Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader and draw more targeted audience to your website. In addition, you can use your blog material to share on your social media accounts, to popularize your products and services, and to discuss the latest market trends and new topics. If you find it easier to speak than write, you can record your thoughts and get it transcribed with the support of an audio transcription service. Blogs play a crucial role in any business to keep customers informed about any development related to the organization. However, writing a blog can be challenging. Even bloggers who have great topic ideas can head off in the wrong direction. So what should you take into account to make sure that you are creating an informative and valuable blog?
- Understand your audience: This is very important because there is no point writing something that your audience cannot vibe with. When deciding on a topic for your blog post, give serious thought to the kind of personas you are targeting and their interests. Say you are writing for seniors launching a business after their retirement, then you must provide them with information about social media that is very important for business activities now. On the other hand, if you are addressing the millennial generation you don’t have to write about the basics of social media. In their case, you may have to provide information as to how to adapt their approach to social media and why a more business-like, networking focused approach is required.
- Brain storm everyday: Generate new ideas everyday and manipulate them to produce valuable content. You can create mind maps to connect apparently unrelated things and create engaging content from it. When your topic is a highly relevant one, it ensures that you are providing valuable information for your readers. LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers and Quora can help answer any questions you may have and give you ideas regarding many relevant topics. Identify trending topics and influencers within your industry. BuzzSumo, Google Trends, Epicbeat, Moz Content and Trendsmap are excellent tools to find good topics and influencer information.
- Ensure a compelling title and introduction: This will make your readers want to read the blog. Studies show that while 80% of people will read the headline copy, only 20% will read the rest of the content, according to James Scherer, Wishpond contributor. This makes the titles very important with regard to the success of your blog. You may assign a title when you start writing your blog, but often your initial ideas may develop into a more interesting topic. So, spend enough time on reworking your title after completing the blog, making it more creative and appealing. Your title should perfectly justify your content.
- Make your posts informative and useful: When you provide informative and useful content, you will receive a steady flow of visitors. So, before writing the blog ask yourself whether the topic is useful and informative; and whether the reader would find value in it.
- The write up should reflect your personality: The writing should sound like your own voice, this helps to draw more readers. Use of descriptive words, phrases and graphics makes your blog more entertaining to read.
- Write to the point: Do not spend five to seven paragraphs slowly building up your article. This could dampen the interest of readers. Use a maximum of two or three paragraphs to set the scene before getting on to the main topic of the article.
- Do not use technical or highly professional language: Blogs aren’t the place to show off your extended vocabulary skills, this will alienate readers. Blog posts should be conversational, clear, readable and effective. So avoid jargon or any technical or academic language if you are addressing ordinary customers looking for some information.
- Create an outline: Have a framework on which you can build your content. This will help you to write with more clarity and be more focused.
- Remove unnecessary words and keep your blog simple: Complex and long-drawn out sentences can be the worst thing in your blog. Do not stuff your blog with unnecessary words; keep it simple through proper editing.
- Use sub-headings: Using sub-headings in your blog helps to break it down into several parts. It also allows you to break your ideas into small sizes and makes the writing process easier. This makes reading also easier.
- Write FAQ blogs: Many users need quick answers to their questions and may not read the entire content. So by writing a blog in FAQ pattern will help such readers to stick to the blog for a longer time. For example, Quora is a site where the posts are in question-answer model, and take inspiration from it to write straightforward answers to the questions popularly asked by the netizen community.
- Listicles are a good idea: Writing a blog in the form of bullet points helps users understand the content quickly. Such types of blogs are called listicles. A user will scroll down till the bottom if they find the content has images, headings and bullet points. This will also increase the time users spend on-page, which is important to improve Google ranking.
- Leverage video for content: Along with content, images and infographics you can include video content also. YouTube has 1.5 billion users now who log in every month to watch content. This shows that website users are interested in viewing videos. It is the fastest way to consume content and is less tiring compared to reading a long post. A video at the end of the blog will outperform the overall content.
- Create an editorial calendar for consistency: Regular posting is important for growing your blog. So prepare an editorial calendar for regular posting of blogs and videos. This will help you to be regular in publishing content. An editorial calendar enables you to set a schedule and publish content regularly.
- Read, edit and read again: Do not publish the first draft of your blog. This is because there is a good chance your eyes will skip some errors. So make sure to proofread it well to avoid any typos or errors.
- Know how to handle comments: Blogs ensure 2-way communication. Often, the conversation in the comments turns out to be more interesting than the blog itself. Handle negative comments discreetly without antagonizing the users. Ensure that communication is maintained even in the face of negative comments.
Long-form Content Is More Appealing to Google Now
What about the length of your blog? If you want your blog to rank high on Google, it should ideally be more than 1,000 words in length. The idea is that if your content is comprehensive enough, the reader does not have to do another search to read another post, which the search engine regards as a success. However, it must be noted that just because you write a long post, it will rank well. Your content should give audience the information they are looking for and contain relevant keywords that include semantic keywords. Interesting and high-quality content is most likely to get read more and shared more.
If you would rather record your ideas than write them down, consider using business transcription services to help you with your blog writing. Most providers make recorders and apps available with which you can easily make the recording and get it transcribed within your required turnaround time.
