A professional blog can increase a company’s reputation, gain visibility on the web, garner inbound leads, gain market share, and maintain a community. 70% of consumers prefer to receive information about a business through a blog post rather than an advertisement. To take advantage of the strengths of a professional blog, you need to publish content at regular intervals, but not the old fashioned way: Writing a quality, relevant and effective blog article involves following a number of steps…
How to write a blog post?
1 – Select the article type and topic
Each article has its own purpose. A distinction should be made between articles whose content remains valid for years from articles that deal with a topic related to current events (of the company or sector). Then you need to determine the format of the article: information, advice, steps to follow or even good practices. The topic is selected on the basis of business objectives and target audience.
It is necessary to ask the target reader: who is he? What kind of subjects is he interested in? What information is he looking for? For this purpose, developing a buyer persona, a profile of specific prospects, is a good strategy. Once the goal is defined, it becomes possible to select relevant topics for blog articles that are most likely to respond to its issues. Ideas for themes can come from:
- Google query;
- search trends on Google Trends;
- Popular themes on BuzzSumo or Quora;
- competition work;
- Questions asked by prospects and customers;
- Marketing and Sales Team.
2 – Find a powerful title
An Internet user spends an average of 37 seconds reading a blog article. In order for him to read the material in its entirety, everything must be done to get his attention from the very beginning. This is the role assigned to the title (but also to the introduction).
The title is by far the most important element in driving traffic to a blog post. It is the first thing an Internet user sees, regardless of the medium used (search engine, social network or e-mail). It is only after reading the title that he decides to click or proceed.
To write an effective blog post, it is therefore essential to write a headline that is powerful, clear, relevant and engaging. It is highly recommended to put the main keyword. In addition, the title should be as short as possible because the number of characters Google displays in result pages is limited (between 60 and 70 characters including spaces).
3 – Write an engaging introduction
The introduction is the trailer of the article, it outlines its unfolding and introduces the material to come by highlighting its issues. It should answer the following questions: What is the article about? What is its structure? What benefits will Internet users get from reading them? It is also an opportunity to arouse curiosity by including striking information, for example, a statistic.
4 – Prepare a plan and write articles
The content of a blog post should be clear, complete and easy to digest. Planning allows you to formulate your progress idea after idea and assess the overall logic. It also helps to write subtitles quickly (H2 or H3) which will divide the content into equal parts and serve as a guideline for the readers.
In addition, writing must follow the rules of writing for the web. To come up with an informative blog post, for example, you should start with an inverted pyramid structure: the most important and general elements first, then secondary and more specific points.
For an article that lists the steps, the structure is more homogeneous: care must be taken to offer subparts of approximately equal size. The form has to match. Paragraphs are short and develop a single idea in a maximum of 4 or 5 lines. The sentences are short and structured in a simple way. Always keep the purpose of the article in mind: to convey information and bring added value to the reader’s attention.
Once the material is written, there is no question of neglecting the proofreading and correction phase. Special care should be taken in spelling, grammar and syntax. The credibility of the company depends on it. If necessary, it is possible to use a correction tool, free (Scribus, Language Tools) or paid (Antidote).
5 – Optimize the article to get traffic and leads
The purpose of the blog post is to attract traffic to the company’s website. It is also a lever for receiving inbound leads. For this, Internet users must see it, especially when they type a query on the search engine.
However, 75% of users never go past the first page of results. Hence it is necessary to ensure that the article appears in the first place. Positioning comes into play when writing blog posts through SEO optimization. The easiest way to take advantage of SEO leverage is to insert relevant keywords into html tags:
- Title (maximum between 65 and 70 characters);
- H2 and H3 subtitles;
- in addition to the name of the image
Tag.
The meta-description tag (up to 160 characters) must be careful. Note that this tag does not necessarily play a direct role in SEO, but does affect the click rate. Actually, it is the first thing an internet user sees when he/she reaches the results page on a search engine.
6 – Work on the conversion
As far as the convertibility of the article is concerned, it depends on its ability to inspire the reader to take action. To do this, putting a call-to-action button at the end of the content, when finished, can make a difference. Proposed action may include:
- subscribe to a newsletter;
- download content;
- read other material on the same topic;
- Register for an event.
Your efforts should not stop once an article is set in your publishing program, as each article must be tracked to determine whether it is contributing to the goals of the publishing strategy. Company content.