Entries Tagged 'blogging for business' ↓

Blogging has long been known as an effective promotional tool for businesses.

Not only do they allow you to add numerous pages of great content to attract readers, they are also an excellent source of links and potential link bait.

Through your articles you can offer advice, build your repuation as an expert in your field and develop online relationships with your readers who, potentially, may become customers of the future.

On this blog I have looked at the art of blogging from many different angles including articles on:

Get Your Blogging Noticed

Can You Be a Great Blogger?

How To Become a Blogging Expert

The Holy Grail of Blogging

Better Blogging

I was interested to come across a really useful pots in socialmediaexaminer.com called 26 Ways to Enhance Your Blog Content.

The article runs through their 26 top tips related to the craft of blog writing and a number of critical factors that will help to ensure the production of high-quality posts. After all it’s only through the constant generation of interesting, well-written articles that you’ll attract a regular audience for your blog.

Grab a coffee and have a read and see how you can improve your blog content.

The one great thing about internet marketing is that it offers numerous channels through which you can interact with customers and prospective customers.

Never before have you, your brand and your company been so exposed which is why how you present yourself online is so important.

The advent of social media means there are more ways to communicate than ever before. Once upon a time if someone wanted to speak to you, they had to pick up the phone. But now they can send a tweet, post on Facebook, comment on your blog or use one of the many internet forums.

There are many ways you can enhance your online reputation, but here are three simple steps you can take to make sure your company is always seen in a good light.

1. Thank you

‘Thank you’ simple but powerful.  When someone retweets you, comments on your blog or sends a new referral your way, make sure you thank them. It doesn’t take a lot of effort and will show you as someone genuine; someone they’d want to do business with.

It also pays to keep an eye on the web in general to see what people are saying about you. I use socialmention.com to keep track of what people are saying about me or my business. The alerts are simple to set up and can offer a great insight into how you are perceived as a brand online.

Again, should you receive any positive feedback or mentions, remember to make contact and say thank you.

2. Blog

Running a blog is a great way to add value to your business relationships. Through your posts you can provide information and tips to make your customers’ lives easier.

But however well written your blogs are if they are not covering topics people want to read about they will be ignored. For example if you are a holiday company don’t write about your special offers, instead write about the countries you go to, their cultures, their sights, their people – something that will inspire your reader to take a trip there to experience it for themselves.

As a freelance copywriter I use this blog to talk not only about copywriting but also about general marketing issues, social media, email marketing etc.; all topics that business owners find useful.

3. Benefits

Whenever writing about your products you must write about their benefits to your customers, but never lose sight of the fact that most people will buy from you because of who you are.

From my own experience, I will only buy from someone if I like them as a person. Why should I give someone my hard earned cash if they come across as arrogant or disinterested?

People will always buy from people so make sure you use your online marketing to connect with them. If your message resonates with them they are more likely to trust you; and with trust comes cash.

When wrapped up in marketing your business it can be easy to lose sight of what really matters – your customers. You’re so busy trying to come up with new blog ideas you forget that your customers still want that personal touch. Just because they can’t see you or shake your hand doesn’t mean they want to deal with a faceless company.

Go that step further and show your human side online.

If you want to join the army of business bloggers out there, you probably have a very pressing question on your mind:

“How do I get started?”

There are a number of things you have to think about before diving in.

For starters, why do you want to blog? If your answer is because everyone else is doing it, forget it.

If you are going to blog you must have a reason for doing so – to position yourself as an expert, to improve your customers’ experience, to help build links etc.

Socialmediaexaminer.com offers a great post outlining The 5 Pillars of Business Blogging Success. It shows that successful blogging is a lot more than just throwing random posts out into cyber space.

You must:

• Plan – why are you doing it? What do you want to get from it? Make sure you pay attention to your keywords. Have you defined your target audience?

• Have great content – your posts should be interesting. The language you use should be accessible to all. Pay attention to your headings. Don’t be overly self-promotional.

