Writing and maintaining a blog may take a little extra time out of your day, but it’s also a low cost means to advertise, educate and facilitate trust with existing and potential customers! Each and every post that is written gets published as its own indexed page on your web site. The more pages you have, the more opportunities you have to get found online! But, it’s also important to understand that even if you take the time to create a blog – it may not create the response you’re hoping for. What you are offering through a blog must be compelling, look professional and be well written, or people will quickly move on to greener pastures.
If you’re interested in learning how to use blogs as an important marketing resource, check out some of the following helpful tips we’ve learned while maintaining our own blog.
Understand your audience: Who is your ideal customer? If you discuss problems and present solutions for your ideal customer, it’s likely they will be interested in coming back to read and learn more. Think about how you might use blog content to facilitate positive relationships and generate trust with your customers!
Keep a blog post to one topic: Just like when people jump from topic to topic in daily conversation, it can also be frustrating for a reader if written content meanders about and doesn’t stick to the point. Consider how newspaper or magazine articles are written, and look at how other popular writers in your industry are generating effective content.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): For each blog post, you’ll want to look at using keywords in the title. Keywords are words or phrases that are commonly searched for on search engines such as Google. But remember! Only use keywords that are relevant to your blog post! Customers will become frustrated if they find your post through a search keyword, and discover that it’s not about the subject they are looking for! You’ll also want to look at creating a meta description for your blog post. A meta description is a short summary that search engines will use when displaying search results. Many blog sites should have capabilities to input meta descriptions and keywords.
Write Compelling Blog Titles: When writing an effective title for your blog, use words that convey an action, such as “How to…” or “Explore”. Be mindful of effective keywords (SEO), being clear and concise (try to keep titles short and to the point), intriguing (such as: “Learn more about…”), and definitive (such as: “The Ultimate Guide to…” or “10 reasons why…”)
Attractive Blog Posts: Not everyone is a designer, but attempt to make your blog post pleasing to look at. Use easy to read fonts, a consistent font and font sizing from post to post, and refrain from using font colors that are hard to read (black is best, but occasionally dark colors for standout text may be useful). Use quality images, subheads, and bulleted lists for additional viewing impact.
Proof Read! When you’re finished writing your blog post, be sure to read through it at least once to look for any spelling errors, bad grammar and poor sentence structure. You may also want someone else to read it too. Nothing will kill a message like bad grammar, misspelled words, or hard to understand sentences.
Utilize a Call to Action: It’s a good idea to end each blog post with a Call to Action – something that prompts the reader to click on a link to download a free resource, fill out a form for more information, or follow a link to another relevant topic or product. If customers like what they read, and are convinced of the value your post is trying to convey, they may want an opportunity to learn or do more. An effective Call to Action that is relevant to the post helps them do just that!
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