If you have adopted an Inbound marketing strategy, then you are committed to producing some regular, high quality, engaging content.
For most B2B businesses a major part of your content marketing strategy will be writing blog posts.
You’ll want them to be not just ‘me too’ blogs, but something that really stands out from the crowd.
So here are five things that you can do to improve your blog writing as you ‘put pen to paper’.
1. Pick a compelling headline
In fact, pick about five and choose the best. Ask a colleague what they think. And then once you have written the post, review the title and make sure that it matches up with the main thrust of your writing.
The title of your blog post is the thing that is most likely to influence whether your audience will decide to click through to read it. So, it is worth spending time to get it right.
2. Pick a format
This will give you a structure in which to write (and eases the writers block). There are plenty of tried and tested formats of blogs that help set your audience’s expectations:
How to… teach them something new.
22 ways to… examples and tips.
Ask a Question?... and then answer it – the more compelling the better.
The negative angle… capture your reader’s attention by telling them they are doing it wrong.
The Secret of… who doesn’t want to know a secret?
Advice, tips and tricks… always useful to your readers.
You should know this… Interesting data … Quick tips … there are plenty to choose from.
3. Help your audience to do something
The whole idea of you content marketing strategy to attract new customers should be that you are adding to their world. What better way to do this than by teaching them how to do something, or to improve the way that they do something.
But how do you know what their interests and challenges are – how do you know what they care about and what keeps them up at night? The answer is of course that you have spent time developing buyer personas.
Make your posts of value to your readers. They won’t forget it and they will keep coming back for more.
4. Write about something that your readers are searching for
Having worked out your buyer personas, you’ll know what their interests are. But how does that translate into actual keywords? You can use Google’s keyword tool, as well as many others to find out what searches people carry out.
Even something as simple as Google’s autocomplete can provide some ideas: Start writing what your theme is and Google will show you the most often searched terms after that:
If you choose ‘blog writing tips’ there are certainly plenty of searches on that term.
5. Have a relevant Call-to-Action
Each piece of content that you produce should have a purpose. Ask yourself the question “What is the point of this blog post?” and “How can I engage my customer further?”.
One thing that you can do is link through to other relevant blogs.
But what you really want at the bottom of your blog is one call to action that invites the reader to take the next step.
Hopefully this gives you some good ideas for how to improve your blog writing.
We’ll be looking at what you can do to improve your blogs after you have finished the first draft. Time to get those scissors out and start editing.
If you'd like to know more about how to stay ahead of competition, why not book onto our next event? It's on us!
