Incredible Tips And Tools For Business Blogging

There are hundreds of reasons to start blogging for your business. If you already have a blog, then there are as many reasons to try and improve. Not only does blogging regularly result in an up to date online presence, with multiple posts featuring your key words and improving your SEO rankings, but it also provides you with better visibility on multiple platforms. Each post you share provides a unique and personal insight into your services or products, and frequent blogging can make sure your product is fully understood. Blog posts can also be shared across social media platforms, which is a great low cost marketing tool. For your posts to be effective though, they need to be high quality and frequent. The following tips can help you see a massive increase in the efficacy of your business blogging.

Never Forget Your Purpose

Whenever you sit down and write, you should always ask yourself why you are blogging in the first place. Whether it’s for marketing, to improve SEO, to create better relationships with clients, or to establish yourself as an expert in a field, you should always know why you are writing. You should then review your post and make sure it meets your purpose. Don’t publish irrelevant information – every single blog post should be linked to the reason you are blogging for your business.

Always Plan Your Posts

Your business blog posts should not be chaotic and unorganised. As you are representing your business, your should endeavour to make sure you appear organised, streamlined, and cohesive. This will make people think your business is also organised, and you are instantly more trustworthy. You could post a series of posts on a particular topic, have a weekly feature, or simply make a note of what the next post will be. While you don’t want to appear predictable, you do want to be organised, and this planning will help you keep on track with the posts you’re publishing.

Remember to Schedule and Strategy

After your first few weeks of blogging, you will be able to track your success using google analytics, or whatever monitoring system you’re using. This means you an find out when your posts are the most likely to be viewed and shared by the widest audience, and schedule your posts. This makes them effective, but also means you’re more likely to stick to a schedule and post regularly. You should also strategize to make sure your posts are shared across relevant social media platforms. Posting frequently, and ensuring that your posts are likely to reach your target audience makes you much more visible, and can also dramatically increase your search engine ranking.

Keep A Spare Post

If you find yourself finishing a post in less time than you expected, or with extra time on your hands, use it wisely. Rather than taking this spare chunk of time for a coffee break, instead write a few extra posts. This means that should the circumstances arise in which you don’t find the time to write, you can still publish something and stick to your schedule. Some business bloggers may write posts a whole week or month in advance, and simply upload them when the time is right, while others simply have one or two posts as back ups in case something goes wrong. This is a great idea as missing one or two blog posts is a slippery slope, and to benefit from business blogging you do need to do it regularly.

Check Out The Competition

If you are blogging for your business, you should be aware that your competitors are probably doing the same. You should read their blogs – not in the spirit of rivalry, but to get a sense of what kind of posts are relevant for your business. You will be able to judge for yourself what works and what doesn’t, and learn from any errors they’re making. Reading other blogs helps with every single type of blogging, and interacting with other bloggers can be an excellent networking tool. You should absolutely read and comment on blogs related to yours, learn from them, and build relationships with other bloggers.

Share Your Enthusiasm!

You should write when you are full of energy and really feeling passionate about your business. It’s hard to fake excitement as you express yourself in writing, and the results really are better if you write while in a good frame of mind. You want your reader to finish your blog post feeling enthused about your product or service, and keen to seek out your business. The best chances of spreading enthusiasm about your project is for you to be enthusiastic too.

Stay Away From Jargon

Avoid jargon as much as you can. While it may make you sound intelligent and qualified, it will completely eliminate the purpose of your blogging. You blog about your business to increase your audience, and connect to your customers. As your customers are unlikely to be industry experts, using jargon will alienate them, and they will lose interest in the content. Using clear and concise language that everyone will understand will make your content much more accessible. This will result in more views, shares, and comments.

Always Keep Your Audience In Mind

While you are writing for your business, you are writing to your customers. Consider them in all of your posts, and never forget them when you are creating content or content briefs. Listen to feedback and comments, and provide them with information they are interested in. One really amazing way of generating ideas for blog posts is by making a note of questions your customers ask. Chances are, if one customer asks the question, many more are wondering the same thing. Working the question into a title and answering it in a post will help to create some great quality content that is tailored to your audience. Asking questions is your customers’ way of telling you what they want – for a successful business blog, you should really listen to them.

