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How to Create Blogging Success

A blog is still one of the best formats in which you can generate traffic for your website and encourage your targeted audience to learn more about your brand.

Google and other search engines are increasing their focus on the content which blogs naturally provide, therefore integrating it into your online sales process is an important step.

So how do you ensure you achieve blogging success? Read on to find out more.

 

Topics and Themes

To ensure that your intended audience are discovering your website, you must first get inside the head of the reader. These days, people rarely search for a product on a search engine. It is much more common for them to search for an answer to a problem or a distraction. Therefore your main focus of topics and themes should be to offer useful content which can provide a solution to a problem or entertainment.

This isn’t as hard as some companies think. Every industry has a problem which their consumers face on a daily basis or there is something in popular culture which is of interest.

You can start by making a list of the common questions which are asked of you by your customers. Customers can be a great source of topic generation and it is likely if one customer is asking you a question, there are dozens asking it on the search engines.

 

Length and Frequency of Posting

The concentration span of the average person has dropped considerably in the past decade. It was once 12 minutes, it is now only five. Therefore you need to consider this when writing your blog posts. Too long a post and your audience won’t read to the end, but at the same time too short a piece and it might not provide enough useful information to be considered valuable to the visitor.

Informative, problem solving blogs should be between 500 and 1200 words, although some technical blogs can go higher. You could have a short blog post, but it has to contain all the important aspects of a post, e.g. a strong intro, informative content and then outcome. This can be challenging to achieve in a small post.

For the frequency of posting there is no hard set rule on the number of times. Some audiences will prefer once a week, others will prefer a more frequent arrangement. The only thing to consider is that your release of blog posts must be consistent. If your audience see you post every Friday they will expect it and missing out can hurt your reputation.

To solve this particular problem, it can be useful to write a few blog posts in advance. Having a bank of blog posts mean you are never rushing to complete one at the last minute and you’ll always have content to publish.

 

Keywords

Keywords have changed dramatically from the old days. Not so long ago businesses could keyword stuff their content and see a top spot on Google and other search engines. This is no longer the case. Google has taken steps to penalise companies which do this with a succession of updates to their algorithm. The search engine is aiming to provide its users with higher quality content rather than being keyword heavy.

But that isn’t the only reason why you shouldn’t concentrate on a single keyword. The searching habits of the consumer have evolved over the past few years. Previously consumers would ask a search engine to draw up a list of results based on 2 or 3 word phrases. Now the common search tactic is a six or seven word question.

Therefore you have a tough job to achieve. You’ve first got to get the question right in order to use it as your keyword and then you’ve got to use it just enough to get it recognised but not too much that it gets penalised.

The exact Google algorithm is not known, they keep it under wraps, but it is probably best to keep the ‘key phrase’ (as it should now really be known as) to being used two or three times at most in your piece.

 

Sharing

Promotion of your blog is important. You can’t rely just on the search engines to draw traffic to it. Therefore utilising a wide range of platforms is a good method of generating traffic. Social media and email are standard ways of drawing traffic to your blog. Many of the best brands who blog, send out announcements their blog has been updated through both formats, and it is an assured way of generating some traffic.

Twitter is specifically useful. Tweets have a short lifespan, only about 10 minutes for most posts; therefore you can mention your new post two or three times on the first day and re-post it periodically (but leave at least a week before you do so, preferably longer).

However, both methods do little to expand your reach as the majority of the traffic from social media and all the traffic from your email is going to be those already connected with your brand.

To reach new audiences you need to allow people to share your content in their social networks. Having a share button on your blog can be a good help.

Another thing to consider is by going onto forums or social media groups. Many of them won’t appreciate you just talking about your blog posts but if you are clever and interact on different topics you can often garner enough favour to post the occasional blog update.

For forums the best thing to do is to contribute to their conversations and include your latest blog post in your signature.

You can also leave relevant comments on other blog posts. Talk about the issues they’ve discussed and in the website box which many blogs offer commentators, leave the url to a relevant blog post of your own.

 

Other Items

There are other items to consider when blogging which can really allow you to achieve success, for instance the use of images. Good quality images can help you generate an emotional response in your audience and images are processed by the brain faster than text, therefore they can set the mood of your content.

Also consider the way you link to other content online. Try to avoid one word links, unless it is a brand name. It is also best to avoid ‘click here’ or ‘try this now’. It is better to use phrases which are connected to the content you are linking to such as ‘achieve blogging success with some easy to implement tips’ or ‘join the discussion on the latest online marketing techniques’. Alternative simply use a URL.

Finally consider using outside experts in your blog posts. Interviewing some can be a perfect way to get free publicity (they are likely to share content they’ve written) but you could also try finding quotes they have given other media outlets. Always remember to quote that source however.

 

Conclusion

There are many items to consider when wanting to make the most out of the marketing opportunity which blogging offers. Yet each step is also fairly easy to implement. If you ensure you tailor your useful content to the ideal length and consistent frequency, with the right keywords, you can start your journey to blogging success.

 

Action Steps:

  • Research blogging platforms and choose which is best for your business
  • Research which keywords your desired customers are using
  • List topics in which you can write about on your blog
  • Create a publishing scheduling so you know when you are going to publish content
  • Create content matching the keywords and topics together
  • Publish the content!

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