9 Essential Blogging Tips
Most of my clients have some genuinely awesome content to share and they totally get why they should blog about it (‘why you should blog’ is a whole other topic and one that I’ll write about another day) but most of them have a block when it comes down to actually doing it. When I dig a bit deeper with them on why they haven’t blogged yet I usually get one of two answers - ‘I am not a good writer’ or ‘I don’t know where to start’. So I’ve put together a list of 9 essential blogging tips which hopefully addresses both of these roadblocks so you can just go for it and share all that good stuff!
Stay on brand. Your brand.
Consider your brand personality. Is it quirky, formal, casual, humourous, adventurous or approachable? You should be consistent with your language and tone across all your brand elements, your blog included.
Pick a topic and stick to it.
Don’t veer off topic - stick to the core message. Rather than going off-topic link to other relatable blogs, categories/tags, or pages on your website.
Use a good headline that is useful and clear.
The headline is uber important but don’t feel like you have to be a copywriter to nail a good headline. Your headline should be clear and useful - don’t overthink it and try to be creative and quirky cause people need to know what they are going to ‘get’ from reading your blog. Try these tips: convey the value or benefit, add an odd number ie ‘9 ways’, add a term ie ‘in 30 days’, evoke emotion like fear, shock, surprise, curiosity, encouragement or use adjectives like ‘best’, ‘essential’, or ‘valuable’.
Include a relative and shareable image.
Like they say a picture is worth 1000 words so it’s important to include an image that relates to your content but words are what is most important in this case so don’t fill your page with images cause without words you just won’t be found on google.
Include keywords and phrases but make sure you still sound human.
Including keywords (for google searching) is key to blogging success but it’s equally important to sound human so don’t overstack your blog with search phrases cause you’ll lose the relatable factor pretty quickly.
Break it down into a list of steps or at least bite-size chunks so it’s easy to digest.
For those of us that aren’t natural writers creating a list or breaking things down into steps makes things a little easier. For those of us that like to write breaking down your content in this way keeps you from going to town with the writing, keeping you from being to verbose. And not only does this make things easier, this style of blog is also hugely relatable, shareable, and popular - win-win.
Supplement the blog with a value-add like a free resource or downloadable template.
People love free stuff - there is no denying it - so consider adding a free resource to your blog - if it’s something that is valuable to the reader you could even provide the resource in exchange for the reader’s email address (why you need an email list is a whole other topic).
Include a call to action.
Blogging is about providing value to your existing and potential clients and customers but at the end of the day we are are wanting to create an opportunity for engagement to sell or upsell so always include a or some ‘calls to action’ encouraging your readers to not just think ‘that was a good read’ but to take some form action. This may be encouraging them to share on social, sign up, complete a form, buy a product or simply contact you.
Plan and schedule your content.
Plan out several blog topics in advance. This is so you don’t have a moment of ‘OMG I have to do a blog post (cause Kim said I did) and I have no idea what to write about so I just won’t do it’ moment. Content planning and scheduling can be as simple as a word document and a folder on your drive or you could use a platform like Asana or Airtable or HubSpot or Trello etc (there are literally heaps them out there) or you could touch base with us and talk to us about we can help - we’ve got a tried and tested system we can help you implement. Get in touch now.