Take Steps To Maximize Your Blog’s Potential

There are several tried and tested techniques that make all blogs more successful. For a business blog, this could include inviting guest bloggers from your industry to share their points of view, or using infographics to explain dry and difficult topics. E-mail lists are always useful in creating a solid customer base, and making sure you have access to your audience. Checking on the SEO and keywords in your posts can make your blog more visible, and improve the search engine rankings of your website overall.

Don’t Be Afraid To Outsource

If you are business-minded, you probably have a whole host of skills, and are able to adapt to many situations. However, those skills won’t necessarily include eloquent writing. While you may be able to express yourself well, if writing isn’t your talent then you may need to hire an editor. They will be able to expand on your points, and rephrase your language to make it engaging to your audience. There are many different tools available for someone with the wisdom to know when to delegate. There are several marketplaces such as UpWork, along with Freelancer where you can communicate with an editor and have a little more control and flexibility over your project. An additional advantage is that it is possible to arrange long term services over these websites too. Another valuable resource could be Scripted, which is an online website offering writing services specifically aimed at online marketing, and who specialize in business blog posts.

Bonus infographic:

Blogging Best Practices: The Ultimate List

Source: Onblastblog.

While there is no easy way to success, and no foolproof plan to a successful business blog, these tips can make your business plans so much easier. Properly using a blog can be an invaluable advertising tool, establish you in your industry, and expand your client base. When there are so many benefits, it is worth putting in the work and following these tips in order to make sure your blog is as successful and efficient as possible.



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Blogging Tips, Tactics and Trends: Survey Results

Are you looking for the most current blogging tips, tactics and strategies?

Do you want to know what the pros are doing when it comes to content marketing and blogging?

Keeping up with the latest trends and tactics on blogging can be daunting, however our friends over at Orbit Media Studios recently shared the results of a survey, which included over 1000+ bloggers and their take on creating blog content for your business.

This is especially timely - with 2017 fast approaching, many businesses are beginning to plan their content strategies for the upcoming year.

These results will show you what's working successfully for the top bloggers right now in terms of time, length, frequency, promotion and measurement.

And while I'm not suggesting that what works for the majority will necessarily work for your content efforts, these results can be a good place to begin, especially if you're just starting out or are not seeing the kinds of results from your content that you want.

I encourage you to experiment with your approach, to find what will work best for your industry, business and community, and to remember that quality is more important that quantity.

Here are the results from 3rd Annual Survey of 1000+ Bloggers from Orbit Media Studios, with my own insights included.

Five Successful Blogging Tips and Practices

1. Blog Post Length & Content

There has definitely been a trend in the increasing length of blog posts over the last couple of years.

In fact, blogs have increased in length by an average of 19% - they've gone from an average of 808 words in length in 2014 to 887 words in 2015 and are now about 1054 words in 2016.

The amount of short posts under 500 words is on a huge decline while the number of the lengthy 2000+ words is on the rise (doubling every year).

What's even more interesting is that the blog posts that are over 1000 words created stronger results in the opinions of the bloggers than those which were less than a 1000. The strongest results were seen by those with posts over 2000 words.

For your own blog, you'll likely need to do a bit of experimenting. For myself, the majority of my posts are 1200-1500+ words, with some in the 2000+ range, depending on the topic.

Media

There's been an increase in the use of visuals over the last two years, while audio inclusion, on the other hand, has decreased since last report.

Images make an excellent inclusion in a post as they help catch a reader’s intention and can break up your text to make it easier to read. Using more than one image is ideal, especially if you're creating longer blog posts.

The use of video is rising too, with about 15% of bloggers now using it.  Those who are using video report it generating stronger results than other media forms.

With the proper strategy, if video appeals your community and your own personal style, now is the time to consider incorporating it into your blog.

And although audio may have decreased from last year, those that are using it still report it producing very strong results. If adding audio to your blog - like a podcast - works for you and your community, don’t be deterred from using it.

There's also been a significant increase in the number of blog using lists, with almost half of bloggers now using them.