• Design – a great blog is more than just content. Think about how it looks, the functions it will have and what tools you’ll use to spread the word.

• Marketing – oh yes, you’ll have to market it if you want it to be successful.

• Engage – if you don’t engage with your audience, they won’t read.

There’s a lot to think about, isn’t there? Why not grab a coffee and have a read, it will help you decide whether you should be blogging or not. And if the answer is ‘yes’, how to get started

As an internet marketer you are spending hour upon hour producing content to promote your business and help build links.

You have a list of topics as long as your arm and every spare minute you have is spent producing blog posts, articles and website copy.

Your dedication is admirable.

Once you’ve uploaded your fantastic value-laden information and hit publish…

…absolutely nothing happens.

No tweets (not even a re-tweet), no comments, no nothing.

Immediately you think “Argh! My writing must really suck.”

But before you enrol in a writing class, just stop and think for a moment. Your writing style is probably perfectly fine, but what about the structure?

You may look at your work and think how proud your old English Teacher would be—stop right there. That’s your problem. When writing for the web and an online audience, you can forget just about everything learnt during your school days.

You need to spend less time writing and more time thinking about how you structure your work.

Writing for an online audience

There is a peculiarity about writing for the web—most people will only scan a web page rather than read every word.

That’s because they are searching for information and if they can’t find it quickly, they’ll move on to another website.

So the trick is engaging your readers and getting them to stay with you until the bitter end.

How do you do that?

1. Snappy

Your writing should be relatively short (long enough to cover your subject). So if you’re writing about a very complex issue it may be worth breaking it down into several posts. Not only will that make it much easier for your reader to follow, it will also encourage them to return to your site for your subsequent posts.

Also when you’re writing start with your conclusion—sounds odd, but by doing that you are immediately giving your readers what they want.  Once you’ve done that, follow up with supporting evidence point by point.

2. White space

Does your finished article, blog post or web copy look like a page from a novel?

If your text is in one long, or several long paragraphs it won’t look very inviting.

Lighten it by increasing the amount of white space on your page. Break it down into small paragraphs (no more than 3 or 4 sentences each).

Or go really mad and use a single sentence paragraph.

3. Sub headings

While you’re following step 2, insert some informative sub headings between your paragraphs. This will help your reader get the gist of your post while they are scanning the page.

4. Bullets

• Using bullet points creates interest
• Highlights important points
• Are instantly scan-able
• Draw the reader’s eye as they break up the rest of the text

5. Links

Don’t only use your post to generate links to your own website. If you have researched your content well you’ll probably have an external source to link to. This will show your reader that your information is well considered (and it may also generate a link from your source too).

6. Bold

Use the bold function to pick out important concepts within your post. These, coupled with the sub headings, should help your reader fully understand the topic you are covering and whether it will be of interest to them.

But don’t go mad—you don’t want to confuse your reader.

7. Numbers

Some people have said that the days of the numbered posts—such as “8 Top Tips to Improve Your Copywriting” are gone. But reader’s still love them.

They help to grab attention and, once reading, retain your reader because they’ll want to make sure they learn everything.

8. Check and check again

Before hitting the publish button, read through your work and make sure it makes sense. Do the headings and bolded words make sense and convey the overall concept of your work?

Of course this read-through should also pick up any typos and other errors.

So there you have it—writing informative posts is one thing, but if you want people to read them they must be presented in a way that:

• Gets your concept over immediately
• Looks attractive and readable
• Gets to the point

If you use WordPress as your blogging platform you probably are already familiar with the All In One SEO Pack Plugin.

It’s a handy little tool to help you boost your blog posts’ SEO capabilities.

The only problem with it is that, although you may have already downloaded it into your blog, you probably haven’t really got to grips with using it.

It’s a bit like paying for yoru gym membership but never going – you’re not going to get fit. If you have it but don’t use it, your posts and blog may not be optimised to their maximum potential.

To help you out I found this post on seohosting.com which looks at What you can do with the all in one SEO pack plugin for WordPress?

It’s well worth a read and could help you blog better and smarter.