Tips for Blogging 201

Tips for Blogging 201

You see blogging advice everywhere these days – your brand should be regularly contributing to a blog on your website. Not only does it help position your company as an industry expert, but the new and updated content being added to your site forces Google to regularly crawl and index your website pages. So what happens if you sit down but get a bad case of writers block? It happens to the best of us. But let’s start with these 3 steps to identifying relevant blog topics to your audience from The Moz Blog.

1. Gather relevant data. Start by going through some of your most popular past blogs. You can identify these through your Google Analytics, or by looking at your most shared posts on your social networks. Next, check out what is getting your competitors attention. (You can use tools such as SocialCrawlytics or Open Site Explorer.) Then do some research into what your community and your industry influencers are blogging about. Using this information, look at what’s trending on social media that is relevant to your business and industry to see if you can capitalize on popular topics. Similarly, find out popular industry web questions and web content searches through online industry forums, SEO keyword tools, and HARO or ProfNet. Now that you’ve done the research phase, let’s move on to step 2.
2. Ask questions to make your research actionable. Refer to the three questions below, then decide which topics have the most potential.
   – What do all of these topics have in common to make them top content? Identify patterns.
   – Ask the five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) and classify “interest” based on relevance and previous search volume.
   – How and when have these topics been covered in the past? Was it a different content structure, such as an eBook or infographic instead of a blog? Was it published a few months ago, or a few years ago?
3. Validate your opportunities. Decide if the topic is relevant to your business’ goal. Interpret if the type of content is useful and interesting for your target audience – is there a purpose to your post? Will this topic be easy to understand? Determine if you have the resources to write to post and whether it will give your business a boost, whether in traffic, sales, etc.

When you’ve decided on an appropriate topic for today, keep your other ones in mind for upcoming posts. Don’t forget that repurposing evergreen content can be an asset to your content management strategy. Have multiple blogs on one topic? Turn it into an eBook or infographic. Already wrote a blog on a topic? Try turning it into a video.

Try to make a conscious effort to create original content using the resources inside your company. A new study shows that on Facebook, original content gets more attention since Facebook is now trying to cut back on re-reporting. Positioning your brand and your business as a thought leader and innovator will help bring the traffic to you. More engagement means more awareness, and hopefully more sales!

One last thing to think about before publishing your new content is Google Authorship. There have been numerous articles about marketing in 2014 mentioning the importance of this tool. Putting a face behind your brand helps build trust and authority, and gives it a human feel to encourage a connection. Names are quickly forgotten, but as they say, you never forget a face. Beyond the awareness and connection reasons, including Google Authorship in your content will also help place your content higher in search rankings.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start creating some new, original content! Check out our insurance blog for our recent content marketing tweak!

–Alyssa : )

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