1. Always offer something of value
The most important way to get readers to engage with a post is to provide information of value. That means hints, hacks, tricks, tips, inspirational stories, how-to guides, recipes, and product or service reviews relevant to your field.
It may seem counterintuitive at first, giving away all your insider knowledge. But the idea is that you’re establishing yourself as the authority in your field. You’re illustrating that you’re the one who knows how to play your game the best and that your readers would be wasting their time going elsewhere.
This pays off in the long run because:
- You have a captive audience when you announce your own business news, discounts, and events
- You are establishing that yourself as the go-to company/solution in your field
Pro tip – almost all your posts should be audience facing. These posts should make your readers’ lives better. Shoot for 90% value-adding posts and 10% posts that promote your product or other engagement.
2. Know your audience
To offer posts of value, you’re going to need to know the intellectual and emotional ways to connect with your audience.
This includes:
- What kind of information your target audience wants
- How your target audience likes to interact
To develop content that speaks to your target audience, check out your competition’s posts and social media sites popular in your industry. If your competition has a blog of their own, see which kind of posts get the most interaction (replies, questions, comments, forwards) and which don’t foster engagement.
You can also join social media sites’ (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) groups related to your field to find out which kind of questions are the most commonly asked. These questions can become subjects for your individual posts.
You are not going to be all things to all people. That’s impossible. If you try this shotgun approach, you’re going to water down your content and won’t be compelling to your audience. Focus on the type of audience you want the most and write content for that person.
The personality of your post comes from your mission and your brand – this is the emotional part of the interaction. If, for example, you’re an accounting firm, does the group of people you desire as clients prefer a very clinical, no-nonsense purely business firm, or would they feel more at ease working with someone who is more casual and friendly in their blog posts?
3. Get to the good stuff fast
It’s the short-attention-span-Internet-age and you have only a few seconds to grab the reader. Don’t put long-winded anecdotal introductions at the start of your post. Instead, get to the meat of your post and, if anecdotes help clarify a point, stick them in there. (After the “read more” button)
4. There is no perfect length for good posts
There are all sorts of numbers that get thrown around for how long a post should be to max out views. The truth is there is no perfect number. You can go over 1,000 words if it’s all juicy stuff that is going to add something of value (or entertain) your readers. On the other hand, Seth Godin has posts that are only a handful of lines long that perform extremely well.
You’ll discover what performs best with your audience as you go along. Don’t be afraid to find try out different lengths or try cutting a long post into two parts. Most importantly, consider the subject matter. Make the post as short as possible to say what you want to say.
5. Work on your titles
Throw on a temporary title when you are drafting your post if it helps you focus on your message. But, keep in mind that you might want to make that title sexier before you post it. Here are a couple of hints that can help post titles grab readers:
Use the words “hints”, “tricks”, “tips”, or “how to”. This automatically shows that there will be concrete actions your readers can take (i.e. something of value) in the post.
Reverse psychology titles – “Here are 5 things accountants don’t want you to know.”
Use numbers – “7 tips to make it sound like you’re an opera expert”. Odd numbers work better than even numbers. There’s symmetry there. Or something.
Also, make your post’s topic very clear in the title. This will help your readers remember it if they want the information at a future date, and will make it more searchable on your website.
6. Link to your other stuff
Try to insert at least one link in all your posts leading readers to some of your previous posts, products or case studies. For example, you can use a term that might require some explanation. Instead of explaining it again in this post, link back to your past post that goes into depth about what the term means. This will show your readers that you have buckets of useful information for them to read through.
This will also give you some information on people who are reading more than one post at a time for lead scoring purposes.
7. Avoid the passive tense
The passive tense weakens your writing. For example, “$10,000 was raised for the charity by our team members” has the effect of distancing the team members from the hard work that they did.
Instead try putting the subject (the team members) up front, strengthening the connection: “Our team members raised $10,000 for our charity.”
8. Stick to the topic
One topic per post. Other topics become their own separate posts. Then you can link to them. This way, it is easier for readers to return to a post and find the specific information they want.
If you know you have a good topic but you’re not sure how to illustrate it in your post, jot down three or four points in short form, and then use those as your paragraphs. Make sure you’re clear on each point and how they affect your readers. And what order they should go in. Most important points go first.
9. When in doubt, ask questions
If you’re not a writer and you’re not sure how to lay out your information in a readable manner, become a surrogate for your audience and ask questions. Each of those questions can become a section title, and the answer becomes a regular-text paragraph or two.
So, for example, let’s say we own a butcher shop:
“I want to make a beef stew. What kind of meat should I ask for?”
Your clear beefy answer goes here.
10. Be consistent
Consistency is key to build an audience. Even if you only post once a week, try to do it at roughly the same time on the same day every week. People will come to anticipate your posts as a regular occurrence in their lives.
If you have a variety of types of posts you want to try out (say, one text post, one video post, and one inspirational quote post per week) have the type of post come out on the same day every week. So maybe your text posts will be Mondays, your videos will come out Wednesdays, and your quotes will be a fun Friday treat.
Keep in mind, you can build up a backlog of your posts. You can sit down and draft a bunch of posts all at once. Then, schedule the dates you want them to publish on the back end of your website… just don’t forget to schedule promotion on social media the same day (but not before) the post publishes.
11. Interact with your audience
When people send you questions (as comments on your posts or on social media) answer within a day or two. Showing that you care enough to answer questions will help build your audience, especially if you address and correct mistakes made on your end. Plus, common questions can become the topic of future posts.
12. End with a call to action
Put in something at the end of your posts that can prompt a discussion amongst their readers. With our butcher shop example, you can ask what other people like to add to their beef stews to add a little extra flavor. Or ask them to post their favorite recipes.
Calls to action can also be geared towards your business. You can end with something like, “If you have any questions about [the current topic] we’d love to help you clear things up. Give us a call at [phone number] or send us an email at [email address].”
Whatever type of CTA you use, you’re giving the idea that this post is only the beginning and that you’re inviting your audience to an ongoing discussion.
13. Build Search Engine Optimization
Content is a great way to build SEO. Use phrases and keywords that will help people find your content… and therefore, your product/service. The more you use keywords and phrases, the closer to the top of Google’s organic search results you will appear. And, the more website pages and blog posts you have, the more phrases you can compete for.
With our butcher shop example, phrases could run the gamut from “best BBQ sauce” to “pork chop cooking tips” to “cheapest cut of beef” to “best kitchen knives.” Anything and everything even tangentially related to your business represents another chance to get more eyeballs to your website.
To get some help figuring out which phrases you should compete for, try out Google AdWords. You’ll choose your business’ category, and then insert some words revolving around the post you want to write. AdWords will give you a list of phrases commonly used by people searching for information like those provided in your post.
Standard SEO practice holds that you should include the phrase you choose to compete for in:
- The post’s title
- The opening paragraph
- Once every 100 words or so
- In one of your subtitles
- In the meta information for pictures
- In the meta info for the page
This SEO stuff does tend to get complicated the further you go (Black Hat SEO, backlinks, overall SEO strategies, etc.) and at some point, if you’re getting serious about competing for phrases it may be a good idea to hire a professional SEO strategist.
14. Experiment often!
An important thing to remember is that your blog posts and your website is an ever-changing and ongoing experiment. Keep trying out new topics, post lengths, graphics, types of titles, interactions, times that you release new posts, and promote your new posts through social media. Then, track success and adjust.
With each positive tweak or ignored post, you’ll get a clearer idea of what your desired audience is looking for in your website, allowing you to create the site (and the product) for your target consumer.
Is there anything I’m missing? Leave your tips in the comments below! (See what I’m doing there with that call to action)
