Absolutely, without a doubt, the most important aspect of any successful blog is the posts themselves. Far too often, we argue over how to market our websites and how to make them look their best. While those things are important, if you don’t have well researched and written posts, it really doesn’t matter how well you market that beautiful looking site. You’ve got lousy content and that’s not going to get you very far.
By this point in history, the world knows the value of a blog. Businesses have regularly added them as asides to their primary websites. Blogs are valuable for their communication aspects as well as their SEO benefits. Blogs make otherwise static websites come alive. They’re the human element, if you will.
Why Launch a Business Blog?
Whether blogs offer added value to static business websites because of their inherent characteristics or employees of businesses that have blogs simply pay more attention to their websites as a whole, we’ll never know. What we do know, according to HubSpot, is:
- Business websites that incorporate blogs generate 67% more traffic than their counterparts without blogs do.
- Those who have incorporated business blogging into their marketing efforts have been rewarded with 97% more links to their web pages overall.
Again, which came first, the popular blog or the efforts that made that blog popular are unknown, but what’s relevant is that the efforts directed toward quality blogs can pay dividends that aren’t to be ignored. Simply put, there’s a lot of potential sitting around waiting to be awakened. With the right mix of efforts, blogs can push a brand’s awareness and interaction with its target market. Only if those efforts are effective though and in order to be effective, they need to be tried-and-true.
What Are Effective Blogging Efforts?
In the sections below, I’ll describe what efforts should be focused on to cultivate a successful business blog. Sure, you can do a heck of a lot of work towards an end, but if you’re focusing on the wrong things, your efforts will be wasted. I’ll discuss those actions you can take that will make a measurable difference.
Ingredients of Successful Blog Posts
In general, there are 10 areas you should focus on while writing any business blog post. I’ll list them below.
#1 – A Keyword Rich & Enticing Title
Your post title is the most obvious ingredient to get right, but it’s depressing to think about how many have gotten it wrong. Let’s take a closer look and pretend we’re writing a post for our business blog right now. We’ll pretend that the post is about a new Boeing jet. I’ll write a bad title and then a good one directly after.
Bad – Up, Up, & Away!
Good – Boeing Announces Completion of the Slickest & Most Modern Luxury Jet in History
Think about what the goal of a post title is. It’s meant to do three thing; first, offer a description of what the post is about, second, entice the reader into actually reading the post, and third, include enough keywords to appear in appropriate and relevant search engine results. The first title in the examples above didn’t meet these criteria while the second one did. With the internet containing billions of blogs and millions of new posts every day, I’d say a high quality, captivating, and enticing post title is rather critical.
#2 – A Seductive Excerpt & Intro
Titles are meant to entice while excerpts and intros are meant to seduce. Yes, your title earned you a click, but if you’d like to captivate your reader to follow through to the end of your post, you’ll need to make a punch right at the beginning.
In WordPress, there are two areas you need to address in order to accomplish the above. First, some themes offer space to display a custom excerpt on the archive pages (category, date, author). If your theme offers this space, take advantage of it. Write an excerpt for your post. It’ll be a few minutes extra work, but I think it’s worth it to draw your readers in. The second area you’ll want to address is the introduction to your post, right inside the post itself. Basically, the first/second paragraph. For examples of the areas I’m referring to, you may read the first paragraph of this post. Then, click through to the archive page upon which the link to this post resides (July 2024) and scroll down until you see the post. Read the excerpt and tell me if it’s inviting enough to persuade you into making a click.
Why are excerpts and intros so important? Because they’re the hook you need to entice readers into making an action – in this case, to read the remainder of the post. You need to be bold in these areas. The first few sentences have the potential to make or break your post so you better make them count.
#3 – Headings That Hold Attention
Headings are like outlines of a post. They tell readers, in very easy to understand terms, what a post is about. As readers scroll through your text, they’ll certainly see your headings if you’ve employed them. And if you’ve installed and take advantage of the plugin called Easy Table of Contents by Magazine3, all of your headings will appear toward the top of the post page. Why does this matter? Because the more attractive information you can give a reader, the more likely they’ll read to the end. The more likely they’ll fall in love with your writing and the more likely they’ll take the action you wish them to take.
Headings also display the fact that you know how to write a proper business blog post. You don’t merely write what’s on your mind in long paragraphs, you know how to organize your thoughts into chunks and then present those thoughts so they’re palatable to your audience. We all know that nobody wants to read long blog posts that offer very little in the way of structure, so be sure to use headings, bullet points, numbered lists, subheadings, tables, charts, images, and anything else that can break up the monotony.
We know long-form business blog posts are in fashion. They’re desirable. Readers want them to contain the important and informative information they crave. Break these posts down so when a reader tells a friend about the post, all they have to do is say, “Yeah, just scroll down to the ‘So and So’ section.” Make your writing easy for people to understand and tell others about.
#4 – A Story That Wins Hearts
Don’t take it from me, take it from Dale Carnegie, the master of winning people to his way of thinking. After all, isn’t that what a blog post is? An effort to win readers to understand, empathize with, and support your way of thinking? Sure, many posts can be simply informative in nature, but most posts have much more to do with, yes, informing, but informing others in such a way as to cultivate some sort of relationship. Whether it be a straightforward reading of your blog relationship or a much more complex customer/provider relationship, it matters not. The goal is the same. You need to win people over.
