16.12.2019Design in video – the key to success
How to Write a Business Blog Post that Gets Read
It’s frustrating when you put time and effort into a blog, and it hardly gets seen and read – or even worse – if you don’t even know where to start when it comes to blogging for your business.
Here are some practical tips to increase your blog viewings to get more of the right people reading it, and get it found in search engines.
Audience
Think about who buys from you – you’re not writing for yourself, you’re writing for them!
What is their job ? What is a typical day? What are their challenges? What blogs do they read? What social networks do they use? How old are they? Are they married, do they usually have kids?
Hopefully this kind of thinking will really get you into their mind set.
Not all about you
So now you’ll realise, they don’t just want to read about your product or service.
They may be interested in it, but posts just full of special offers are only interesting to those who are already considering your business. You need to appeal to those who don’t even fully know about you yet. What else would they be interested in? Do you have any insight into the industry or related issues?
For example, if you’re a Kitchen company, you can post about top recipes for the season, new styles that are in fashion, co-ordinating the right colours, tips for picking the right taps / chairs.
The list is endless and none of it needs to be directly about your company.
But it is providing useful or interesting info to your potential buyer, and so the benefit is two fold.
It shows you are an expert in the field, making you an industry leader – which boosts credibility. And regular blogging on these expert topics also makes you more likely to be found by search engines. Win win!
Problem Solving
People often search in Google with a question or query. So how can you solve their problems? Are there common question you always asked?
Be prescriptive and give real help or advice – if applicable explain how to do something, or really go about it, not just describe a process superficially.
Images
You really must add images to your blog posts. It makes them look more engaging, exciting and it will aid the memory of whoever is reading, whilst also helping to establish credibility.
There are plenty of places where you can get free stock images for your blogs. But it’s also advisable to use your own photos where applicable, as they may be much more relevant.
Generally a photo every 350 words is considered good – a recent study showed the world’s 100 most popular blogs followed this rule.
My conclusion from this is that it breaks up the text a little and give the reader a small rest with something visually engaging, before the carry on reading.
Here’s an infographic video on the Picture Superiority effect – for info on image retention too.
Writing Style
These days, most blogs are written in a more conversational tone. Even if you’re writing a business blog aimed at other businesses, you don’t need to be very formal – you’re still writing for a human. And it’s not a scientific paper after all!
Personally, I write in quite a casual way, but it’s very important to keep the grammar, spelling and punctuation perfect. As slips can really let you down and you lose your credibility instantly.
Statistics
Where possible, give evidence for your statements. This isn’t applicable for all blog posts, but if you’re trying to convince people of an idea and you’re making bold claims, then you need something to back this.
It doesn’t need to be metric based, though it helps if there are figures and facts that relate to your idea. You can also give real life examples (like a case study) as evidence.
For example, here’s a quick one from Hubspot in this year – “Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.” So go forth and blog!
Length
The old guidelines for blogs posts used to be 300 words minimum. Now, the average blog post is around 400 – 600 words minimum. Many of my favourite blogs have posts regularly 1000 words or over.
You don’t need to write quite this much, but you can see the trend is for more in depth knowledge. people are really searching online to learn something, so shallow content doesn’t cut it any more.
Title
Your blog title and first few lines matter more than you think. They are the first thing that viewers see before they even decide to read more, so keep it exciting and fairly short (less than 70 characters).
Lists with numbers always work well (though the post should reflect this), and don’t be afraid to use strong words to create excitement. ‘How to’ type titles, or questions are also popular devices.
Generally, I have 3-4 attempts at the title before settling on one – it’s definitely worth spending some time on. Think, would I read this post, based only on this title?
Really this topic deserves a whole blog in itself, so read this good one from Hubspot – A Simple Formula for Writing Kick-Ass Blog Titles
Linking
You can link to your relevant pages, if they are indeed relevant – it will help to boost your page and it helps guide the viewer.
But please don’t spam the page and add lots of links that have no relevance! Keep it just to a few.
Here’s a quick example for a Printing company. The link is the text that is bold and underlined.
Here’s a recent leaflet print project we did, that demonstrates this example of paper folding and cutting well.
This allows the viewer to explore further, if they want to, and is directly relatable to the blog post.
Another way of linking, is to link to similar blog posts you have written on the same topic.
Another example.
If you’re interested, you can learn more about designing flyers in our in depth post How to Create the Perfect Flyer
These all aid the viewer, and lets them discover more, but interlinking also boosts your site SEO.
Formatting
People don’t read online, they merely skim. Many usability studies over the years have shown that people do read very differently online to printed materials. So long paragraphs get completely missed.
As well as short paragraphs, it’s best to keep sentences short – usually under 25 words.
If you’re making a list, then you can use bullet points to aid reading. They catch attention and are often well read.
If you want to bring emphasis to particular words or phrases you can also make them bold.
It’s also important to make good use of headings to separate the content out – allowing people to scan to the section they want.
All of these factors allow a user to scan through your post – finding just the parts they are looking for and the main parts you want the user to read. .
Summary
If you incorporate these ideas into your next post, soon enough, you will get the type of results you’re hoping to achieve from your blog posts. And if you want a hand, to boost your marketing – then just let us know
to say great blog!