7 Tips For A Better Blog!

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Hi All!

I was doing some research for my blog and came across some really awesome advice! Wicked cool value here, so I just had to share this with you!

There were all kinds of relevant bits of info – so here’s the some of the key bits!

Be Specific – Be Focused – Be Opinionated

Blog on what you know about, and know about what you are blogging on. You should research your topic and become an authority on the matter. This builds authority & credibility. When a company can establish trust with readers, it’s a sure way to create a connection and become a source of information on a regular basis.

Though you may have a great many interests, and desire to share on a range of subjects, having a very specific area or field that you write/video on will bring clarity. Once your audience grown substantial, your topical focus may broaden in scope.

Being opinionated will attract and repel readers. Rather than looking at what you lose, look at what you gain in terms of actively engaged members of your growing community.

Know Your Audience – Let Them Know You: Empathy Drives Relevance
Make an active effort to make yourself known to your audience and to get to know them. Engage them through the comments and leading questions to better understand how your blog readers prefer to discover, consume, and act on content.

Blog content that satisfies those information needs in the formats that readers enjoy will retain readers and inspire engagement.  Empathy for your readership (vs. only writing about your own brand) will help you create more relevant content experiences.

A Blog is Only As Interesting As the Interest Shown in Others

One of the most powerful motivators for humans is recognition. Business blogs are a terrific platform for recognizing talent in and outside the company. More importantly, business blogs have an opportunity to highlight members of the blog community. That recognition is very powerful, but it doesn’t “just happen” by publishing lists.

Get into the habit of asking the blog readership and connected social networks questions. Ask their opinions. Ask for feedback and insights about a particular topic from your blog editorial calendar.  Then curate the responses into content that recognizes contributors. Promote the crowdsourced content back out to the social networks where the questions were asked and it will be very motivating for all involved.

Get Your Message Out!

Great Content Isn’t Great Until It’s Discovered, Consumed & Shared

Invest equally in creative elements of your blog and in the promotion of blog content. Simply writing great ideas isn’t enough to stand out.

There are so many ways to attract, engage and inspire blog readers, it’s important that the experience has a visual component to it. You can use images or videos, GIFs, Vines, etc.

Of course the content needs to be easy to find as well – wherever your target readership prefers to discover content. That could be email, search, social streams, news feeds or subscriptions.

Look Beyond Yourself For Blog Topics & Writing
A person has finite topic ideas and brands tend to have a limited scope of topics they want to talk about.  Running out of ideas is a common source of writers’ block, so be sure to connect with the community for inspiration – crowdsource topics through analysis of blog engagement, through social media monitoring and important questions that get asked.

At the same time, insourcing content creation within your company is an important way to share the load of business blogging as well as shining a light on other voices and talent within your organization.

Optimizing Blog Performance is a Continuous Effort

Blogging, social media and communities are a very dynamic mix and it will take a persistent effort to try new topics, formats and media to connect with your readership. The insights drawn from social media monitoring, community engagement and web analytics alone can provide a goldmine of information on topics to write about, types of media to use in posts and where/how to promote on social networks. 

Monitoring social network friend counts, traffic and search ranking isn’t enough in most cases, so business blogs should allocate marketing analytics resources to the blog as they would to any other business marketing effort.

Expectations for how a business blog will provide value for the brand and community of readers can vary. Make sure specific goals are identified, and motives hypothesized (remember, be opinionated), along with clear indicators that measure progress towards stated goals.

Tap Into Offline Engagement to Create Content Magic

Events and other face-to-face opportunitiews are one of the lesser maximised sources of great content that bloggers can use to connect with a variety of audience targets. Whether liveblogging a prospective customers’ presentation at an industry conference or writing a wrap up of a panel of industry influencers, event blogging creates content that serves multiple objectives: creates useful content for your blog community, creates value for people you’d like to do business with, creates a content asset that will be linked to from newsrooms and share on social networks.

Blogging about industry influencers and prospective customer contacts online and then engaging them in person at an event is another powerful connection of offline to online for blogging. The content is a win for everyone and the potential relationships are valuable too.

Key Points:

• If you start blogging, finish it – commit to success
• Focus on meaningful vs. mechanical approach to content
• Create value for readers first, build your own brand and create demand for your valuable information
• Don’t go it alone – ask for help!

Remember, while it’s true that a blog is not for every business, but every business that blogs, sees numerous advantages. Really! Any time a company really sticks with it, the blog is always a great boon to the entity’s marketing and bottom line!

But be warned… businesses can get caught up in distractions and let their blogs die through neglect. On that point, IBM research shows that 80% of the blogs started there have fewer than 5 posts.

Stick with it!

Peace,

Tommy D