For early Internet users, weblogs—later colloquialized as “blogs”—published on individually operated sites were the closest thing to social media. Years later, blogs are still a great way to enhance your online presence and draw positive attention to your website from both users and search engine algorithms.
However, getting the most from a blog is not as simple as writing a few hundred words and tossing it up on your site with an inbound link from your homepage. Here are some tips for writing effective blogs that could have huge short-term and long-term benefits for your practice.
Most practices and their digital marketing agency post blogs without any real plan or purpose other than to just add more content, thinking this will help their SEO. However, to get the maximum impact and return on this investment, blogs and topics should be researched and planned within the overall scheme of your website, content, and SEO strategies.
And they should be written and marketed with target visitors in mind, so that they find it and engage with it.
Communicating clearly about a single central topic is one of the most important aspects of a good blog. This is also one of the areas where novice bloggers struggle the most. You should split your blogpost into a few subsections that each go into detail about a specific subtopic, but all those individual sections should contribute in some way to the core idea of the piece. It is a good idea to establish this core idea as your thesis within the first couple paragraphs.
It is equally important to pick a unique and engaging topic to blog about. Select a topic that is relevant and timely to the audience you want to reach. Then, write concisely about that topic with a unique perspective that sets you and your business apart from other people talking about the same thing.
Common wisdom for novel-writing is that the average reader will stop reading if the first page fails to immediately grab their attention. The window for drawing site visitors into a blog is even smaller. No matter what your blog is about or how interesting the content may be, your best and often only chance to catch a reader’s eye is usually in the first couple sentences. Failing to include a snappy “hook” usually leads to closed browser windows and no leads generated for your business.
On the other hand, the last section of your blog should highlight a “call to action.” This could be a brief sales pitch, invitation to pick up the phone or call, or a link to a contact form that encourages a reader to interact with you on a more actionable level. Even something as simple as a comment box or a button to share to social media can increase engagement with your blog and allow you to reap various benefits.
As mentioned above, splitting your blogpost into subsections is a great way to make it more digestible. Posting a “wall of text” tends to drive away potential readers. Other tips for improving readability include breaking up large segments of text with:
It is also important to consider how your blog “reads” to the search engine algorithms that crawl new webpages for information. Failing to use relevant keywords and phrases in your post can substantially decrease your blog’s potential to spread online.
Effective blogging can be more complicated than many people expect. To make the most of your web presence, seek help from experienced marketing professionals. Our digital marketing services could help your business reach your online audience and community, resulting in more quality leads that may turn into customers. Get in touch today to learn more.