Part 1 of this 2 part installment covered topic choice and strategy and then some basic pointers about writing a business blog. After you have picked topic you can proceed onto content/writing and then to distribution. Throughout this guide we will not be telling you how to technically write your article, but rather some pointers to make your blog top notch for your readers, your business, and your website.
Headline
The first part of writing blog is creating a great title. Think hard about what you want to write about. Sometimes the “eureka effect” comes in handy, just write down everything you think of which may work out. You want the title tell the user what they are reading about in a creative way to interest them. Keep marketing in mind; grab their attention!
Body
The body is the most important part of your article. This is where you need to capture the reader and convey the information you are trying to pass along. The body must be of importance to your reader in order to keep them interested. There are many different grammatical ways to write an article and you can choose which one you would like to use, however, we do offer some tips regarding content which you should follow no matter what.
Keywords
You will want to use keywords, or specific phrases which you want to target within your article. Do not do it so much that it becomes repetitive. Try to repeat these keywords 2 to 3 times on a short page or 4 to 6 times on longer ones. Your keywords should be included somewhere within the first paragraph of your article. This will catch the search engines eye and will make it rank your site higher.
Internal Links
You will want to use links within your article as much as you can. Try to link to related material or relevant pages on your own website and limit links to sites outside of your own. Keep this rule in mind when linking on your website: when linking to yourself open the link in the same window and when linking to others open the link into a new window. The goal is to keep a user on your site as long as possible. Therefore, you do now want to put in a link that takes them off right away. Open links to others in different windows so it is easier for them to find their way back to your page.
Image
Articles should contain some sort of image in order to catch a prospective reader’s attention. The image needs to represent some sort of aspect of your article. If you cannot find an image to relate your article to, then do not use one, it will only be more distracting to the reader.
Remember to always to make your image optimized for the web. Keep your images down in not just only size dimensions of the image itself, but to keep the file size down also. Try to play around with quality adjustments and file formats to optimize it as best as possible. Keep the file name descriptive but small and lowercase. If you need to use spaces, use hyphens instead. Don’t forget your alt tags with a description for screen readers and to stay W3C valid.
Show it to the World
A great article has no worth if there is no one reading it. After you have written your article, proofread a few times and posted it on your site, it is time to share it with the world. Even though people will eventually find your article using searches on the internet or just by visiting your site, you will want to get the information to them quicker. Social media is a great resource for this. I recommend posting it on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Digg. Other great resources are email blasts and RSS feeds. Make sure to gather peoples input and when you are ready to write again, go all the way back to step one.
Articles and blogs can be powerful tools for a business. They can create dedicated readers and customers along with proving your authority in your industry. Blogs can drive readers, or prospective clients, to your site while informing current ones. You need to use your blog to build these relationships between you and the public in order to convert them to customers. If you think a blog might be right for your website, please contact us for a free 1 hour consultation on how a blog could create a great business blog.
