STARTING YOUR OWN BLOG
What Is a Blog?
In Simple words, a blog is
a tool that can help develop an online presence, attract leads, and engage with
an audience. It's often a series of editorial content centered around a central
topic that demonstrates industry expertise -- for instance, a catering company
might write blog posts like "The 11 Best Appetizers to Serve to a
Crowd" or "Stress-Free Dinner Parties: Recipes that are Prepared
Ahead of Time".
Blogs can help drive traffic to your website, convert that
traffic into leads, establish authority in your industry, and ultimately grow your business
Blog Post Mistakes
to Avoid
Most of a blog's traffic is
driven organically -- in other words, consumers will search for something on a
search engine and click on your blog if it matches their intended topic.
However, there are a lot of organizations competing for your audience's
attention, so it's important to avoid common blog mistakes to stand out.
1. Create blog posts that serve your
larger company goals.
Mistake:
You think of ideas that only interest you.
As much as you might read
and re-read your blog posts after you publish them, you're not the only reader,
or the intended reader.
When you start blogging,
ideas will come to you at random times -- in the shower, on a run, while on the
phone with your mom. While the ideas may come at random moments, the ideas
themselves should never be random. Just because it's a good idea in general --
or something that interests you personally -- doesn't mean it's a good idea for
your company.
Solution:
Align your blog posts with company growth goals.
The reason you're blogging is to solve problems for your
audience and, ultimately, to grow your business. So, all of your blog post
ideas should help serve those growth goals.
They should have natural tie-ins to issues in your industry and address
specific questions and concerns your prospects have.
Need help figuring out what those goals
are and how to address them? Chat with your manager about the larger company
goals, and then schedule a meeting with someone on the sales team to hear what questions they
get asked most often. After both meetings, you should know which goals you need
to achieve and have some ideas on how to achieve them.
2. Identify what resonates with your
audience.
Mistake:
You forget about your persona.
If you want your blog
content to perform well (i.e. generate traffic, leads, and sales), it must
resonate with your audience and compel them to take action. One of the biggest
mistakes is assuming that your content will perform if you haven't actually considered
your audience or the actions you want them to take.
Solution:
Understand your persona's pains and solve for them.
If you're not consciously thinking
about your persona's pains, you're just creating content for content's sake,
which is a waste of resources.
3. Write like you talk.
Mistake:
Your writing is too stiff.
Writing a blog post is much different than writing a term paper.
But when bloggers first start out, they usually only have experience with the
latter. The problem? The style of writing from a term paper is not the style of writing people enjoy reading.
Let's be honest: Most of the people who see your post aren't
going to read the whole thing. If you want to keep them interested, you have to
compel them to keep reading by writing
in a style that's effortless to read.
Solution:
Try to write blogs that feel personable.
It's okay to be more conversational in your writing -- in fact,
we encourage it. The more approachable your writing
is, the more people will enjoy reading it. People want to feel
like they're doing business with real people, not robots.
So loosen up your writing.
Throw in contractions. Get rid of the jargon. Make a pun or two. That's how
real people talk -- and that's what real people like to read.
4.
Show your personality; don't tell it.
Mistake:
You think people care about you as a writer.
It sounds harsh, but it's the truth: When people first start out
blogging, they think that their audience will be inherently interested in their stories and their interests ... but that's not the case. It's no knock
against them as a person -- it's just that when you're new, no one is
interested in you and your experiences. People care way more about what you can
teach them.
Solution:
Infuse your personality without eclipsing the topic.
Even though people don't really care that it's you that's writing the post, you can infuse parts of your
personality in your writing to make them feel more comfortable with you. How
you do that is entirely up to you. Some people like to crack jokes, some like
to make pop culture references, and others have a way with vivid descriptions.
To infuse personality into
your own writing, try looking for ways to relate to your readers on the topic
you're writing about -- then write in the first person as if you're hanging out
with them and chatting about it. Make your tone personal, approachable, and
engaging, just like you would in a face-to-face conversation.
5.
Make your point again and again.
Mistake:
You digress.
Although you are encouraged
to let your own personality shine through in your writing, don't abuse the
privilege. It's one thing to be yourself in the topic you're covering, but it's
another thing to bring up too many personal experiences that bury the point
you're trying to make.
Don't digress into these
personal anecdotes and analogies too much -- your readers aren't sitting in
front of you, which means you can't guarantee that you have their undivided
attention. They can (and will) bounce from your article if they lose
patience.
Solution:
Repeatedly assert your argument.
To prevent your writing from
losing its audience, restate your point in every section of the article. The
best blog posts commit to an overarching message and then deliver it gradually,
expressing it multiple times in small ways from beginning to end.
