Blogs: How to blog successfully (with PDF Guide download)

Most companies have a blog or news section on their website. A company blog is a marketing channel which should be included in your strategic marketing planning but unfortunately, the majority of businesses don’t know how to use it effectively. 

In this short guide, we’ll give you a few tips on how to blog and come up with content that is useful and relevant to your company and your website visitors.

Why write a blog?

Your blog will drive traffic to your website and that means more opportunities to convert a lead into a sale. Your blog should support your other marketing efforts. It should also be a tool that you use to tell search engines what your website is about and establish you as an authority in your field. By using keywords and links strategically, you help search engines identify what your website is about. It can also be informative, educational or entertaining. This creates opportunities for your prospects to share your content. 

Step-by-step blogging

1. Plan ahead
2. Write well
3. Great blog post structure

1.Plan ahead

As part of your marketing strategy, you need to plan your blogging schedule.

Start with your strategic marketing plan. When and what are you advertising, what events are you hosting, what news do you have to tell your readers? Decide on your main topics and then build your blog topics around these. Structure your blog posts to support the main topics. So you might be offering work shoes as the main topic. Your supporting topics might include things like women’s shoes, shoe performance in different weather conditions, rain-proof shoes, the lifetime of work shoes and so on. This will help you with your keyword planning as well.

2. Write well

• A great title can attract your prospect to click on a link to your blog so be sure to make the content of your post clear in your title. 
• Write in simple language. 
• Use the active voice in your writing. 
• Be clear and concise so your readers will understand what you are trying to convey. 
• Use short sentences. 
• Don’t cram as many keywords as you can into your blog writing. Overdoing it with keywords both sounds silly and search engines don’t respond well to it anyway! Instead, ensure your keywords are very specific to your business and products/services. 
• Avoid using industry jargon when possible. 
• Grammar and sentence structure is important, so use spellcheck and always get someone to proofread your work and give feedback. Rewrite your content accordingly. 
• Blog posts perform best when they are over 300 words long. Anything from 800 to 2100 words is acceptable, depending on the complexity of the topic BUT don’t keep writing after you have said what you needed to!

3. Great blog post structure

The most important thing is to structure your blog properly and use all the necessary elements to make sure it is optimized. Every post should support the topics you decided on in the planning stage and achieve the goal that’s been set. For example, is your goal to inform people of an event and get them to register their interest? Then your content should reflect this and tell people what you are expecting them to do. Make sure your title is compelling, your post has subheadings and calls-to-action.

Bonus tip

Go back over your old blogs and make sure they are optimized. You can get traffic for relevant and timely blogs, even if they were published the first time a while ago. Try not to use dates in your titles, so that your blogs are timeless and don’t become outdated.

Still unsure about where to start? Contact DMM to help you plan and execute your blogging strategy.