Five Tips for Creating Strong Blog Content
With the ever-growing world of bloggers, it’s hard to compete for readership in the digital space. People look to blogs for insight within an industry or topic that interests them. If your blog content isn’t relevant or strong enough to attract viewership, your blog won’t stand a chance.
At Otherwise, blogging is one focal point of our social media expertise, and we teach our clients how to develop a robust, sustainable blog presence. And based on what we know (and do), here’s our top five tips for creating strong blog content:
Every brand has a niche and in blogging, it’s important to figure out your niche. By understanding and articulating your expertise, you can provide unique, high value content on your blog.
Simply put, if your content isn’t relevant, distinctive or interesting, you can forget about attracting viewers and enticing them to return.
To ensure that your blog retains a strong following, find out what your audience cares about. Don’t assume that you know. Use data tools to help understand, address and evolve your niche.
Set up Google Analytics on your blog to track how people get to your blog, which posts visitors like to read, which parts of the blog lack traffic, which keywords drive visitors, etc. This tool will help define what type of content your audience wants to read, providing opportunities to strengthen your existing content.
Another tool worth utilizing is Google Keyword Tool. This tool can guide you to new content topics by measuring the popularity of searched keywords on the web. If you submit a keyword to this tool, you will receive a list of related keywords along with the number of hits they have received within that month.
Research is a vital part of content development. Blog content should be unique to your brand and serve as a valuable resource to your viewers. In order to establish and maintain your presence, research the work of your competitors and your industry to discover what hasn’t been talked about. Find every opportunity to provide unexplored content that can fill the void and attract viewership.
In addition, avoid generalization and vagueness. Give your audience detailed, rich content that is both insightful and actionable, so readers leave your blog better off than when they arrived.
You’ve got a brand, and your brand has character. This includes a distinct tone, which is a critical element in creating blog content that reflects your point of view and values. From the outset, define the personality you want to convey to your audience – casual, humorous, informational, serious, reflective, academic, etc. – and deliver that tone throughout your content.
People search for and read hot topics. By writing about popular trends that are relevant to your industry, your blog will develop stronger SEO and gain more traffic.
To stay on top of trends, build a Google Reader database. This tool pulls the most recent content from industry leaders into one place where you can read about the trending topics.
Did we leave something out? What tips do you have?
Makenzie Davies is a Social Media Marketer for Otherwise Incorporated.
Illustrations by Josh Epstein, Designer at Otherwise Incorporated.
