Fering Communications Blog: business blogging

Monday, 25 February 2013

What a Stale Blog Says About Your Company

I was reading a blog post recently—a guest post by the client of a web design company who was describing the business that he was losing because his website was outdated. Naturally, he was thrilled by his new website and had received all sorts of kudos because of the update. I wholeheartedly agree with him on the importance of a good looking and professional website—it’s what gives prospects their first impression of your company and you absolutely want that to be a positive and lasting impression.

But I’m not a web guy; I’m (among other things) a blog guy. So I’m going to continue the theme of the importance of having a good blog that is continually updated with fresh content. Company blogs are the centerpiece of successful inbound marketing campaigns as they can be stuffed full of SEO friendly keywords and keyphrases that help search engine rankings and they help engage prospects and build credibility.

We’ve come up with a few key pointers to keep in mind starting or managing your company blog.

Keep It Fresh

You have to keep fresh content flowing. When you pick up the newspaper in the morning do you want to know what happened in the world a month ago or yesterday? When you flip to your local TV news station do you want to know what’s going on right now in the world or this time yesterday? If a prospect visits your blog and your last post is from three months ago will they get the impression that your company is hurting and doesn’t have the resources to keep the blog current? Will they think that your company starts things but doesn’t follow through? I’m sure these aren’t the first impressions you want to make.

So what are you going to blog about? You definitely want to exhibit industry expertise and thought leadership. Take inspiration from the world around you: things that happen during your day both at home and at the office, current events and hot discussion topics, things that you’ve done right and wrong. Don’t be afraid to admit mistakes as long as you highlight the lesson learned: people love reading and learning about how not to do things.

Before you start a company blog make sure you understand the time it will take to maintain it. Some people don’t appreciate what’s involved and they end up with a stale company blog that sends all the wrong messages.

Make It Look Good

Your business blog has to look good because while it might be crammed full of knowledge, insight, expertise—and even if it had the winning lottery numbers—few are going to click through if it isn’t visually appetizing. Visitors are shallow like that so you’ve got nothing more than a few seconds to catch and keep their attention before they’re reaching for the ‘Back’ button.

Keep Changing It Up

Vary the lengths of your posts. Shorter posts (400 – 600 words) are more likely to get comments from your readers, while longer articles (800+ words) are more likely to be shared on social networking channels. Don’t force your posts to be any longer than they naturally are to meet some magical word count criteria—keep them crisp, concise and to the point. Even if you can only bang out four sentences before hitting the publish button you’ll still outperform at least one professional journalist on a nationwide sports website (don’t get me started on the ever diminishing standards of sports journalism!).

Conclusion

A business blog is a great tool for improving search engine ranking and engaging readers. To help your blog be everything it can be make sure it looks good and is updated frequently with fresh and relevant content. Some companies get overwhelmed when they try and set up a blog or find they can’t keep pace once they do have a blog up and running – if you find yourself in either of these situations then give us a call or shoot us a quick email, we’d love to see if we can help!

Got something to say? Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you! Got a question that we can address in our blog? Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.

How To Write a Blog Post That Doesn't Suck

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last ten years, you’ve probably heard about blogging and how it can be a great way to help your search engine rankings, build a connection with prospects and turn those prospects into leads. You probably also know that there’s lots of competition out there for readership. So what do you do? How do you build an audience and engage readers when there is so much background noise drowning out your message? This post describes simple steps that you can follow to write a post that will put you above the rest.

A Catchy Title

A strong title is the most important part of a good post. It’s like an invitation to a party—if the party sounds boring then no-one will want to come. Your title has to have a bit of sizzle to it – it’s what a reader will quickly eye and decide whether to click to see the rest of your post or not.

Good titles include “How To” guides, “Top X Reasons to …”, or something that’s a bit cheeky (double score on the title of this post!).

An Engaging First Paragraph

After your title has caught the reader’s eye, the first paragraph needs to continue the momentum.

You don’t want to dive too deep into the content because you’re still coaxing the reader, but at the same time you have to start giving them something to show that they’re not wasting your time. Good things to include in the first paragraph include an anecdote, reference to a current event or a personal story that might resonate with them. Set up a problem or ask a question that the rest of the post promises to answer.

Images

What’s that old saying about what a picture is worth? Well, you can probably get some free images from your friend Google (although be sure not to use any protected images) or if you use a professional image service you can expect to pay as much as $20 for a large high-resolution image. Either way, add one or more relevant images to your blog post whenever you can: images break up the text on the post and make it look more readable.

Headers

Like images, headers are a way to make your posts visually appealing—instead of having a large block of text you have a post that is divided into sections. Another way that headers make your post more readable is by allowing the user to see what the following section is about and allowing them to skip it if it’s not something that interests them.

Killer Content

Finally we get to the meat of your blog post: the content. Your content should inspire, educate, entertain and solve problems. You should have something relevant to say, voice an opinion, frame something like no-one else has or write with a twist of humor or sarcasm – anything that’ll help differentiate your blog from the rest of the blogs out there.

A Strong Finish

Your reader has made it to the end of your post … so now what? Every post should end with a call-to-action (CTA) – tell the reader what you want them to do next. If you don’t they might leave your blog and you lose the opportunity to engage them further.

Conclusion

Blogging is a great way to get exposure and generate interest for your business or brand and engage your prospects. However, blogging isn’t just a matter of putting words on your website and calling it a day. Follow the pointers outlined above and you’ll be well on your way, or (CTA spoiler alert!) if you find that you don’t have the time or resources to maintain a blog or you can’t manage to make the words on the screen say what you want them to, give us a shout, we’d be glad to help!

Fering Communications Blog

Monday, 25 February 2013

What a Stale Blog Says About Your Company

Keep It Fresh

Make It Look Good

Keep Changing It Up

Conclusion

Other Blog Posts

Monday, 11 February 2013

How To Write a Blog Post That Doesn't Suck

A Catchy Title

An Engaging First Paragraph

Images

Headers

Killer Content

A Strong Finish

Conclusion

Other Blog Posts