Marketing

Don’t Be a Bla-Bla-Blogger: 10 Best Practices

Posted by Chad Coleman
min read
April 27th, 2017

Content marketing is a must.

In fact, Content Marketing Institute reported that as of last year, nearly 9 out of 10 B2B companies use content marketing in their overall strategy...and the numbers keep growing.

Let’s take a step back: content marketing encompasses any online material (blogs, social media posts, videos, infographics) that is created and shared and functions as a tool to organically  draw in your targeted audience.

That being said, I’m going to tackle one small, but crucial, element of content marketing in general: the blog. Since the very first blog (or, at the time, weblog) was published in 1994, the trend blew up and took a seat in the marketing hall of fame as a vital element to the overall marketing strategy.

But before you dive headfirst into cranking out article after article for your blog, pause, take a deep breath, and follow the 10 commandments below.

1. Speak directly to your targeted audience through your writing and topic

The whole point of writing articles for your content marketing strategy is to appeal to a specific audience and attract them to your brand. Look, I know how tempting it is to write about the first cool thing that comes to mind, but if it doesn’t fit the audience, don’t do it.

Once you have certain buyer personas or audiences in mind, think through their pain points, what they want and need, even what keeps them up at night. That’s the stuff you should be writing about, because the right people will care when you write as if speaking directly to them.

An easy trick for conveying the “especially for you” feel to your audience is to use “you” instead of “one, he, she, they, etc.” - this makes it easy for your readers to relate and find relevance.

Bottom line:

Write your articles for your buyer personas by giving them what they want and how they want it.

2. Tell a story, provide value, or otherwise engage your audience

As I laid out in a comprehensive article about emotionally engaging your audience, your writing absolutely cannot be empty fluff.

Besides appealing to a potential future customer, what’s the point of writing an article? Certainly not for SEO or just to have more stuff on your website, because the new age of marketing is about providing content with substance to draw in leads.

There are so many ways to write engaging, non-emotionally-flat articles, but it’s best to start with honing in on the value of the piece: what pain point does it solve? What gift of knowledge are you handing to the reader?

If the topic is less informative and more artistic, do as the authors do and tell an awesome story. Even if your story doesn’t end in some colossal, life-changing lesson, it sure as heck better grab your reader by the collar and keep them fixated until the very last punctuation mark.

Bottom line:

Give your readers the gift of a great story, solution, helpful tip, or anything else useful - just make sure to give them something.

3. Keep it casual - but polished

When you’re blogging, there is a certain level of casualness that just clicks with the reader, keeping her from dozing off or rolling her eyes - or just plain bouncing (meant both in a “peace, I’m out” and analytics sense).

This is a blog; it’s not like submitting a publication for a scientific journal, but it’s also not like texting your BFF. Think of it more as if you’re having an intelligent conversation in a casual setting: avoid internet slang like the plague, use big words if necessary, but strive to write in the lingo that your readers connect with in their industry.

Much like commandment number two, telling a story, your language should help the article naturally flow from one point to the next. Have you ever read an article that was dry, choppy, or even awkward at points? Trying to sound like someone you’re not (and peppering in words you don’t actually know) rarely triumphs, so using your unique and casual voice is a much better strategy for getting people to casually fall in love with your writing.

Bottom line:

Find the perfect balance between stiff, formal publications and texting-derived jargon by writing in your unique, casual - yet professional - voice.

4. Quality matters most

Anything you write, regardless of any other factors, absolutely needs to be of high quality. It may sound obvious, but what I’m getting at is that you cannot write something - anything - just to have a presence online and get seen, even if it’s on a relevant topic.

The glory days of “write something, boost SEO” are long gone; Google’s bots are all grown up and keen on building authority via quality links with pages that have quality content. This means that your writing should be interesting, valuable, focused, and overall worthy of reading. While this is easier said than done, it can be achieved with practice and perseverance.

Bottom line:

Quality is a results of having a solid topic and stance, doing your research, and not just reiterating what someone else has already said. Great writing garners great results.

5. ...But quantity matters second-most

Now, this is a tricky concept to get just right. Since the birth of blogging, the ideal post length dictated for every year has gotten longer, going from an original, miniscule 250 words to recent data suggesting you should write between 1,800 and 2,500 words. Before you accept this as the ultimate truth, keep in mind that:

  • The statistics are always changing
  • The length of your posts may vary from topic to topic - and industry
  • Readers’ attention spans vary per individual
  • There are many other factors to consider when measuring users’ time per page

Did you know that NewsCred Insights recently discovered that readers’ average time spent on an article is 37 seconds? Yes, that’s the real number, at least for now.

