Today, social media and video have taken up much of the internet scene, but they haven’t been able to silence the power of the blog post. In fact, blogging is still one of the most impactful methods of communication on the internet, and it plays a huge role in marketing to this day.
Blogging can be used to educate, entertain, and guide readers. It can be used to market products and give tutorials. It’s also an essential key to search engine optimization, a marketing tactic that’s still alive and well for pushing your website to the top of the list.
But blogging is also a highly competitive industry. If you’re not a well-established brand or your content has been lagging, it’s not easy to reach the top of the search engine results. Someone with a better strategy can easily knock you out of that top spot if you’re not performing at the top of your game.
Read: Books for Bloggers
So, if your blog—whether it’s an independent entity or a subsection of your business website—is not performing well, it might be time to reevaluate your content strategy. Here are eight key tips for writing better blog posts and resuming your top position in the competitive landscape.
1. Redefine Your Audience
You probably started your blog with a good understanding of your audience—it’s hard not to do this at the beginning. But believe it or not, audiences change. This could be the result of changing viewpoints from your audience or your blog morphing into something that it wasn’t originally. In any case, if your blog is losing readership or you’re just not hitting those numbers, it’s time to redefine your audience.
If you’re blogging as a business, it might be simplest to look at your customer base. For example, if you own a CBD shop, your audience will involve those who are likely to purchase CBD. From there, narrow down age, demographics, and interests that stem from an interest in purchasing CBD products to define your writing style and topics.
It might help to consider demographics of your customers are readers. Using analytics tools like Google Analytics or another service, you can get breakdowns of who’s buying your products and reading your articles for you to get a better look at who you should be writing to.
2. Work on Your Titles
There are three things that go into a good title.
- It should explain what’s in the article for SEO purposes.
- It should be catchy and unique to generate attention and better match search queries.
- It shouldn’t be too long or complex.
The art of writing a good title takes practice, but most importantly, it takes time. If you’re just writing titles on the fly without giving it time and thought, you’re probably going to miss the mark. It might take you as long to come up with a good title as it does to write your article.
3. Edit Thoroughly Before Publishing
A blog post containing excellent content is often very harshly judged for having errors. Even the highest value content could be discredited by the incorrect use of a semi-colon. It’s very important to edit for grammatical, spelling, and structural errors before you hit publish.
If you’re serious about blogging, it might be worthwhile to hire an editor to look over your content, no matter how good your grasp on the English language is. When you’re staring at your own content for hours, it’s easy to skim over some of those errors, and you’ll pay for those mistakes later.
4. Edit After You’ve Published Too
You might have thought that once you hit publish the work is done, but it’s usually not. Some blog articles will be timeless and good to go, but others will need updating in the future.
For example, if you’re blogging about current events, you might need to publish an update later to make it relevant. It might be good to note changes in laws or rules when relevant as well. Just put a little note that points out that it’s been edited and the date that the edit was made.
And, of course, if you see errors or someone else points out a mistake in your content, fix it as soon as possible.
5. Make Your Paragraphs Short and Succinct
It’s vital that your internet content is easy to skim. Consumers want content that they can consume in a matter of minutes, and large, blocky paragraphs seem insurmountable, even if there are only a few of them.
Shorten your paragraphs to no more than five lines when published. Three lines is better. Also, don’t use flowery language that distracts from the point. Say what you need to say in as few words as possible.
6. Use Lists
A great way to make your blog content easy to consume is to put it in list form. Numbered or bulleted lists are easy for consumers to skim and understand. That’s why listicles are so popular.
It’s a good idea to structure your article in list format, using subheadings to separate each section. It’s also wise to break down sections into smaller pieces whenever you can. For example, if you have several examples to illustrate a point, you might add a bulleted or numbered list inside a sub-section to improve the readability.
7. Have a Call to Action
Business blogs should end with a call to action whenever possible. This gives the reader a direction to take and prompts action from those who are interested. There’s little risk with using a call to action. If your reader is not interested, they won’t take action, but it gives interested parties a way to act.
Even if you’re not a business, a call to action is very useful for growing your audience, increasing online traffic, and generating SEO. Your CTA might encourage users to read more content on your blog, subscribe to a YouTube channel, follow you on social media, or even engage on your social media page or comment section. These metrics are huge for online search engines, and they can benefit your blog greatly!
8. Use Descriptive Language
It takes more than just a talent for stringing sentences together to write a successful blog. You also need to be able to paint a picture for your readers. Describe things using the five senses, make comparisons to relevant topics, and translate complex topics into bite-size pieces.
Remember that writing descriptively does not mean writing more. You can often say more with a descriptive image than you can with a long, drawn-out paragraph.
Writing descriptively takes practice, and it helps to reach descriptive blog posts. This will get you in the right mindset to craft your own descriptive pieces and paint the picture your readers will continually return to see.
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