by | Feb 11, 2015

Are you blogging for your business yet?
If not, you should be. Blogging is a crucial component of content marketing – which, as we’ve discussed many times before, is necessary for any successful online marketing strategy.
Consistent, relentless creation of fresh, relevant content will help your business by:

  • Being found by search engines
  • Positioning yourself as a thought-leader in your industry
  • Gaining credibility and trust from potential customers
  • Generating leads and educating process though their decision-making process
  • Improving lead conversion
  • Staying engaged with your customers

Whether you are already blogging for business or you are considering starting a company blog, it’s absolutely critical to make sure you’re engaging in blogging best practices.
Here are the top guidelines you should follow to create an engaging, successful company blog:

Blogging Do’s

  • Do: Optimize for Search Engines (SEO)

You are blogging with a clear purpose – to, ultimately, generate more revenue. To get there, your blog and your website need to be found through search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.).
Make sure you are incorporating relevant keywords into your blogs, providing links back to related pages on your website, and using simple on-page SEO techniques for each blog.
Check out this handy guide we created to help you optimize your content.

  • Do: Incorporate Different Content Types

Your blog doesn’t have to contain only written content. Think about including infographics, presentations (e.g. slideshows), and videos to vary the types of content you are providing.
Multimedia content gets more shares and can be more popular than written posts. Although it is more time-consuming to create these various types of content, it is well worth your effort.
Have a mix of content types and you’ll appeal to a wider potential audience.

  • Do: Include Images

It should be a standard practice to include at least one image with each blog you post. You need a featured image that will show up when your blog is shared on social media – plus, blogs without images can look like a wall of text (we’ll deal with walls of text in the “Don’ts” section below).
Ideally, you want to include many images in your blog, to emphasize different points you are making as readers make their way through.
Don’t be afraid to use images to provide additional context – or even humour.

  • Do: Leverage Every Post via Social Media

If content creation is King, content distribution is Queen. Content marketing
Why create all of these fantastic blogs if no one sees them? You need to share your articles with your audiences on the various social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.).
In fact, you should even be sharing older posts that are still relevant, to get the most out of them.

  • Do: Have Calls to Action

Ask yourself what you want your readers to do after they’ve gone through your post. Do you want them to contact you? To download a case study? To request an estimate?
Whatever your objective, you should always have a call to action (CTA) in every blog post. Never forget that blogging is part of a content strategy – the key word being strategy. You aren’t just blogging for the sake of it, you’re blogging with purpose.

  • Do: Link to Other Content in Your Posts

Your blog posts shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. They should link to other relevant content on the same subject, so readers can dig deeper if they’d like.
A good online citizen links to other blogs and other content from some of their blog posts – especially if the post references an article on another site.
You should also link your posts to content on your own website, including related static pages and previous blogs.

  • Do: Be Friendly and Relatable

Blogs don’t have to be all serious. You can be casual and friendly to create a personal connection with your audience. Show off your sense of humour. Show that there are real people behind your organization – real people that are sympathetic to the customer’s problems and struggles.
Blogs should help humanize your business.

  • Do: Be Interesting to Your Audience

Write about topics that are interesting to your audience and customers. Although some of the nuances of your industry may be fascinating to you, chances are that most your audience couldn’t care less.
You want to share your expertise with your audience. Answer their common questions, provide solutions to their problems, help them make decisions, etc.
Click here to read some guidelines on what to write about in your blog!

Blogging Don’ts

  • Don’t: Use Too Much Jargon

Don’t fill your posts with words and concepts your typical prospect would be unfamiliar with. Just as it matters which topics you write about, it matters how you write about the topics you choose.
Use simple, accessible language. Be sure to explain any industry concepts or jargon that you reference in the post.

  • Don’t: Sell Sell Sell

People are busy. They’re also inundated with advertisements all day, every day. If your blog is just another piece of sales literature designed to sell your products or services, your audience will catch on right away. They don’t want to be constantly sold to.
Instead, they want useful, practical information and solutions to their problems and questions. Provide content that achieves these things, and you’ll keep your readers around long enough so that they consider you when they are ready to buy.

  • Don’t: Fail to Deliver on Your Headline’s Promise

Have you heard of “clickbait”? It means that a headline is deliberately provocative in order to get people to click on it. But the majority of the time, once people get to the article, it is underwhelming. It doesn’t deliver on the headline’s claims (e.g. You Won’t Believe How These 5 Earth-Shattering Tips Changed This Woman’s Life Forever).
That kind of behaviour will lose your audience’s trust immediately. Soon, they won’t be clicking on your content at all.

  • Don’t: Lose Momentum

Blogging is all about consistency. You need to blog regularly, all the time. Set a schedule that makes sense for your business and – this is important – that is doable for you and/or your team.
It might be once a day, once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month. Whatever your schedule is, the most important thing is to stick to it!

  • Don’t: Create Walls of Text

No one wants to read content that is formatted as one huge “wall of text”. It’s overwhelming to see – and most people are skimming content online anyway.
Rather than long paragraphs, you want lots of short paragraphs, lists, headings, and images to break up the content into more easily digestible pieces.

  • Don’t: Use Design Elements that Make It Hard to Read

As mentioned above, walls of text are bad because they can make your post hard to read.
You should also shy away from design elements on your blog that make the text hard to read. This includes things like background colour, font colour, size of the font, amount of space (or lack thereof) between lines, and so on.
Look at the design of your blog and ask yourself if it’s easy on the eyes.

  • Don’t: Be Negative

Do not use your blog as a space to deride your competitors or make fun of your customers. Your blog needs to be a positive, helpful, and empowering place.

  • Don’t: Jump in without a Solid Strategy

Blogging shouldn’t be done without strategic thinking behind it. It should be targeted and purposeful.
In fact, recent data from a study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs reveals that the most effective content marketers are those who have an actual documented content marketing strategy.

The Bottom Line

Blogging best practices are always changing, but these fundamental do’s and don’ts never change. Content marketing needs to be strategic and focused on business objectives – always with the audience’s needs in mind.
Now get blogging!

>> Core Online Marketing is an outsourced digital marketing agency with expertise in content creation, social media, SEO, email marketing, and much more! Contact us today.

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Ben Molfetta
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