Blogging is a great way to build your business and convey your message, but it can take awhile to show signs of growth. If you’re looking for the route to overnight success, it’s not through blogging. Developing trust and building relationships takes time, and it means continuing to do all the right things, even when change feels slow.
Here are five blog writing tips designed to help you stand out from the competition:
- Make Us Invest – I’m about to divulge an industry secret. Ready? It’s not about how many times you repeat your keyword. I know, everybody to this point has told you that if you repeat the phrase “Underwater Basket Weaver” fifty times inside 400 words of copy, that you’ll appear higher for this phrase. The problem is that it’s impossible to pull a stunt like that and keep the traffic you MIGHT generate interested. They came. They saw. They left. Instead, pull us in. Tell us a story. Make us invest in something by giving it to us in a way that’s – you know – actually interesting.
- Tell Us What You Think – Just about every industry these days has a thought leader. They have someone who’s generating those lovely tips that we’ve started to see pop up like dandelions all over the Internet. Don’t just take those tips and regurgitate them in the same fashion. Chances are your reader may have seen them before. So tell us what you think. If you want people to respect your position inside your industry, it’s your job to have an opinion on everything.
- Take Advantage Of Your Tools – If you’re writing on WordPress, you’re not writing in a vacuum. Thousands before you have built successful platforms using this system. Do the research on the best platforms available for distributing your work to an audience. Make sure that you’re doing everything you can to optimize your website. Take advantage of the right tools, and building a regular audience becomes a little easier.
- Give Us Something Original – I can find the same generic tips for underwater basket weaving plastered all over the big websites on the Internet. There’s nothing new that way. What you – the underwater basket weaver – needs to tell us is, what makes you different? Why should we buy from you, and what problem do you solve? Draw some UWBW comparisons to things outside your industry. Show us how you’re different.
- Don’t Neglect Your “Offline” Traffic – This means keep networking! Develop relationships with people close in geography, because these will often be your strongest relationships. When and where it makes sense, plug your blog. Tell people that you just wrote a post about this topic. Conversely, write posts about the topics that you’re discussing in person. If you’re looking to drive interest, this is often your most engaged crowd.
What are your thoughts? What’s worked for you in building the success of your blog? Let me know in the comments.
Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing writer and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.
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