Lists can be exceptionally handy for readers, but with such of an abundance of them, it would be wise to not over use them or you risk becoming just another list among many. While the occasional list can be an excellent inclusion to your blog, variety is ultimately the key.

2. Blog Post Frequency

So just how often should you be publishing new posts your blog?

Frequency can range greatly from more than once a day to irregular intervals over the course of a year, with the average falling around once a week.

How often you choose to publish will most likely be dictated by your own resources - posting once a day requires a lot more resources than publishing once per week, especially if you're creating quality blog posts.

It's important to note that the bloggers who blogged the most frequently found the strongest results.

What this means for you is that the more often you can manage to post a quality blog post, the better results you are likely to see.

3. Writing & Editing Blog Posts

How long a blog post takes to write will vary greatly depending on your topic, how in-depth you're going, your familiarity with the topic and your skill researching and writing in general.

To give you an idea of what other businesses are investing in each article, the average blog post takes 3 hours and 16 minutes to write. This is up 26% from last year.

But if you're writing longer, more detailed posts, you can expect it will generally take longer than this to write - in fact, twice as many bloggers are now spending 6+ hours on an average post.

Stronger results were reported by more bloggers that invested 6+ hours per post than those who invested less than 6 hours.

I would NOT use these hours for planning purposes, but rather as a general guide.

Editing

The survey also discovered that now 1 in 4 bloggers are using a formal editing process.

Over half of bloggers now at least have a second set of eyes review their posts, which is important.

The reason that this is so important is that it's hard, even for skilled writers, to edit their own work. A second set of eyes helps ensure that most errors are caught.

Ensure that you're only posting professional looking blog posts by hiring one or more experienced editors. Remember, the quality of your posts (or lack thereof) will leave an impression with the people reading them and can affect the level of trust you create with your posts.

It's worth noting that more of the bloggers who had a formal editing process reported seeing strong results than those who did not.

4. Blog Promotion

While it's important to create great content, there isn’t much point in any of these blogging tips if no one reads it. That's why promoting your blog is so important.

So how are most businesses promoting their blog content?

Over 95% of bloggers are promoting their blog posts on social media.

The number of businesses using email to promote their content has had a fairly significantly increase over the last two years to 55% of businesses.

Influencer outreach has also seen a continued increase to almost 25% of bloggers incorporating it into their promotion.

Over 14% are also now including paid promotion of their content into their strategy.

Businesses using paid services and influencer outreach have seen the strongest results compared to social media which was least effective.

The most important step in creating content is promoting and sharing it, otherwise it won't be seen. A successful strategy that we use with paid promotion is the posts that do well organically are the ones we are most likely to dedicate a budget to with paid social ads.

5. Blog Measurement

The final topic covered in the survey was measurement, with bloggers asked how often they check their analytics.

Over 50% check their analytics on a regular basis.

But just under 20% rarely or never check. This number is staggering because if you don’t know how your posts are doing, how will you know what worked and what didn’t.

If you don’t know the topics or types of posts that your community loves or ignores then you'll waste a lot of effort in the future.

Want proof?

Those who checked their analytics the most often saw the strongest results.

Moral of the story – you'll be more successful with your content in the future if you know how past content has performed. What isn’t measured, can’t improve.

Creating Your 2017 Content Marketing Plan

There is no 'one size fits all' solution when it comes to blogging - what works for one business won't necessarily work for another.

But although this may be the case, there are certainly some practices which generally produce better results for the majority.

Glean what possibilities exist from this information to create your content marketing plan and improve your blogging practices. Ultimately, you need to test some of these blogging tips and practices to determine what works for your business and your community.

Did any of the stats surprise you? What is working well for your blog? Share in the comments below.

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4 Tips on Writing Better Short Copy for Social Media

If you do any kind of writing, you’ve probably been asked something along the lines of: “Hey, can you whip up a quick [email/tweet/tagline/insert other piece of short copy] for me?”

It’s just a couple of lines of text - a few dozen words at most. What could be difficult about that?

But as most people who write content will tell you, producing short copy is hard. Rumor has it even Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Just think: In an eBook, you have thousands of words to get your point across however you want - there’s no limit on the number of stories, quotes, metaphors, and examples you can use to convey your ideas.