If you're writing about how much water a potted plant needs, for
example, don't spend three paragraphs telling a story of how you came home to a
dead fern after returning from a two-week vacation. This story offers real
evidence of your point, but what is your
point? Certain plants can't go without water for more than 14 days. That's one
possible point, and it should be stated upfront.
6.
Start with a very specific working title.
Mistake:
Your topics are too broad.
When people start blogging,
they generally want to write on really big topics like:
·
"How to Do Social Media
Marketing"
·
"Business Best
Practices"
·
"How to Make Money on the
Internet"
Topics like these are far too broad. Because there are so many
details and nuances in these topics, it's really hard to do a good job
answering them. Plus, more specific topics tend to attract smaller, more
targeted audiences, which tend to be higher quality and
more likely to convert into leads and customers.
So, to get the most
short-term and long-term benefits of blogging, you'll need to get way more
specific.
Solution:
Begin with a clear, concise idea.
Nailing really specific blog topics is crucial to knocking your
first few posts out of the park.
Keep in mind that a working
title isn't final -- it's just a concrete angle you can use to keep your
writing on track. Once you nail this stage of the ideation process, it's much
easier to write your blog posts.
7.
Specific posts should still tie into the bigger picture.
Mistake:
You're don't tie a specific topic into your reader's broader struggle.
You already know how
important it is to resonate with your buyer persona and understand their pain
points. However, there's a reason why they're experiencing pain points and what
is driving them to get it solved.
Solution:
Understand the challenges and consequences they're facing.
You should be asking
yourself:
·
What is at stake?
·
What do they gain by taking
action?
·
What are they afraid of happening
if they don't take action?
All of these things can
manifest in the content that you write for your blog post. Doing so will signal
to your reader that you understand what they're going through and you want to
help.
8. Use a specific post type, create an
outline, and use headers.
Mistake:
Your writing is a brain dump.
Sometimes when I get a
great idea I'm excited about, it's really tempting to just sit down and let it
flow out of me. But what I get is usually a sub-par blog post.
Why? The
stream-of-consciousness style of writing isn't really a good style for blog
posts. Most people are going to scan your blog posts, not read them, so it
needs to be organized really well for that to happen.
Solution:
Structure your blog with a template, outline, and section headers.
The first thing you should do is choose what type of blog post you're going to write. Is
it a how-to post? A list-based post? A curated collection post? A SlideShare presentation?
For help on this, Reach me privately on +254 708
459 336. Once you have a template down, it'll be easier to write your
outline.
Writing an outline makes a
big difference. If you put in the time up front to organize your thoughts and
create a logical flow in your post, the rest becomes easy -- you're basically
just filling in the blanks.
Using headers is also
critical for reader experience.
To write a blog post outline, first come up with a list of the
top takeaways you want your readers to get from your post. Then, break up those
takeaways into larger section headers. When you put in a section header every
few paragraphs, your blog post becomes easier and more enjoyable to read. (And
plus, header text with keywords is
good for SEO.) When you finally get to writing, all you'll have to do is
fill in those sections.
9.
Give your audience something to walk away with.
Mistake:
You're relying on the conceptual instead of the concrete.
One of the first things
you’ll do in your blog research is look up how other publications are writing
about a topic. However, if you notice, almost all the results on the first page
of Google are writing about conceptual, vague ideas. How can your blog stick
out? You can include actual, actionable steps to achieve success.
Solution:
Include actionable steps to achieve success.
One of the biggest tenets
of content creation is that it should be useful, and that means your audience
should walk away with something.
This might come in the form
of a "how-to" as you recommend they implement a particular strategy,
or it might simply be a suggestion for a tool or tactic to make a process
easier.
10.
Use data and research to back up the claims you make in your posts.
Mistake:
You don't use data as evidence.
Let's say I'm writing a
blog post about why businesses should consider using Instagram for marketing.
When I'm making that argument, which is more convincing?
1. "It seems like more people are using Instagram
nowadays."
2.
"Instagram’s user base is growing
far faster than social network usage in general in the Kenya Instagram will grow 15.1% this year, compared to just
3.1% growth for the social network sector as a whole."
The second, of course. Arguments and claims are much more
compelling when rooted in data and research. As marketers, we don’t just have
to convince people to be on our side about an issue -- we need to convince them
to take action. Data-driven content catches
people's attention in a way that fluffy arguments do not.
Solution:
Use data to support your arguments.
In any good story, you’ll offer a main argument, establish
proof, and then end with a takeaway for the audience. You can use data in blog posts to introduce your
main argument and show why it's relevant to your readers, or as proof of it
throughout the body of the post.
11. Use examples to back up why what
you're saying is important.
Mistake:
You're not adding enough context.
