What is a blog post?
A blog is short for “weblog” and they have been around since 1994 with over 600 million blogs on the world wide web today. A blog post is a discussion or an informative page on a website that offers its readers some form of valuable content. Their authors are somewhat classed as “blogger” or “bloggers” and they typically write about what is interesting or relevant to them at the time using entries posted in chronological order, writing in the same style as a diary or a journal.
How can blogging benefit a business in its marketing efforts?
Blogging is acknowledged for being super popular amongst B2B organisations with helping the promotion of products and services. Why? With more than 4.66 Billion active internet users, blogs create connections between a business and its relevant audience by helping to drive website traffic into conversion for leads. They are a great way to form trust with potential prospects, building stronger relationships with its readers whilst keeping them up to date.
So you’ve just started out with your blogging skills in your level 3 digital marketing apprenticeship and you don’t know where to start. Don’t get overwhelmed, the whole purpose of this blog is to help you in your beginner’s digital marketing apprenticeship So let’s get right down to it with our top tips.
#1 Headlines and Titles
Your blog headline should be powerful enough to get your viewer to want to read the full article. To create a good headline you should keep it personal and specific to the content inside so viewers know if they want to read it or not. If you are stuck on inspiration try looking at a newspapers or a magazines to see how their headlines are structured, you can also find our frameworks guide useful here:
The How to Framework – This is good for viewers that want to educate themselves on particular information.
Example – ‘How to create a good social media strategy
The Listicle Framework – This is good for viewers who enjoy reading about numbers like this blog! They are also good for viewers who like their content broken up so it is easier for them to digest.
Example – ‘5 top tips to create a successful blog’
The Question Framework – This would appeal to a more specific type of viewer. Targeted questions make strong headlines.
Example – ‘How do you make an article go viral?’
The Storytelling Framework – This intrigues viewers, as it creates interest for the reader with a narrative structure. It has a storybook likeliness about it.
Example – ‘How we developed more engagement through social media’
The Command framework – This is effective with viewers as it is straight to the point and easy to read.
Example – ‘Read this if you want to gain more open’s in your emails!’
Once you’ve jotted down a few ideas for your headline you can go to the advanced marketing headline analyzer to test how effective the algorithms think they are. And don’t forget, use words that drive action they will help with user clicks!
#2 The Structure and approach
The approach:
The style you should write will depend on the audience you are trying to communicate with but most of the time it should be conversational and informal. As a rule with blog writing, you should always put the reader first like you are talking to them about a topic including the use of ‘I’ and ‘You’ in your text so it reads more of a conversation.
Blogging is more of an informal platform to communicate to readers, with this in mind, paragraphs and sentences should be kept short so it’s easier for readers to take information in bite-size chunks and avoid confusion.
Do not use Jargon unless necessary. The purpose of your blog is to communicate information to viewers, this is best done using simple words so stay clear from the long complicated words that most readers do not understand. You have to break it down for them and see yourself as though you are teaching intermediate students.
Use statistics. Be more specific to the information you are trying to deliver. You need proof to back up the facts and information you are trying to educate your readers on to show viewers that they can trust in what you are writing for them. As humans, we have always judged that If someone else is talking about it then it’s probably true.
The Structure
Always start off with an introduction as this will be the opening of your blog which hook viewers with a bold statement to read the rest of the article. The introduction should be a short overview of what will be covered in the blog.
Then write up your conclusion, this should relate back to your introduction and summarise the important information and what the post was about. This is your opportunity to go over the main message you are communicating in the blog trying to indicate to the reader what they should take away from it. Make sure to label this subheading as ‘conclusion’ or something along the same lines like ‘finial thoughts’
Finally, move on to fleshing out the main body of text, this should include subheadings throughout to able readers to skim through the content. Paragraphs in the main body should be around 5-6 lines long maximum, you want to keep your reader engaged not bore them with large amounts of text at one time.
#3 Imagery and Media
Relevant images and media use are just as important as the text in your post. They offer a visual element to your blog that supports everything you’ve written about in your article. Just like the headline and introduction, your blog will not work without some form of visuals.
Readers want to get to the point as fast as they can. Images can help tell your story without them having to read the rest of the content in your blog, not that your text isn’t important because it is.
Photos act as a tool to transform your blog from a standard chunk of text to an exciting blog with more than 1 element, making the text more diverse and attractive.
Images can also help give your readers a bit of a rest by breaking up chunks of text so it is easier for them to digest. They are used to separate sections in blogs which makes your points easier for readers to understand.
Make sure that you insert clear crisp images, there’s nothing worse than coming across an image that looks like it was developed in the early 2000s. High-quality imagery keeps your bounce rates at bay. Nobody likes a poor quality image or file. Image quality must be taken into consideration as the better quality they are the more appealing your blog will be to your readers.
If you’re not using your own created imagery or files you will need to check if it is legal for you to use them as a lot of images have copyrights. The consequences of violating copyrights are serious so you’ll want to check ahead before posting online. You can find a bunch of free stock image websites here :
Stockunlimited.com
Freeimages.com
Pexels.com
Pixabay.com
Unsplash.com
Pikwizard.com
#4 Facts in Links
Everybody loves to click a link and everybody loves factual information. Clicking a link can add an exciting feature to the text sections of your article. It takes the user from one page to another providing a more in-depth experience white it opens up your sources and gives your blog posts more credibility.
You can direct readers to your other blogs and specific parts of your website by inserting hyperlinks into your blogs. This will boost page views and improve your page ranking as they help crawlers and indexing on the web improve your overall SEO. Readers will also stay on your site longer increasing ‘time on site’ and lowering bounce rate stats.
Other bloggers and websites appreciate being linked to as it drives more organic traffic their way. This would be classed as an external link. You should really reach out to the website you link to, to inform them that you’ve included their site in your blog. You could also ask them to share your blog which creates a benefit for everybody.
There are many benefits to using links in your blog, just don’t overdo it.
#5 The Keywords
Keywords are the words people type into a search engine. Finding the right keywords for your blog will be an essential part of your blogging strategy. They help your users find and identify your blog post through their search queries to get their questions answered.
You’ll want to think about the audience you want to target and what keywords you want to rank for. Keywords help promote your SEO by generating more organic traffic from search engines. You can search for keywords through keyword tool generators such as Ahrefs.com, Wordstream.com and many others you can find on the web.
Once you have made a list of the keywords you want to use, It is important to evaluate each one for their difficulty score. Each score is calculated by the strength of pages that are currently ranking for page 1 on a search. If you have a fairly low domain authority I’d start off with keywords that have a score of below 30. For more on Keyword difficulty checkout this Semrush’s article
In Conclusion
Blog writing is not that hard if you follow these top tips. You’ll be on the fast track to creating a unique, engaging blog post in no time. Even if you are a beginner. The more blog posts you construct the better you will become, practice makes perfect right? Blog writing is an excellent way to improve your writing skills for sure.
If you found this article useful and want to learn more Digital Marketing skills, head over to our website
ApprenticeTips.com