We’ve been spending a lot of time on marketing plans and how to train your brain to blog, but today I want to spend a little time on the actual anatomy of a blog. You know how to seek out trends, you understand what your audience wants and what your business brand should say, and you have some solid marketing plans, but you still aren’t sure how to put it all together. Sometimes writing the first line of a masterpiece is the hardest part.
Keyword Focused, Relevant Title
Your title should explain it all, and yet leave everyone hanging. If it sounds confusing, well honestly it can be. Creating a title for the search engines as well as the target audience is more than a skill, it’s a gift. According to ProBlogger.com, the blog title is the most powerful words that you’ll write because for most of your readers the decision as to whether to read the rest of your post rests upon this title.
Blog titles are incredibly relevant to search engines because it’s the title that shows in search results, RSS Feeds, links from other bloggers, and headlines social media shares. There are some proven techniques and title strategies that you can use such as creating controversy with a headline, asking a significant question, mentioning graphics or videos, as well as secrets or free will definitely grab a reader’s attention.
Mix it up a bit with your title. Don’t just use the keywords because you know you have to for search engines, use them because they actually help to make your title relevant. Don’t just ask a question because you know it might get a response, ask a question that is truly meaningful. Finally, humor always wins over a crowd.
Keyword Integration
Just below the importance of the blog title comes the integration of keywords. This is nearly as important as the title because this is what the search engines are looking for. Just as your marketing plan has the keywords that you want to rank for, your blog should be highly focused on each of those keywords but separately.
The easiest way to accomplish keyword blogging is to focus on a different keyword each week or perhaps even each month. Don’t just write one blog for each keyword, write ten blogs for one keyword. And don’t just include one keyword in each blog, focus highly on one keyword but think about longtail keywords at the same time. (Longtail keywords are those search phrases that individuals use when being very specific about search results. For example, an individual might use the keyword “Wisdom Teeth” or they might use the longtail phrase “what happens if I don’t get my wisdom teeth removed.” Consider this when writing keyword blogs).
And, as we’ve mentioned in previous articles, no matter what your keyword is, your blog topic must be relevant to what’s trending, what people are thinking about, and what is significant to your industry.
A Blog’s Tone
Lastly, the tone of your blog is especially important. Are you blogging as your corporation; professional and to the point? Perhaps you’re blogging as a doctor; technical and informational? Maybe you are a small business blogger who is light-hearted and inviting? The tone of your blog will depend greatly upon the tone of your business brand.
Consider Starbucks, for example, whose business brand is very inviting and engaging. It’s all about the audience, which is why Starbucks has multiple blogs dedicated to its audience; blogs that encourage audience participation. They are light-hearted and fun, but serious when topics call for it (Japan Relief, for example).
Decide if you’re going to write in the first person, or third person. Decide if the blog will be ‘authored’ by you as the business owner, or by employees, or perhaps anonymous. Take a look at your overall marketing plan to determine which route is best to take.