6 Keys To Blogging Success

A company blog is a great way to keep customers informed of news and events surrounding your business, and an even better way to deliver a continuous flow of new and interesting content online. In my experience, small businesses that utilize a blog to its fullest potential see an improvement in search engine optimization (SEO) as the unique content brings in visitors from popular search engines such as Google or Bing. Here are six areas where businesses can build traction through blogging.

Understand the audience

Before you even write your first blog post, carefully consider who your intended readers are. Are you hoping to update current customers on product and company news, or inform prospective customers on the basics of the products and services you offer? You may even choose to write about your industry on a more general tone as well or position the site with more advice based articles. By understanding the intended audience and what it wants, you can craft blog post topics accordingly to reach the highest possible engagement, including subscriptions, comments, and shares.

Plan your structure

While audience is important, it is still possible for your blog to target multiple audience segments across several topic areas based on the structure. Break your blog down into sub-categories. From here, visitors can choose the topic that best suits their needs. For example, users looking for specific product guides can navigate to posts only discussing that subject.

Segmenting the content of your blog works best when the navigation on the website properly supports it. In other words, making it easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for will ensure increased readership. Provide these sub-categories in a prominent location of the page so it is easily accessible.

Develop a content schedule

One of the biggest problems I see small businesses running into with their blog is a lack of consistent content. Often, blogs will start off strong with a regular schedule for the first few weeks, and then drop off to increasingly seldom posts after that. By developing a long-term plan for ideas and timing, and remaining diligent, you can count on your blog staying up-to-date and not falling behind. If your visitors see that you haven’t posted in a long time, they are unlikely to return. Therefore it is important to showcase that your blog is frequently adding new content.

Understand reading behaviors

The way you write has a huge bearing on keeping your audience interested and coming back. Online readers tend to respond better to content that is broken down into lists or small sections, rather than long pages of text. It is difficult to retain the attention of a typical Web visitor, so making your content engaging, but also able to be read quickly and easily, is very important.

Use engaging imagery

Similar to the previous point, the visuals you incorporate into your blog posts are almost as equally important as the text. Try to accompany each one of your blog posts with interesting photos or graphics that can adequately illustrate the content. Not only does a strong visual draw readers in and keep them interested, but it will also assist in making your point beyond words.

Follow up on comments

Finally, once a blog post is written and published, don’t forget about it. Make sure you have a method in place to keep you aware of any new comments or shares on an older blog article. Take the time to respond to any questions or comments you may receive and your readers will appreciate the community atmosphere provided by your blog.

I Write Things.