I have a weekly marketing group for small businesses that meets for 90 minutes each week. In the group we are setting measurable goals and learning to target activities such as writing blog posts to help reach their goals. I wrote these tips for them but wanted to share them here too.
Blogging Tips
1. Keep your target reader/customer/purpose in mind.
2. Break your posts into short paragraphs, with no more than 7 lines.
3. Use sub-headings between paragraphs. Helps readers to scan and not be overwhelmed.
4. Do not use a black background or text that is too small. Why do people have blog themes that make their writing impossible to read? On the other hand, don’t have text in your blogs posts the size of the senior edition Reader’s Digests .
5. Use links rather that writing out a link URL. And please check the links. Best to go to the site that you are linking to and copy their url and then paste it into the link box. Don’t guess.
6. Use bulleted lists or numbered lists. People like them and Google likes them.Win-Win.
7. Have calls to action on the pages that your posts are on. Don’t make people guess what you are wanting them to do. Make it easy for them to shop with you, become your client, sign up for your newsletter etc…
8.Use the “read more” tag in your posts so that the articles on the front page of your blog are not too long. You want people to be able to scan a number of the titles and thumbnails of your posts. If the posts go on too long they won’t keep scrolling.
9. Use images in your posts. They breaks up the text and makes your posts more appealing. Dreamstime is one of my favorite places to get images at reasonable cost. You only need the small low resolution graphics that don’t cost very much. You buy yourself $20.00or so, of Dreamstime credits then you have access to downloading the images you want.
10.Do post about other people’s posts and link back to them. Don’t copy their entire post. Just tell your readers what you liked about the material, maybe put your own take on it and then link to their posts. Hopefully you will write a post or two that other people will link to.
11. Make em mad, Make em laugh or Kick up some dust with your posts. These are the things that have people comment.
12. Ask questions of your readers. Get them to start commenting.
13. Use key word phrases( something someone may search on to find your article) in the title and the content of the post. Catchy headline titles are old school, print cliches. Your post titles may appear in a Feed Reader or search result, so they needs to describe what you have written about. On the other hand, don’t just stuff key words into your posts you will get dinged by Google and it is bad form and spammy.
14. For most blogs, you should write in the first person. Write conversationally. People want to know you and you should show up. And it will make it easier to read.
15. Proof read and spell check.
16. Keep a file of good blog post ideas that can move you towards your goals and then make a schedule as to when you will write what.
Homework
Marketing plan: Pick one short term goal that you have for your business. How will you measure it? What steps are you going to take to reach that goal? Write post titles that may help you reach that goal. Schedule the posts. Write and post the first one.
Leave a comment here on the goal you would like to work on and your ideas for it.