Dale claimed that storytelling is an essential ingredient for winning friends and influencing people. He actually inspired a book called, “The Art of Storytelling.” It provides the basic structure to build credibility, capture attention, and call others to action.
Every blog post needs a good story and that story should have goals:
- The story should flow in order to help the reader understand what you’re trying to communicate.
- The story should be so appealing that regular readers transition into fans and brand ambassadors.
- Each post should present a problem and a solution.
- The extent of the problem should never be diminished. It should be thoroughly explained so it’s fully appreciated.
- The solution should be clear, concise, and easily understood. Bullet points are a good option.
- The post should answer any questions the reader may have.
Let’s face it – many business oriented blog posts have the potential to be utterly boring in nature. When writing one of these posts, pretend that you’re on the stage of a TED talk. Connect with your audience and tell a story so it’s captivating. Try your best to avoid being a bore so you can turn a business issue into something exciting.
#5 – Persuasive Vocabulary
When writing a business blog post, one of you’re primary goals is to earn your readers’ trust. It’s a good thing that blogs are generally viewed as being trustworthy – as a matter of fact, blogs are viewed as the 5th most trustworthy source of information on the internet today. With that in mind, every post you write should continually encourage and cultivate that trust. You should do your best at persuading readers to believe what you share and once that trust is granted, you’ll have an easier time convincing them to take whatever action it is you’d like them to take.
How do you persuade with a blog post? Why, use persuasive vocabulary. To become an authority in your niche, you’ll need to sound like an authority. This is what Study.com has to say about persuasive vocabulary:
Persuasive language encompasses a variety of words and phrases. Some examples include introductory phrases like “for example” and “in other words,” descriptive words like “trustworthy” and “horrible,” conclusion language such as “for this purpose” and “should,” and transition language like “similarly” and “despite.”
And here’s what Branding Strategy Insider has to say about it:
The Canadian Consumer Magazine quotes a research report saying that the 12 most persuasive words in the English language are: You, money, save, new, results, health, easy, safety, love, discovery, proven, and guarantee. Note that the three-letter word “sex”, didn’t make the top 12. Source: [Gettysburg (Pa.)
I suppose every business post is sort of a sales pitch. Being as such, it’s probably a good idea to use vocabulary that’s oftentimes used in sales.
#6 – A Post That Stands Apart
Are you still reading this post? Has it bored you yet? I hope not. If you’re still reading, I’m going to have to assume you’re not bored and that you’re somewhat interested in either the topic upon which I write or perhaps even the way I’m writing – and that’s a good thing. It’s actually another one of the primary goals of any business blog post – don’t be boring.
No matter your topic, no one want’s to be bored to tears while reading about it. Even the most somber of topics can be livened up in some way. Just remember, offering an appeal to someone means that your post is unique – something similar hasn’t be seen across the blogosphere. So to sum up, make your posts unique, interesting, and with personality.
#7 – An Aesthetic Edge
There are many business bloggers out there who have enjoyed wild success with the use of mere text. That’s fine, but don’t you think adding photos and videos to posts can make them even better? By adding appropriate and complementary images and video to your already incredibly captivating words, you can heighten a reader’s experience. While a talented author can create a fair amount of imagery with his or her writing, good photography can obviously help. And video? That can make things just so, so good. So the next time you’re about to write a post for your business blog, think about ways to enhance the experience with these types of media.
#8 – Shareability
I’m not sure I can think of one blogging platform that doesn’t include the ability to share a post. With WordPress alone, there are dozens of different plugins that give authors the ability to allow others to share. For this blog, I use Shareaholic as well as Simple Social Icons. After I’ve captured the attention of a potential reader with my title and intro paragraph and after I’ve enticed them with my text and media, I’d certainly hope they’d share my work with friends on social media. There’s no reason that should be a challenge. So what’s the point? Do some research into sharing plugins and install them on your blog. It’ll be worth the effort. If you’re using a platform such as Substack, sharing capabilities are included. Feature them in your writing.
#9 – Simple & To-the-Point Takeaways
Axios, the news website, is very good at offering its readers simple takeaways. They’ll begin a story with a few sentences and then directly below, start a new paragraph that includes the words, Why It Matters at its beginning. And at the end of many of its posts, it concludes with links to other stories that begin with, Go Deeper. It’s this kind of directness that readers appreciate. Yes, many business and consumer related blog posts are quite a bit longer than Axios’ stories, but if you’re able to add sections that bring readers to your point(s) quickly, it’s a good idea to do so. I think my “In This Post” (table of contents) section at the start of every post on this blog does a decent job of that.
#10 – Your Desired Action
Let me ask you a question: why did you write your blog post in the first place? What did you hope to get out of the effort? While this is a simple question, it’s oftentimes one not easily answered. Do you want potential customers to call your offices for more information? Do you want to lead blog readers to your primary website? Are you trying to hire employees? Drive website traffic in general? Build links? Your goals for the post need to be spelled out as calls to action down at the bottom of the post page. Be clear. Don’t mince words. Lead the reader to the answers they seek. After all, you put a tremendous amount of work into your writing – make it pay off.
Are you a business blogger? What’s your opinion on the essential ingredients of any spectacular post? I’d love to read your opinions below. And if you have any questions at all about what I’ve shared above, please leave them down below as well. Thanks for reading!
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