Your Blog Writing Project Starts Now
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to start the writing process and once you rip that barrier with the support you need, the challenge is to remain consistent and how to keep the creative juice flowing. Don’t hesitate to begin the blog project now, and good things will follow.
Use your keywords on the title and first paragraph – Ask your SEO consultant for your brand keywords and build a write-up around it. Don’t overstuff your key phrases, no need to use all. If you have 15 key terms, just use one to three depending on the natural flow of your content.
Draft an article/blog content plan – Schedule posts can vary but make sure that you are committed to writing quality contents. Avoid writing now then two years after or never again… this scenario is for real. I’ve seen websites with this big blog schedule gap.
Give value – Write with purpose, and remember, it’s not always about your personal journey; it’s about what you’ve learned and how it can help your readers. Give tips with a clear target reader in mind, so you don’t fall out of tune with your messaging.
Write in bullets and have highlights – You may be giving a thought-provoking concept but try not to overwhelm your readers. Don’t bore and intimidate them. Make your idea chewable and easy to digest. Bear in mind that it is a blogging platform, and not a text book or your diary.
Catchy images – Images have to make sense to your overall content. It has to be a visual representation of your words. It is not supposed to confuse your readers and lead them to think away from the actual flow of your blog.
Leave a strong takeaway – Make them think or encourage them to reach out… this is a good way to build a relationship. Given the 300 to 500 words of your article, they should be able to articulate it for at least 75 words. Ideas that will stick to their head, push them to move, or make them think twice. Create a call-to-action that can really mobilize your readers.
A successful blog doesn’t happen in a snap. It’s a journey of sharing, learning, and connecting. Start your blog writing project today, and watch your ideas come to life!
Tips When Outsourcing a Writing Task
When hiring someone to write for your online marketing content (such as website, social media, blogs, white paper, etc.), start it right by providing the person with the information he needs to fill the knowledge gap. This will save time and money especially if you are paying the writer on a per hour basis. Tons of back-and-forth revisions can also be avoided if there is a proper direction. Either you schedule a zoom meeting to have a thorough discussion or provide him with a gdrive file of the company’s information. Better yet, do both.
- Give a background about the company so the writer gets a feel of what he is writing about. No need to elaborate too much but just the highlights.
- Clarify your objective. He needs to understand the deeper context of his own writing tasks. Mobilize him with a clear path; say, you are rebranding your company so it can cope with the new online trends and you need to adjust your content to better fit the market. Make it relatable to the new identified audience while keeping the message relevant to the existing group.
You can start with this: “Our tone is professional yet friendly, and the profile of our readers include…”
- Describe your audience. Good if you can provide an audience profile so he gets a realistic picture of who will eventually read his material.
- Simplify the jargons. Help him uncover the terms that may sound strange for a new comer in the industry; this way, his writing will not alienate the readers and the technical terms can sound naturally pleasant. Good to also recommend resources the can aid his research.
- Share the style and voice that you like to “hear”. You can refer him to a prior content output or other online references. The point is to get a grip of how he will narrate your story.
Just last month, I also wrote an article about 7 Pre-Writing Considerations that can come useful when engaging with a writer. You can also apply the given steps as you move forward in building a productive writing project.
Pursuing a Blog Project: 7 Pre-Writing Considerations
You have decided to start blogging for your company website and have line-up possible topics to discuss (as listed from the last month’s digital marketing blog: 6 Blog Ideas for Your Company Website). Perhaps you have also assigned your staff to draft an article; gathering write-ups for the content pipeline is fun but sometimes reading the content from your team can be disappointing for many reasons (content, voice, grammar issues). Or perhaps the quality is good, but the material is appropriate for another purpose—the flow of story is quite distant or out of sync with the website’s writing objective. To address this, it helps if you are all aligned and has the same perspective on the project.
Agree on the guidelines and follow them. Schedule a meeting with those involved to calibrate the tasks, understand the expectations, be clear with the instructions, reiterate the mandatory elements, and assign the person in charge.
Here are Your Seven Pre-Writing Considerations:
- Identify the Tone – Proper tone has to be set. Is it going to be friendly, authoritative, serious, funny, conversational? Each of us has a different blogging style but we can tweak it according to the given tone.
- Know Your Readers – Who are the target readers? What’s the demographic? The site visitors are also readers of your blog; targeting the content and satisfying the purpose of their visit is a must to make them your returning visitors.
- Use the Keywords – Ask your SEO consultant for the copy of your keywords. Use two or three of these search terms on the title and first paragraph of your blog.
- Browse for Samples – Check for possible articles that you like to be the peg of your writers (review industry and competitors’ blogs to give you ideas). This will give them a specific direction of what to write.
- Use Images – Make sure that all blogs have corresponding images (depends on the length but one or two would be okay) either original and retrieve from the net with proper credits.
