A big component of content marketing is writing content that converts. That means every piece you produce should serve a purpose and blogs serve more than one!
So why is it that businesses still struggle to write chat-worthy content?
See an overview below and skip to the parts you need a brush-up on!
- Personalise it
- Keywords + other SEO tips
- Links internal/external
- Add a sprinkle of self love
- Categories and Tags
- Write, rest, publish
1. Dig deep and personalise it!
Write from your own experience. No one, not one person likes to read dry, boring content. You can spice up even the most dreary of topics. Trust me I’ve written everything from accounting articles and recipes to tech trends and wedding inspo blogs. You’d be surprised how quickly you find yourself having to cut words out of a topic you were struggling to put words into at first.
Steer away from click-bait headlines, this may sound like bad advice but what’s the point of nailing a headline but then failing to engage the reader past the first line. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
2. For god sakes, insert some keywords + update the page title while you’re at it
This one isn’t rocket science, if your writing a blog about blog writing (wink face) insert some keywords in the headings, page titles, meta descriptions and of course the blog itself. It’ll help get you traffic organically. But a word of warning, if your blog starts to sound like a robot on repeat, ditch those keywords for narrative – content will triumph, always.
3. Don’t be afraid to insert some links
Contrary to what you may think, inserting links to other sources of information wont take traffic away from your website. It will help build you as a credible source of information, help readers further expand upon the information you are providing and proves helpful in pointing to one source that’s updated regularly in times when information keeps changing. Not to mention there are some SEO bonus points in there for pointing to internal pages and external sites.
Add some images too, they can be used to break up big slabs of content and visually, I think it looks pretty.
Like everything, do this in moderation…. not one likes a link farm.
4. Be a little narcissistic
Following on from the above point, sprinkle a little self love into the article. No one stoped reading a blog because they saw a graphic or link highlighting something else the user might like to read. Good marketers will have graphics to other similar blogs or pages on their website.
I once read 5 articles in a row on a website as I kept clicking the “read more like this” link and went full Alice In Wonderland on it.
5. Make use of categories and tags
This is probably the most underused tool on a website. Categories and tags help you organise your blog by helping users find information they want.
A blog category is like the table of contents for your blog. Categories are broad and encompass smaller, more defined topics (i.e., tags).
A category title should be descriptive – it is to assist readers finding the right type of content on your site and a tag is more specific and addresses particular topics in your blog. A tag is usually only a word or two and reflects the keywords or points of your article. If categories are your blog’s table of contents, tags are your blog’s index. For example, the categories for this blog is Content-Writing, The tags are blog organisation, SEO for blogs and blogging advice.
6. Sleep on it – never publish a rush job
Speaking from experience, never write a blog/article/news piece/ advertisement etc and publish it the same day. Even if you think it’s some of your best work. If you can sleep on it, do it – I’m sure you’ll be better for it.