Also called 3 tips to writing great blog posts.
Chances are that you or your business have a blog on your website. A blog is a vital tool for any business and is an essential part of content marketing. Google SEO rankings are becoming more and more content driven and for many sites the number one way of promoting content is via their internal blog which brings us to the topic of this article. Over the years, many have asked me what they should write on their blogs. What kind of content should they publish? Now the answer to that depends on the site, the business and what you want to achieve but there are a few key tips I can give you to help steer you in the right direction.
Write What You Know
Whatever you do, do not push crap. If you are writing about a topic that you have not the first inkling about than don’t write about that. One would be surprised at the ability of the online community to detect BS and trust me when I say that they don’t respond well to it. Where content marketing is supposed to improve your credibility, writing about and publishing something that is very thin can have the opposite effect just as easily. Write about a topic that you know and even better, a topic that you are passionate about. If you are not passionate about a topic that sentiment finds its way its the writing and can be picked up by the reader. However, if you are passionate about the topic, you excitement and enthusiasm becomes a part of the writing and excitement is contagious. I love writing about various marketing topics and because of this passion I come up with quite a number of unique, one might say bizarre, articles. Yes they may be strange but the reader learns something from them and I find the stranger they are the more they are enjoyed. You can go to any number of sites or blogs to learn about online marketing and web design. I like to think you come to MarketingModo to get my unique perspective. In the end, remember to write what you know and write what you love.
Be Unique
I’ve touched upon this one in the previous tip but it is worth repeating again. Chances are that the topic you are writing about has been done before and has been done many times before. Do you really want your version to be the same re-hashing? I didn’t think so and your readers will thank you for it. As I said before, right now this moment I can immediately think of a few dozen sites where someone can go to learn about the latest and great in digital marketing and website design. There are literally tens of thousands more beyond those few. For a vast majority of them, the articles will be the same thing over and over again. This is your chance to shake things up a bit. Take a different perspective or look at a common problem from a different angle as I did with my article about conversion optimization from the perspective of Super Mario Brothers. Be unique and don’t forget to have fun.
Find Trending Topics
Thanks to such wonderful tools as Google Trends we are able to see immediately and in real time what some of the topics that are out there getting the attention of the public at large. Wouldn’t it be great if you can ride some of that wave? Well you can. You will be able to take advantage of the viral potential and popularity of some of those trends and you will start seeing yourself rank for terms related to that trend. Perhaps only temporarily but it also shows you are on top of the latest topics. Here is how you do it. Find some trending topics that you and your community would find interesting or at least a topic that is on mainstream news and getting traction. Take that topic and mold it to your business and industry. Now granted some things are incredibly hard to mold. Taking Justin Beaver and relating him to a blog article on the latest tax laws might be a stretch though give me some time and I’m sure I could find a way to swing that bat. It helps immensely if you are able to seriously relate the topic to your business or industry somehow. It can be anything from Columbus Day or the Scottish Independence Referendum to the latest season of The Walking Dead or even the latest on the ebola crisis. In fact let’s take a look at that one even closer. Look at the ebola virus situation now that ebola has been detected in Texas with other potential locations across the United States. Many are afraid it will continue to spread across the country and even possibly mutate and become airborne which would be a nightmare scenario. Now you are probably asking yourself what can the ebola outbreak in Texas possibly have to do with online marketing. Well actually quite a bit if you take the time to look at it. In a past article I wrote about how businesses could follow the response that the US government, when they had control over the situation when it was in Liberia and not in the US, and model their public relations messaging in regards to customer service after their initial response to the outbreak in Africa. You admit there is an issue and you explain step by step what is being done to remedy the situation. The same thing applies in business as that article mentioned. A day or so after that article was published it was being shown for a number of search queries related to the ebola outbreak and we had quite a number of people congratulate us for taking a seemingly non-related topic and bending it to our business. Now that the outbreak has progressed, you can do the same thing especially if you are in a health related business such as providing face masks and other health focused products. Talk about ebola. Show your community that you are an expert in your field and that you are staying on top of the latest news. You’ll find more and more will turn to you for the latest which is exactly what you want. Even if your business is not related to health, medicine or anything remotely related to viruses and ebola don’t despair. You can easily take the topic and twist it to your needs just like MarketingModo. Every topic can be made to relate to something else if one looks closely enough to see the links. Just wait until you see my next article on what The Walking Dead can teach you about conversion optimization.
Writing content is never easy but then again nothing worthwhile is easy however writing quality content for your blog is an incredibly important matter for improving the content you publish overall as well as improving your content marketing and SEO ranking potential. The tips mentioned about should set you in the right direction of writing good, quality content for your blog that will not only attract and retain readers but will also have positive SEO benefits as well. If writing just isn’t your thing we understand and MarketingModo offers a full suite of content marketing services including copywriting. Reach out to the MarketingModo team today to see how we can help your business’ content development plans today!