We have discussed in the past about the critical nature of online marketing and reputation management. A quintessential part of these aspects is incorporating well-written and effective blogs into the strategy for online marketing. There are of course several reasons why people/companies take the help of content marketing – the underlying aspect, however, should be that you believe in the opportunities that could open up from incorporating them into your overall business online strategy.

We believe that there are several important reasons to write blogs. Businesses may use them to build credibility and trust with existing and prospective customers, and or drive traffic to their online sites. In addition, engaging and interesting blogs are a great way to retain customers since they would have access to a free resource of information that would help them in the business and personal lives. What are your company’s reasons for writing blogs?

If you do agree that writing effective blogs will benefit your company, the next thing to understand would be how ensure that the blogs your company publishes are effective. By effective, we mean those that get you all the results mentioned above – and more. Start with the most obvious – a catchy and curiosity building headline. The headline is the first thing that readers see and if it stokes their curiosity, they would go on to read the contents of the blog. Ensure that the blog headline is not too long, or has no connection with the information contained in the blog. Keep it simple, relevant, and easily ‘searchable’.

Every article / blog / piece of content, must have a suitable introduction – it should flow seamlessly into the main ‘body’ of the blog. The introduction is vital – a boring or poorly written introduction could lead the readers to ‘quit’ reading the blog even though it may contain the information they want. Keep it enticing, yet easy to read and simple. Interesting and powerful content should follow the opening lines. This content is what will determine whether your blog is effective, enough to deliver the results your business hopes to see. In addition, the content should serve a purpose for the readers, such that they are encouraged to share it with their friends and associates. The more a piece of content is shared, the greater the reach and visibility a business would get, without putting in the extra effort.

SEO may not have been a popular term earlier. However, now with so many companies posting so much information, it is becoming increasingly tough for readers to decipher which content would be useful and which they should ditch. Through well-planned SEO, your company would ensure that the popular search engines would rank your content high, thereby making it visible to a larger number of readers. The higher the ranking on SERPs, the more attention would the blogs receive – it therefore makes sense to consistently take measures for better SEO.

Writing and posting blogs because others are doing it too, would not get your company the results it hopes. Many bloggers and companies make the crucial mistake of ‘stuffing’ the blogs with jargon, industry terminology, and abbreviations that the public neither understands nor is interested in reading. An overdose of such words would lower the ‘readability’ of such articles, thereby ensuring that readers give up on just one article, but subsequent ones too – obviously believing that the content would be as confusing as the first.

We mentioned that a smooth and articulate introduction is essential to effective blogs – helping to highlight the main points in the remainder of the blog. It is also essential to write a proper conclusion to the blog in order to maintain flow. A well-written conclusion will ensure that the readers leave with a positive impression and would look forward to the next article, while at the same time sharing, saving, and or commenting on the article. Ensure that you make it easy for your readers to share and save your articles – interactive content always works better.

Simply churning out content through blogs is something anyone can do – but will not necessarily bring the results expected. Every company must have a robust and practical online strategy in place that will enable it to see higher success rates for its content marketing endeavours. Is your company writing the most effective blogs? What do your content marketing results say?

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