To Blog or Not To Blog?

That seems to be the question for many to whom this concept is new.

At Epiphany, we encourage our clients to blog. Or, at the least, give it a try. It’s a fascinating art form in and of itself. When blogging, here are a few tips to help you with catching your audience’s attention, tracking metrics,  and even a few items that will assist you in building your SEO plan.

1: Understand your audience.

• Have a clear understanding of who they are.
• What do they want to know about?
• What will resonate with them?

2: Start with a topic and working title.

• Brainstorm a few topic ideas to get you started.
• Choose one.
• Create a working title that grabs the reader.

3: Write an intro (and make it captivating).

• Work to keep their attention within the first two lines or you loose them.
• Show the purpose of the post and explain how it helps readers solve a problem. (Remove or ease their pain point. Teach them something new.)

4: Organize your content.

• Avoid too much information — for the reader and the writer.
• The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content.
• Ideas: sections, lists, tips, whatever’s most appropriate. But it must be organized! Don’t just ramble and wax eloquent. It doesn’t work!
• Outline your post.

5: Write the content.

• Take your outline and just fill in the blanks.
• Use your outline as the guide.
• Expand on all of your points as needed.
• Write about what you feel comfortable talking about, and do additional research, if necessary, to gather more information.

6: Make it look great/easy to read. Visual Appearance

• Pictures don’t make a post visually appealing – it’s the formatting and organization of the post.
• Keep titles and subtitles in the post consistent.
• Do pictures always have a similar border?
• Keep style consistent from post to post.

 7: Include a CTA (Call-to-Action) at the end.

• What do you want them to do? Why are you doing this? (Conversion)
• At the end of every blog post, add your CTA.
• They will click on the CTA if they enjoyed your blog post and want more information on that particular topic.

8: Optimize for on-page SEO.

• Incorporate keywords but don’t impact reader experience.
• Make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly. Don’t overdo keywords or attempt arbitrary keyword density — Google’s knows!

9: Pick a catchy title.

• Keep the title accurate and clear.
• Make it sexy — whether it’s through strong language, alliteration or another literary tactic.
• Optimize for SEO by sneaking some keywords in there.
• Shorten it up. No one likes a long, overwhelming title.

10: Add a great image!

• Put additional visuals to complement the different sections of your post.
• Add data or statistics to back up any claims you made in your post.

We know that’s a lot to swallow. That’s why some folks simply ask us to handle this for them. But you can learn and do this, too.Remember: statistics show that blogs do affect purchasing decisions. It may seem like a lot of work, and it is, blogs, however, are the hub of a good inbound based Social Media strategy.

If you’d like assistance with blogging for you or your business, we’d love to come alongside. Give us a call. It’s what we do, and we enjoy doing it.

– Stephanie and the Team at Epiphany

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