As we’ve said on this site before, a blog is much more than a childish thing that your teenage niece does to pass the time. A blog is one of the most useful content marketing tools at your disposal to drive traffic to your website and boost your SEO performance. However, for a blog to help your business you first have to know how to write an informative, engaging, and interesting blog post. This is easier than you might think, and with the four tips below you can become the Ernest Hemingway of the blog!
Write What You Know
This is the cardinal sin of beginner bloggers, trying to write about something you don’t have an understanding of yourself. You’re not going to listen to Gordon Ramsey on the best way to shoot a basketball and you’re not going to listen to Larry Bird on the best way to baste a chicken. Everybody has their own expertise, so use yours to write about what you know. If you’re having to Google what things are to explain them in your blog, you probably shouldn’t be writing that blog in the first place.
Who Are You Talking To?
When you write a blog you have to determine who your audience is and what their knowledge level is. For example, when I am writing this blog I can determine the people who are reading it has a basic understanding of blogging dynamics and wants to improve their skills or get started blogging. That gives me the baseline of what I need to talk about, touch on, and explain to the reader. No matter what you’re writing about, assess your audience, and cater your content to them.
Start Writing
Michael Scott once said, “sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” Crazy as it may seem, this is actually pretty good advice. Writer’s block can sneak up on us at any time and can also be very frustrating. When this happens, just start writing. Write about anything you can think of, even if it has nothing to do with your actual business at all. This strategy has led Midwest Marketing to write blogs by the titles of What the Great Pumpkin Can Teach Us About Business, Robots Inside Your Phone, and The Marketing Iditarod. Coincidentally, these are some of our best and most creative blogs ever written.
PROOFREAD
Holy smokes! This is by far the most important aspect of writing a good blog in the entire universe. If you don’t follow any of the previous advice I can live with that (I hope you do follow some of it though), but please for my sanity proofread your blog posts! As a matter of fact, after you proofread your post, have a friend, co-worker, or your mom proofread it for you as well. Whatever you do, please proofread.
Blogging can be tricky at times, hopefully, these tips can help you improve your blogs in the future or help you get started. If blogging is something that you want to get into but still seems complicated or you’re too busy to handle yourself, Midwest Marketing offers blogging packages for your business. Contact us today for details!
