Blog Post

Content Marketing Tips: The 4 Things That Every Business Blog Needs

  • By Mark Baker
  • 18 Dec, 2015

If you want to generate more inbound marketing traffic to your site, you probably already understand how important content marketing is. Creating content and posting it on your blog is an effective way to increase engagement with your targeted audience, and it’s cheaper than more traditional forms of marketing. If you haven’t re-evaluated your content marketing strategy recently, now is the time.

DEFINE YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY

Many businesses dive in and start writing their own posts about what’s going on in the industry. As long as your content is interesting, informative, and valuable to those in your industry, there’s actually nothing wrong with writing about whatever is on your mind.

However, at some point, you will need to define your content strategy to make sure that your blog posts aren’t missing those little components that make every business blog effective. By ensuring that your future blog posts have all of these essential components, you’ll make a big difference in your overall content marketing effectiveness and reach. If you’re ready to bring your business blog to the next level, don’t forget to include these four things in each piece of content you post:


1.
  A Clickable Headline

Simple titles aren't necessarily a bad thing. However, you want people to hardly be able to resist clicking on your title and reading your blog post. This can be tough to do with a too-simple headline, so take the time to come up with something striking and exciting. But titles that are too long can easily be passed over, too. You need to hit just the right medium.

Think about what makes you click on blog posts. You probably look for action words and results-oriented phrases, so try to incorporate some of those same things. Be exciting, but be clear about what the payoff will be if a customer does choose to invest her time reading your content

2.  Images

Reading a page that is filled with nothing but a white background and black text can be boring sometimes, right? Breaking up the monotony with subheadings can help, but it's really not enough in today’s media-focused marketing world. You’ll need to incorporate interesting images into each and every blog post.

This doesn't mean that you have to break out your digital camera. There are stock images out there that should work just fine for blogging purposes, and many of them are completely free to use. If you want to make things even easier, you can pay a modest fee for a stock-photo service, which can provide you with even more images to use and can make it easier for you to search for them.

And remember: the images don’t need to be literal representations of your subject. Sometimes, images that relate only abstractly can do a lot of work to grab your reader’s attention.

3. Encouragement For Questions And Comments

If you allow comments on your blog posts, you should try to facilitate conversation. Ask questions at the end of your posts, and specifically request responses in the comment section. When people start commenting, they’re more likely to return to your page to check for responses to what they’ve said.

Show that you are an active reader who responds to each person. Be professional, but don’t be afraid to show your personal side, either. A glimpse of the person behind the blog is refreshing, and can actually encourage people to come back again.

4. Social Media Sharing Buttons

You worked hard on that content, and of course you want people to share it with everyone they know. The easiest way to make sure that your content is seen by more people is to include social media sharing buttons on all of your blog posts. A simple addition like this will drastically increase the number of social media shares that your content receives. The easier it is to share, the more likely readers will.

Take a look at your current content strategy. Does each piece of content have these four components? If not, you may be undercutting your own efforts. Make it a point to implement these things into each of your posts, and you might be surprised by how quickly your content marketing efforts improve.

Mark Baker

Mark Baker is a natural artist. Since starting his first business hand painting graphics onto vehicles in high school, Mark gained experience in the entertainment, sports, and retail industries before founding this company in 1993. Honest and pragmatic, Mark knows that anything can be accomplished with a great communication plan and creative thinking. 

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