But if you’re doing content marketing right, you’re not only producing long-form content. Your strategy should include everything from 20-page eBooks to 750-word blog posts to 140-character tweets.

And therein lies the challenge: When you get down to an 80-character headline for a Facebook ad, a few words for a tagline, or a three-sentence company description, you don’t have the luxury to be wordy. You have to pare down your copy to the bare minimum - but somehow still get your message across.  

After spending a lot of time squeezing big ideas into very small pieces of copy, I’ve learned these tips.

1. Determine the one message you want to get across

When your space is limited, you have to prioritize.

If you’re writing an email promoting an eBook, for example, your priority is to get your readers to download that piece of content, usually within 200-300 words - which means you don’t have room to explain how the eBook relates to your product or service, why that product or service is so great, and a list of every feature and benefit it includes. There’s a time and place for that message, but it isn’t in this particular email.

Ask yourself what the main purpose of the piece of content is, then whittle away all the excess.

2. Use design to your advantage

If you don’t have much space (or many characters) to work with, you don’t have to rely solely on text. Incorporating great design can help you get your point across successfully, without adding to the word count.

In a social media ad, a well-selected image that works with your headline can convey the tone and feel of your message, and is likely to be the thing that draws people to your copy (versus the other way around). A postcard covered in text will probably go straight in the trash - but an engaging image that accompanies a few lines of copy can grab your recipient’s attention and make your message much more effective.

3. Get rid of the fluff

If you’re struggling to get the right message into the right number of words, try this: Just write.

Forget about the word or character limit, don’t worry about making it sound good - just focus on getting down the main point you want to convey, no matter how much space it takes up on your page. Once that’s done, take a critical look at it, see what you can cut, and edit it.

It may take a couple of tries, but eventually you’ll get rid of the fluff and trim down the copy to something that fits your needs (and the small amount of space you have available).

4. Remember that it’s just one piece

You might worry that people are going to see a single tweet or tagline and that’s going to be the end of their engagement with you. And that’s when you might make a common mistake - assuming that you need to pack in as much information as possible, just in case that single piece of content is your reader’s only interaction with your company.

It's important to remember that a single piece of copy isn't likely to be the decision-maker for one of your potential customers - at least, not in the scope of your content marketing strategy. Each piece of copy is a part of the bigger picture - a tweet may lead to a blog post that links to an eBook that leads to a deeper conversation with one of your sales reps. A tagline on a business card may lead to a website visit that leads to a webinar registration.

Each piece just has to lead to the next. Understanding this will free you from forcing every possible piece of information into your copy, and rather, help you focus on its individual purpose (which usually turns out to be a much shorter message).

Now that I’ve written 750 words to explain how to write short copy, maybe John Mayer summarizes it best:

"Say what you need to say."

Keep it to the point and focused to ensure you're maximizing your opportunities. 

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How do I find time to create content? 25 Ideas!

By Mark Schaefer

I’ve never met a person who says they have too much time, especially when it comes to creating content!

But here’s a fact: successful bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters have the same number of hours in a day as you. Everybody has the same time to create content, but not everybody makes it a priority. The real question isn’t having the time, it’s whether you have the tenacity and drive to do it … and keep doing it.

There’s probably nothing I can write that can impact your determination, but I can provide you with 25 ideas and best practices to help you squeeze more content-producing productivity out of every hour.