Solution: Illustrate ideas with examples, visual aids, and
additional content.
As bloggers, we become
experts in our industry. Because of this, it's easy to forget about specificity
when giving advice, explaining examples, or walking through a common process.
Ask yourself questions
like, "Will readers know what this big word means?", "Will they
recognize this acronym?", or "Can they easily visualize this example,
or do I need to add a visual aid?" From there, you can determine where you
need to explain something more, or hyperlink potentially confusing words other
blog posts that relate to them.
12.
When drawing from others' ideas, cite them.
Mistake:
Your content borders on plagiarism.
Plagiarism didn't work in
school, and it certainly doesn't work on your company's blog. But for some
reason, many beginner bloggers think they can get away with the old
copy-and-paste technique.
You can't. Editors and
readers can usually tell when something's been copied from somewhere else. Your
voice suddenly doesn't sound like you, or maybe there are a few words in there
that are incorrectly used. It just sounds ... off.
Plus, if you get caught stealing
other people's content, you could get your site penalized by
Google -- which could be a big blow to your company blog's organic growth.
Solution: Give credit where credit is due.
Instead, take a few minutes to understand how to cite other people's content in your blog posts.
It's not super complicated, but it's an essential thing to learn when you're
first starting out.
13.
Take 30 minutes to edit your post.
Mistake:
You think you're done once the writing's done.
Most people make the mistake of not editing their writing. It
sounded so fluid in their head when they were writing that it must be great to read ... right?
Nope -- it still needs
editing. And maybe a lot of it.
Solution:
You'll never regret time spent proofreading.
Everyone needs to edit
their writing -- even the most experienced writers. Most times, our first
drafts aren't all that great. So take the time you need to shape up your post.
Fix typos, run-on sentences, and accidental its/it's mistakes. Make sure your story
flows just as well as it did in your outline.
14. At a certain point, just publish
it.
Mistake:
You try to make every post perfect.
I hate to break it to you, but your blog post is never going to be perfect. Ever.
There will always be
more things you can do to make your posts better. More images. Better phrasing.
Wittier jokes. The best writers I know, know when to stop obsessing and just
hit "publish."
Solution:
Better to publish and update than postpone for perfection.
There's a point at which there are diminishing
returns for getting closer to "perfect" -- and you're really never
going to reach "perfect" anyway. So while you don't want to publish a
post filled with factual inaccuracies and grammatical errors, it's not the end
of the world if a typo slips through. It most likely won't affect how many
views and leads it brings in.
Plus, if you (or your
readers) find the mistake, all of you have to do is update the post. No biggie.
So give yourself a break once and a while -- perfect is the enemy of done.
15. Blog
consistently with the help of an editorial calendar.
Mistake:
You don't blog consistently.
By now, you've probably heard that the more often you blog, the more traffic you'll
get to your website -- and the more subscribers and leads you'll generate from
your posts. But as important as volume is, it's actually more important that
you're blogging consistently when
you're just getting started. If you publish five posts in one week and then
only one or two in the next few weeks, it'll be hard to form a consistent
habit. And inconsistency could really confuse your subscribers.
Instead, it's the companies
that make a commitment to regularly publishing quality content to their blogs
that tend to reap the biggest rewards in terms of website traffic and leads --
and those results continue to pay out over time.
To help establish
consistency, you'll need a more concrete planning strategy.
Solution:
Schedule and publish blogs consistently.
Use it to get into the
habit of planning your blog post topics ahead of time, publishing consistently,
and even scheduling posts in advance if you're finding yourself having a
particularly productive week.
16. Focus on the long-term benefits of
organic traffic.
Mistake:
You concentrate your analytics on immediate traffic.
Both beginner bloggers and
advanced bloggers are guilty of this blogging mistake. If you concentrate your
analysis on immediate traffic (traffic from email subscribers, RSS feeds, and
social shares), then it's going to be hard to prove the enduring value of your
blog. After all, the half-life for those sources is very brief -- usually a day
or two.
When marketers who are just starting their business blogs see
that their blog posts aren't generating any new traffic after a few days, many
of them get frustrated. They think their blog is failing, and they end up abandoning it prematurely.
Solution:
The ROI of your blog is the aggregation of organic traffic over time.
Instead of focusing on the sudden decay of short-term traffic,
focus instead on the cumulative potential of organic traffic. Over time, given enough time, the traffic from day three and
beyond of a single blog post will eclipse that big spike on days one and two thanks to being found on search engine results pages through
organic search. You just have to give it a while.
To help drive this long-term traffic, make sure you're writing
blog posts that have durable relevance on a consistent basis. These posts are called "evergreen" blog posts:
They're relevant year after year with little or no upkeep, valuable, and high
quality.
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