5 Tips to Have A More Effective Blog for Your Business
5 Tips for Better Blog Pay-Off
Recently, we’ve been encouraging you to blog more! It’s a great way to build out your inbound marketing strategy as well as your organic SEO. And best of all… it’s a free form of marketing! That being said, if you’re checking out your analytics and not seeing a lot of traffic or conversions from your blogs, you might be scratching your head as to why this is happening.
Though there are a variety of factors behind what makes a successful blog post (and what makes a blog post that completely blows up), there are a few pretty basic reasons why the average article doesn’t get more than a dozen viewers.
1. Share Your Blogs
Are you sharing your blog posts on social media? Are you including them in newsletters and adding them to LinkedIn and other relevant places?
These are simple questions, but the truth is that many content creators assume that simply hitting “publish” is enough, and often want to save their Facebook and Twitter presence for other things, like company announcements.
If you are sharing your posts regularly but they still aren't getting clicks and attention, it could be because the way you're sharing them isn't very effective. Look at what times you’re getting the most engagement and try to be consistent with when you post.
Another favorite tip of ours? Share a snippet of the content in your social post from the blog. Give your users a taste of what they can read in the blog and entice them to read more. All you have to do is choose one of your favorite parts of the blog and copy it into the description, then give a call to action to read more on the blog and click the link.
2. Remember Your Audience
Is obvious as it sounds, it can be hard to keep focus and remember who you want reading your blog. It's crucial that you think about the content they want to see and how they consume it best. If you’re in the legal sector, your readers will probably want a lot of content with sources and citations. If you’re an eCommerce company selling t-shirts to teenagers and sharing fashion tips, they’ll probably want to see more photos.
As tempting as it is to just do things the way you want or what’s easiest, you have to consider your audience and put in the work to appeal best to them.
Our friends at Dainty Jewell's have a huge blog following that is both personal, as well as points to the business, sharing photos of the beautiful dresses they sell, along with style tips and more. 
3. Increase the Content In Your Blog
Sometimes blog titles promise the world and then really don’t end up providing a whole lot to the user. Remember that your title should be reflective of the content you’re providing, and if not, you should increase it.
Another foul play we often see is when people write blogs on one platform and then link to them on their company blog. Posts that are just a link with no context perform much more poorly, as do those without images.
When we say increase content, we don’t just mean the number of words you are writing, either. Consider the potential for adding photos, graphics, infographics, and even videos to your blog! The more visually appealing a blog is, the easier it’ll be for a reader to look through and learn from. Consider getting your design team involved to add photos, stats, or even videos to make your content more engaging.
4. Optimize for Keywords & Links
Don’t forget… always be optimizing! No, this doesn’t mean you should stuff keywords into your content, but you should make sure that your content is optimized to get all the SEO juice out of each blog.
A few tips to optimize your blogs:
- Remember to Include Keywords in Headers
- Use Internal Links to Your Other Pages if Mentioned
- Link to Well Known Sources for Citations
- Add a Complete Meta-Description
3. Make Sure Your Content is Unique
There are a lot of blogs on the internet. As in, there are literally billions. This means to stand out, your content has to truly be original.
Instead of trying to write blog posts that are similar to those you’ve seen shared by your friends and competitors, try to write something that only you could write. What are some of your favorite insights? What did you learn this week that you couldn’t believe? How could something that’s been happening be viewed specifically through your unique lens?
The best content isn’t content that speaks to everyone, it’s content that speaks to something specific which a lot of people need to hear. If you’re an expert in the field, show it off by being a thought-leader and sharing something insightful.
Want to Grow Your Blog? We Can Help.
efelle creative is a Seattle based marketing firm that specializes in website design and development as well as digital marketing services. Since 2005, efelle creative has worked with hundreds of businesses to help them with their web development needs. Call us at 206.384.4909 or fill out our online contact form to get in touch with a custom web design specialist.