Three Ways to Produce a Blog That Works
What makes a good blog post?
We do a lot of blog writing here at Dux, on a wide range of technology, financial services, and other topics. And we’re voracious blog readers, so we know a thing or two about the blogging game.
A good blog post accomplishes a couple of different things. It enlightens – and hopefully entertains – and it achieves the bottom-line objective of demonstrating to your clients, your prospects, and any other readers that you know what you’re talking about. And that your company is worth paying attention to because you know your stuff.
Here are three key points if you want your blog posts to stand out:
Give your reader something to think about. The perspective that you can bring to the topic or issue is your value. It demonstrates your expertise and insight, which is why someone would want to read it in the first place.
It’s important to blog frequently – we recommend at least once a week – but it’s more important to offer good, thoughtful content. If you’re writing the post just because it’s time to write a post, there’s a good chance it could end up sounding like it’s a chore; it won’t be as strong as if you are inspired. If your frequency drops to posts every two weeks as a result, that’s OK. The better content will make up for it.
Infuse it with personality. We all like to read something written by someone likable, and the writing style can convey information about you even without sharing personal details. And speaking of style, if you have several writers contributing to your blog, it’s important that each is distinctive.
Yes, they need to speak with a consistent voice in terms of the messages they are conveying about your company, but they shouldn’t all sound the same. If someone is ghost-writing your blogs for different individuals, the ghost writer needs to keep that in mind.
Don’t write for length. While there are no real limitations on how long a blog can be, you don’t want it to be so long that your readers get weary along the way. A lot of SEO advice these days is pushing for longer posts, as much as 1200 words. We think that may be too long. But on the other hand, we have had clients put a cap of 500 words on a post, which can be too confining depending on the topic.
What is best is to cover the topic well and make your points in a strong way. If you find that you’re up in the 1500-word range, perhaps consider breaking it up into two shorter blog posts, one for this week and one for the next.
There is more advice we can offer about blogs, and we’re always happy to talk with clients and potential clients about them. Not everybody loves to write blogs like we do, but we believe that everyone who tries can find it an enjoyable experience with the right attitude and a bit of guidance.