- Set a Deadline – When is the submission date? Delegate an “editor” role to one of the members. It is going to be his responsibility to make sure all blogs are submitted on time. He or someone else must also be commissioned to edit the write-up following the agreed guidelines and implement general grammatical fixes.
- Writing Brief – After discussion, finalize with a blog brief and disseminate the gathered information to serve as the outline of the writing project (from the tone, keywords to use, number of words, and when the blog would be due).
Staying organize and consistent is vital for the success of your writing initiative. This effort can jumpstart a stronger online presence and drive brand advocates. Writing something of value goes a long way.
6 Blog Ideas for Your Company Website
Now that you have finally convinced your team to start blogging and drove them to appreciate its importance in terms of building the brand on the internet, the next question is always— what to write? Creating a blog is not a one-time activity so pipelining the contents would benefit the overall digital marketing campaign whether you are doing online in the Philippines or in other countries.
Here are some quick suggestions that can help spark more ideas:
- Industry News – Highlight the findings and mention the trusted source of the study while giving your own point-of-view and interpretation.
- How-To Articles – Assume that not everyone knows your product or service so consider your blog as a gateway of explaining what you can do. Reach out to your target market wherever they are in the world and convert them to become advocates.
- Answer Problems – Try to consider the inquiries you are getting from your fill-up forms—what common questions do you get? When you attend a face-to-face meeting with clients, what are their usual issues? Gather and answer relevant chunks of these questions then write contents of at least 300 words.
- Your Own Stories – Bring to front your expertise and what you have learned from your profession. Take note of your experience, what you have learned in the process, and enumerate tips; become an authority in your field.
- Share Your Events – Are you invited to do a talk in a conference? Attending an industry-related seminar? Joining an expo? Is your company inviting a guest speaker? Promote it on your blog and write a gist of what happened.
- Check Your Search Query Report – If your website has a Google analytics installed or offers a summary of “Top Searches” report, you can use the information to discover what your site visitors are looking for and translate it to a blog post.
And most of all, enjoy writing! Writing a blog goes beyond the act of creating content. It encompasses the satisfaction of connecting with your audience, sharing knowledge, and leaving a positive impact on others. Still need convincing? Hop to my previous blog: 4 Reasons to Create a Blog Page on Your Website.
4 Reasons to Create a Blog Page on Your Website
Part of my online marketing recommendation to clients is to consistently create a blog post. Given an SEO perspective, a website is not complete without an article, insights, or news page. I encounter some resistance from site owners, especially non-writers, emphasizing that their website can survived without it. Perhaps it can, but has the site attained its main objective or has it reached the target market? Did the website with no blog provide a prominent impact to the overall marketing campaign of the company?
A well-thought, properly written blog that is published regularly may be considered a worthy investment. Schedule of publication may vary—it can be weekly, once a month or twice a week depending on your resources, but the idea is to do it religiously. What can blogging do for you?
- Makes you an expert in the field
Sharing your knowledge to the site visitors gives a signal that you know your industry, your business, and you are capable to deliver what your website is offering. Blog page is a good push to your “about us” and “testimonials” as it highlights that you are truly in the zone of your trade.
What can happen then? Site visitors can be converted to customers or clients. You can also become a top-of-mind resource when your service is suddenly needed.
- Builds engagement
If you hit the mark and was able to answer a specific question of readers, expect that they would be in touch with you or may ask more information about what you wrote; this is an ideal setting to offer your assistance and put your product/service at the forefront that does not appear imposing and hard sell.
Some readers would just appreciate the value of your effort and share your contents via social media. In a likely scenario, their friends might click the link, read your post, re-share, and be aware of your existence creating a ripple effect. Voila! You get the advertising your business needs for free!
- Drives traffic (or visitors) to your site
More readers mean more site visitors and more opportunity to develop awareness of the website’s core products/services. The created content is also a very useful material for social media posting that can convert followers to readers.
- Improves search engine ranking
There is no schedule as to when Google bots crawl a website but when it does, we need to make sure that the page is SEO-friendly with fresh updates. This does not mean that we have to constantly rewrite the texts found at the “mission/vision” or “contact us” pages; that is why a blog is necessary.
Simply put, a new post gives Google a cue that the page is alive and that it maintains a good number of web traffic. This is also a spot-on activity to strengthen your SEO strategy (as you simultaneously work on the keywords, meta tags, image optimization, Google analytics, and a heap more.)
A good blog also helps keep your visitors stay longer on the page and thus reducing bounce rate (the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page at a given duration) which may suggest Search Engines that something is relevant, readers are not leaving at once! It serves as one of the many factors for better ranking on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). So, when someone runs a query using your preferred keywords, Google might then include you up on the list!
If you are not yet implementing a blog page to your existing website or if you are planning to (re)launch a new site, make this your mandatory feature. It’s going to be worth your writing time.