1. Focus. Don’t try to be everywhere and on every platform. Pick the content type that fits your mission and stick to it.
2. ABC (Always Be Creating). There are story ideas all around you. Make a habit out of writing down every inspiration as it happens so it’s not lost. Be aware of what you see, hear, and read every day and think about how that could become a relevant piece of content. If you follow this practice, you will always have a bank of ideas.
3. Make time to create. Block out several undistracted hours each week to create. Schedule this with discipline like you would prioritize an important meeting.
4. Add an insight. Let’s say you see a post of five ideas to bake a better cake. For your cooking blog, create a new post noting the original post and writer, list the five ideas, and then add two more ideas of your own. You’ve just added value to your readers, helped the original author by linking to their content, and created a great piece in a fraction of the time.
5. Find a routine.  Try to create content at your most productive time each day, or on the same day each week. By doing this, you’re training your mind to expect that this is the time you’re going to create content. You might even look forward to it!
6. Let it sit. Don’t spin your wheels too long on any one idea. If you’re feeling stuck, move on to another idea to use your time productively. Some of my best posts don’t bloom for weeks after the initial “planting!”
7. Learn to say no. Every minute you spend on tasks not central to your goal is time that is gone forever. Guard your time carefully since it is the only asset you have to devote to content creation.
8. Look ahead. What interruptions do you have in the upcoming weeks and months? Vacation? Business trips? Family commitments? Prepare for these “outages.” If you try to rush content, quality will suffer. Success requires consistency.
9. Take a break. I know this doesn’t seem to make sense, but taking breaks make us more productive. Studies have shown that even two-minute breaks can increase productivity by 11 percent.
10. Imperfect is perfect. The biggest obstacle for many people is they waste too much time seeking perfection. You are human. That post or video is probably never going to be perfect. Push the publish button any way.
11. Use the apps. There are free apps to help you create free and easy illustrations, infographics, and videos. You can create podcasts on your smartphone now.  There are apps to help you find content ideas, edit, guide your SEO, and write better headlines.
12. Mix the media. Don’t have time to write a post this week? Well you can make a three-minute video in … well, three minutes! Embedding a little video in a post is a great time-saver and provides variety for your readers. I saw an interesting post one time that was simply a photo of what the blogger’s office set-up looked like. So simple and it probably took him five minutes. Mix it up.
13. A little help from your friends. In a time crunch? Why not invite some of your trusted friends to submit a a guest blog post, a video for your channel, or a “takeover” of your Instagram or Snapchat account?
14. Ask, don’t answer. Don’t feel pressure to develop time-intensive advice on every piece of content. Some of the most engaging posts are questions, not answers. “This has been bothering me and I don’t have an answer to it. What do you think …”
15. Copy and improve. You consume so much great content every day. Part of the value you can provide to readers is exposing them to new ideas from others and then improving on it. For example, I was reading about the “flow state” of peak performance and wrote down an idea about how this could be applied to content creation.
16. Out-source the admin. Much of the time needed to create content comes with the editing, producing and scheduling. Podcasting and video editing can be particularly time-consuming. Try to out-source these activities so you can spend your time on the actual content creation.
17. Don’t multi-task. Turn off the TV, smartphone, iPad, text messages and alerts. An average knowledge worker wastes 28 percent of their time on interruptions and “recovery time.”
18. Prepare a content calendar. Plotting out your content plan week by week can help you visualize your commitments and arrange your content to align with your work schedule. For example, I don’t schedule content that is going to attract high levels of engagement on days jammed with meetings.
19. Round-up posts. Come up with an interesting question or industry problem and ask a group of trusted industry friends to provide a 2-3 sentence answer. Collect them all and you’ve got an extremely interesting post with little original work on your part.
20. Set a deadline. When I was starting out, I would take forever to create content. I fretted over so many details. I found that when I set time limits on the content (I will spend one more hour on this – then publish!), I was much more effective.
21. Don’t over-think it. A great piece of content doesn’t have to be a PhD thesis or earth-shaking insight. Some of my most popular posts have emerged from a simple observation or a question on my mind. There’s no pressure to be profound.
22. Create a list post. Readers love lists. They’re easy to scan, easy to digest, and lists are highly-shard content. Lucky for you, lists are also much quicker and easier to write than longer-form content.
23. Re-purpose your content. Transcribe a podcast to create a blog post. Use ideas from a blog post to publish a slide presentation. Base an infographic on your slide presentation. Starting to see the potential here? It’s possible to make many pieces of content from one core idea.
24. Narrate. Most people can speak 3-4 times faster than they can type. I use a college student in my area to transcribe all sorts of audio and video content, which saves a significant amount of time. There are also apps available that can do a decent job of transcribing at very low cost or even free. You can spend your time editing, instead of writing.
25. Drink a beer. Several research studies showed that slightly elevating the alcohol level in the bloodstream increases creativity levels. I am not making this up.

The last tip is my favorite. It might be the best blogging tip on the whole planet. No need to thank me. What tips would you add to this list?



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