We write a lot of blogs here at Weidert Group. We strive to publish every work day because we believe in blogging as a fundamental element of our Inbound Marketing strategy.
We also spend a lot of time looking at our blog analytics. It’s not just enough to write a blog; you have to look at the traffic generated each time you publish a new one. Which blogs performed well? Which ones did not attract the audience you’d hoped? More importantly, do you know why?
Each and every time one of the team here at Weidert Group writes a blog, we try to deliver a post that’s both interesting and informative. We have our areas of expertise, we seek out compelling topics and we judiciously use our keywords.
Yet, some posts do better than others, and some really take off, gathering hundreds of views and driving prospects to our website where we can convert them to leads.
To date, our top 5 posts are:
- How 6 Hours of Social Media Marketing Can Increase Your Sales – 1,219 views
- Top 10 LinkedIn Etiquette Tips to Connect Like a Pro – 725 views
- 6 Ways To Use Pinterest To Promote Your Business – 678 views
- Social Media Optimization 101: How To Optimize Your Profiles – 666 views
- Social Media Marketing: A 30 Minute Plan – 604 views
When you read these posts and really delve into why they’re successful, you begin to see they have certain elements in common – let’s call them the essential elements of optimized blog posts:
A great topic
While I like to think all of our topics are good, there are just some topics that catch a reader’s attention more than others. However, you can increase your chances of choosing a good one by knowing your audience, why they follow you and what they’re interested in. Blogging about your keywords is a good start, and it certainly increases the chances of your blog being found.
A conversational tone
When you read these 5 blogs, you’ll notice they’re written in a way that’s both educational and conversational. You can hear it in your head as a dialog among a couple of friends or colleagues. It’s not jargon. It’s not overwhelming. Just a pleasant read.
Links to additional information
Links are a great way to add more information and expertise to your blog posts. It gives the reader additional resources, both on your website and to external sites, without adding to the length of the post. Adding those links also helps to build your websites inbound links, improving your rankings with the search engines.
A list, a graphic or both
Lists and images serve several important functions for a blog. Bulleted lists are a great way to segment copy into easily digestible nuggets; they’ll also help to break up a long post. Images can also break up long sections of copy, and they give you another opportunity to add keywords to your post by using them in the alt text, further increasing the visibility of the post.
A related call to action
Every good blog post needs to have a call to action asking the reader to take additional steps. Directing them to a topically related tip sheet, white paper or e-book increases the chances they’ll find additional value in the post. Not only will they download additional content, but that additional value will often cause them to share the post, increasing your views and potential to attract additional prospects.
Of course, there are other ways to boost your blog viewership, like proper use of tags and a well-written meta description. But if you work on making sure you include and master the essential elements, you’ll see your blog readership steadily increase.
To learn more about writing optimized blog posts, please see our e-book How to Write a Killer Blog Post.
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