No matter what kind of business you have, your promotions and marketing plan should definitely include writing a blog with content your readers will find helpful, engaging, and educational. In doing this, you’ll see more business; businesses with a blog receive 55 percent more website visitors than those without one. 

A blog is also a great place to increase your website’s search engine optimization, not only driving more traffic to your page but building trust with your audience. With a blog, you can also engage more on social media, showing that you as a brand are interested in hearing what your customers are interested in.

Here are our favorite tips for writing content for your website:

1. The Parts of Your Blog

First off, you need a great headline to attract a reader’s attention. It can’t be too long, it has to be descriptive, and it has to generate hits. Make sure your headline has a keyword in it too so that you can add that to your SEO.

Next up, you need a subject that your audience will care about and that’s in your business’s realm of expertise. For instance, if you have a tree care business, your readers probably will not be interested in what you think of this year’s Oscar picks. Even if they love Hollywood, they are visiting your website to hear how to prune their dogwood.

So once your audience reads your attention-catching headline, you still need a hook to draw them in further. They may have clicked on the headline, but now you want them to read the whole article. An easy way to keep them reading is to present a problem. That tree care business might remind the audience about the old tree on their property is unhealthy or a danger in high winds, for instance.

Lastly, after all that, you need to present a solution to the problem you raised. This is similar to writing persuasive essays to convince your audience they need you and your company’s services. If you’ve convinced them, they’ll keep coming back for more.

2. Proofread and Edit!

Nothing can undermine you more than using the wrong “there,” “they’re,” or “their.” Even if your reader is able to look beyond the awkward language and the errors, they may think that you don’t care enough about your blog to be careful about presenting the best possible content. You want to show that you take the time to do a thing right.

Posting a blog article that you’ve only just finished is a great way to find a bunch of errors and run-on sentences after the fact, so reread your article when you’ve finished it and make sure there are no typos. 

Try reading it out loud to see if the sentences are too long. If you find yourself out of breath by the end of a sentence, maybe you should break it up. Let your blog article sit for a little bit in your drafts—an hour or a day, depending on your deadline3then read it again. Have someone else look over it too. It can be hard to check your own work for errors, and a fresh pair of eyes never hurts.

3. Write About What You Know and Love

Your business is important to you, but no one loves every single part of their job. Thinking back on that tree care business example, you may love talking about which kind of tree to plant, but when it comes to talking about pruning that tree, you draw a blank. Maybe that subject is something you don’t know a lot about, or maybe it’s something you are well-versed in but don’t care to do. If the article you write about pruning the tree is lackluster, the fact that your article about pruning the tree is factual won’t matter, because your audience already lost interest and moved on.

The solution here is to find someone who excels at that job and have them write the article for this week, or at least give you ideas on why they love it so much or why it’s so important to the business. Remember, we’re writing to share solutions. The best articles have not just news about your company, expert tips, and relevant information, but they also have heart.

4. Writing for the Internet

Blog writing is different from other kinds of writing. You’d get tired of reading a novel online if you hadn’t expected a novel, right? Writing a blog for your customers is different because long paragraphs are much more difficult to read on a computer screen. People have come to expect a shorter, more information-filled article when they’re researching a business or a topic.

You want to make sure your article is short and to the point but gives enough information about a clear topic. You can use bullet points or a numbered list to make reading even easier. Make sure each of these points supports your main topic. If you find you have a lot of relevant tangents, you can always link to other articles you’ve written or to other online resources. 

Highlighting or emphasizing each point is a good way to draw attention to them. This can help keep a clean outline that supports your main statement—and it can keep you on track when you’re writing as well.

5. Promotion

The project isn’t over when you’ve safely posted your beautifully written blog post online. You have to drive people to it so they can read it. Hopefully, they’ll then share it with their friends or repost it on social media. Your article will have some keywords in it already so that when people are researching your industry or looking for a business to help them with a specific project, your blog will pop up on their search engine results and they’ll start reading.

You can also start an email newsletter so that folks who sign up to hear from you will receive your new blog posts in their inboxes as soon as you post them. Consider guest blogging on another website to drum up interest from other platforms. Make sure you also post about your blog on your social media accounts, showcasing what’s up in your industry’s world. You’ll be on your way to building a platform in no time.

If you’d like to learn more about adding a blog to your business’s website, and maybe even hire an expert to do the work for you, speak with a professional at InnoVision Marketing Group.