My advice to you is to vary post length and type, such as sprinkling in some infographics or video-based content in between articles. You will not only please the Google bots (and committed readers) with lengthy, quality content, but also please your busy, less patient readers with quick, bite-sized information.

Bottom line:

Set a word amount for the week and experiment with different post lengths, then measure, analyze, repeat, and hone in on the ideal article length for your audience.

6. Naturally utilize keywords

Keywords are your friend, but they don’t like to be paraded around awkwardly and non-contextually all over your article just to become a cheap trick for Google. With SEO, the bots are smarter than they used to be, and now it’s imperative that you carefully place keywords in relevant and appropriate places.

In a blog article, this means including the important keywords surrounding your topic within the title in a natural way: if you’re writing about SEO for blogging, make the title sound like natural English, but try to strategically include SEO and blogging so that the search bots know what it’s about.

Within your content, don’t just sprinkle keywords into awkward and ill-fitting places. If they naturally fit into the article, let them be there, but if they don’t, it’s worse to force words that cause your writing to make less sense.

Bottom line:

Use keywords only if they are relevant, fit naturally, and help search bots recognize the topic you’re writing about.  

7. Come up with a clear and catchy title

If I called this article “Write Better,” would you be able to gather what it’s about? Would it pique your interest? I’m wagering that it would not, but if it did somehow pass as catchy enough, it still would not provide nearly enough context to communicate who it’s for and what it’s truly about.

The title, though oft the most difficult part to write, is the first glimpse of your article that a reader gets - so make it count.

Start with clarity: make a list of different ways that you can communicate the overarching theme of your title, then make note of the key identifying words (likely keywords) that successfully and plainly describe what your article is about.

Now, try to come up with clever ways to relay the same message, preserving only the most important words to maintain clarity. I usually pull inspiration from idioms, puns, metaphors, word play, or jokes. Your goal is to come up with something that makes your ideal audience stop and say, “wait, what?” and motivates them to investigate further. Then, BAM, you have them where you want them.

Bottom line:

Your title should clearly convey the topic of your article without misleading readers, but also be enticing enough that they can’t help but click.

8. Properly use internal links

Internal links are super useful for your website: they make navigation easier, help boost page authority and ranking power when done well, and help elaborate on a side note without disrupting the flow of the article.

When writing an article where you quickly touch on a concept that you have explored in-depth in a previous article, you could easily use an internal link between the two. Not only does it give readers a chance to check out more pages on your site, spend more time overall, and choose how much information they bite off, but it is quite simple to do.

The most important thing to remember is to never put an internal link on a word that does not properly describe the destination that the link goes to. Let’s use the example of linking to my article about evergreen content:

Wrong: learn more about evergreen content

Right: learn more about evergreen content

"Learn more" is too general and could imply thousands of destinations, while linking an article about evergreen content to the phrase itself clearly depicts where the link is going. Trust me when I say that search bots would thank you for doing it the right way if they could.

Bottom line:

When used properly, meaning added in natural places in your writing and linked with relevant context, internal links will increase link juice between your website’s pages and boost your SERP (search engine results page) ranking.

9. Use relevant multimedia assets to help your writing along

If you think that your point can be made crystal clear with an infographic, throw it in there! If you want to toss an infographic into your article just because, please don’t.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I say it’s worth zero when put in the wrong context.

That being said, posts with images, videos, or GIFs perform better engagement-wise online, so if you have the perfect opportunity to explore these mediums and boost your writing as a result, go for it. The most important things to consider are:

  • Is it relevant?
  • Does it provide more context or disclose more information to the reader?
  • Does it properly serve as an example that cannot be shown through just words?
  • Is it visually appealing?

Bottom line:

Using multimedia assets is perfectly fine - or even excellent - so long as it checks off at least one question on the above list.

10. Always, always, always proofread.

I don’t care how good of a writer you are; we all screw up sometimes.

No matter how confident you are in your article, read through it again, ideally out loud, so that you can scan for errors, awkward or run-on sentences, or anything else that can stand in the way of all of your awesome ideas.

Many people, myself included, are critical of blogs to the extent that sloppy writing genuinely distracts from the content. It’s my personal pet peeve, which means that if I read an article with grammatical errors, I think to myself, “three strikes and I’m out of here.”

Bottom line:

Don’t let your readers miss the depth of your writing because they’re busy criticizing the surface. Just proofread - all the time, always.


I hope this article helped you get excited and prepared for writing magnificent and effectively engaging blog articles. If you have any advice for better writing that I didn’t cover, please share it below!

And remember, a successful content marketing strategy includes actively blogging, so get to it, like Bob Law does. 

 

 

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