there really no benefit to commenting on blogs? Other than the obvious knowledge gaining you get (of course, I am assuming that you actually read the blog before you comment on it), do you gain anything else?

Well in my humble opinion the answer is yes. The benefits are threefold:

• It can help you build a good relationship with other bloggers
• Well thought out and relevant comments will show others your authority in a subject
• In relation to the point above, that could potentially lead to traffic heading your way

But this will only happen if you write well-constructed comments showing that you have obviously read the original post, understood it and have something valid to say.

What you shouldn’t be doing is:

• Write something trite such as ‘Great post!’ or ‘I agree’ which are absolutely meaningless. Respond to the points raised and make sure your comment adds value
• Be controversial just because you can. I hate it when that happens; if you don’t agree, fine, but back up your opinions with relevant facts. If you just rant for the sake of it, you’ll end up discrediting yourself
• Posting rude or offensive comments is bad (do I really have to point that out?) – as your mother once said, if you have nothing nice to say keep your trap shut (I may have paraphrased that a bit)
• Posting comments that are full of links. It looks spammy and as such will be consigned to the spam bin
• Posting a comment that’s full of typos. Just as with everything else you write, read it through before you hit send

The writing, reading and commenting on blogs is essential if we are to share information and knowledge. It’s still work doing, just make sure you’re adding value with every comment.

Sally Ormond – Professional copywriter and blogger