Blogs help you connect with customers, set you up as an expert and drive traffic to your website. Here’s my copywriting checklist for how to write a business blog that will help your business stand out…
Write a catchy headline
People judge books – and blogs – by their covers. They will take three seconds to decide whether to read your blog. When you are writing a business blog, keep your title simple and short (anything more than 60 characters will be cut short on google search engines). Look at newspaper headlines to get a feel for how to write succinct titles. Or run your heading through an analyser.
Create space
It doesn’t matter how interesting your blog is, if it’s hard to read it won’t be read. People skim-read blogs. Short sentences and paragraphs are easier to read. Lists, formatting and blocks of text help people navigate a post. Even better, add lots of sub heads when you write your business blog. Try bullet points and bolded words to draw attention to areas of interest or products. The idea is to give quality information in a short amount of time.
Add images
Pictures speak a thousand words. Visuals will draw people in and keep them scrolling. When you write a business blog, always use royalty free images. Useful sites are Unsplash and Pixabay. Add an alt tag (alternative text) to photos as this helps with SEO and accessibility for those with special needs.
04
Look at what your competitors are doing
There’s no copyright on ideas! You can pick up some great tips from other blogs, and see what’s doing well and what isn’t. Think about asking other people to write guest blogs – and plug each other’s blogs.
05
Write for your customer not yourself
Work out who your target audience is. This is not always obvious. It depends on what you want to achieve with your blogs and what you want people to do on your website. Blogs should be all about your readers. Ideally, they should solve a problem or give insight into the business or a product. A good blog should also show the personality behind your company (just like your social media).
06
Post regularly
It doesn’t matter if you post once a week or once a month – the key is a regular content plan that you can stick with. Blog pages that are abandoned half way through, will remain on the site with out-of-date content. It gives the impression you don’t care, or, worse still, that your company might not be operating anymore.
07
End with a call to action
Blog posts that end with a call to action i.e. ‘share this’, ‘read more like this’ or ‘book one of our classes’ get more traffic to convert to sales.
08
Boost your post with SEO
SEO can seem complicated (or boring) but you don’t want to miss these three out when you write a business blog…
- Add a meta description – a 160-character block of text that search engines display below your post title.
- Use keywords – get your business keywords into your title and body text, without making sentences unreadable or unenjoyable.
- Add social links – external (in a new window) and internal (to previous blogs) to drive traffic.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks