Keeping you up to date

While paid advertising and social media play vital roles in your marketing strategy, owning your media channels has never been more crucial. It’s the power of owned media that truly sets your brand apart, establishing trust, authority, and long-term relationships with your audience. At the heart of owned media lies blogging—a dynamic platform that should serve as the cornerstone of your content marketing strategy. But why is blogging such a key ingredient in today’s digital landscape?

With a host of different advice available, we thought it would be useful to summarise what we’ve learnt from creating content ourselves that works most effectively for company blogs.

First of all, some key points to consider when starting a blog…

1. Blogging is about sharing your knowledge with the world, so take the time to understand your audience and ensure you blog about topics that will appeal to them.
2. Blogging is interactive and designed for people to connect with one another, meaning people will likely want to comment on your posts. Allow them – this is a great way for you to learn from your readers.
3. Ensure your writing style is appropriate for your topic and audience.
4. Make sure you have the time and capability to post often – even if your posts are short. If this is going to be a struggle, consider recruiting other bloggers alongside you.

Consider your standpoint:

1. Are you a thought leader in your industry? Your blog provides the perfect platform to leverage your voice and showcase your values to build authority in your industry.
2. Are you a Sherpa? If you’re on your journey to the proverbial mountain top, but not quite there then your goal is to reflect personal experiences and guide people along with you.
3. Are you a beginner? If so, you have a powerful voice as you will be considered a likeable, unbiased leader who is willing to share both successes and misadventures, so ensure to convey your position as a writer who is gaining readership along their journey.

Consider your content:

`

1. Ideas need time to “marinate” – the best ideas are often the 6th/7th one you come up with.
2. Ensure what your writing is unique and is an angle that nobody else has taken. To gain authority you need to share your own views and not just a re-work of what everyone else is saying.
3. This is often best achieved by writing authentically about what you know, how you feel and why this is different.
4. Consider the value to others your blog post can bring – your blogs should be entertaining, engaging, interesting or educational for your audience.
5. Define the topic (easier said than done!) and then decide if it’s a single post or can be covered over a series of posts.
6. Always consider what would make it more useful and more memorable to your target market.
7. It can be easy to accidentally intimidate readers or undermine their intelligence. To avoid this, use this process:
   – Jot it down
   – Review it
   – Mash up
   – Write your first draft
   – Look at what others have written in that area
   – Bounce it around to other people
   – Add depth
   – Write your final draft
   – Share/post
   – Read your comments and feedback to improve next time

Consider how to write:

1. Try and write conversationally.
2. Avoid jargon and clichés, and don’t overuse the thesaurus!
3. Read it aloud after you’ve written.
4. If you find yourself struggling when reading it, or you’re speaking unnaturally, think about how you would have said it if speaking to a friend.
5. Always consider your audience – don’t write for you, your competitors or your suppliers, write for your target market.
6. Small mistakes can be barriers to engagement so proof-reading is essential!

Consider the amount of effort it takes:

1. Frequently updated blogs are the most attractive. And to get the full SEO benefit you’ll need to post at least once per week, ideally twice in a week!
2. Be consistent about when you’re uploading posts, e.g. if you say you will post every Friday – do!
3. Be prepared to spend time working on it every week – making a blog successful takes discipline.
4. If you find yourself posting your blog with a feeling of dread, it may not be for you. Perhaps you can outsource it?
5. Jot down reminders for topics you want to blog about as you go about your day. Great ideas will come when you least expect them!
6. Pay attention to the parts of the day that are most interesting to you as they’ll most likely be the areas your audience are most interested in as well.

Consider scan-ability:

1. Most people read online by scanning the page for individual words, phrases or headings.
2. Consider asking a friend who is not familiar with your site to read your recent posts for 15-30 seconds and then ask them to define what the post was about; this will give you an indication of how they’ve interacted with your blog.
3. Format your blog with headings and sub-headings for visual cues of what is happening in the content, making it easier and more enjoyable to read.
4. Place pictures cleverly by your key points as eyes are drawn down the page by pictures; this will help get people through the full article.
5. Create space as it helps readers to not feel overwhelmed; use paragraphs to do so.
6. Get to the point and say it up front; you can expand upon it later.

Consider length:

1. Reader attention span – the typical online reader has a short attention span particularly with online content (even less than a goldfish apparently!) So make sure your content is interesting and to the point.
2. SEO – posts do not have to have the same word count to help with search rankings but they do need to include key words that are relevant to the services or products you are trying to sell / promote.
3. Topic/genre – if you feel you have to much to talk about in one post, consider how you can break each topic down in to smaller posts to create a series.
4. Comprehensive – write enough to cover your topic and then stop!

Consider titles:

1. Keep it simple – if you get it under 40 characters, the whole title should appear in search results.
2. Grab attention – titles set you apart, but avoid shock tactics or “click bait” as this will just disappoint or mislead your readers!
3. Meet a need – people are drawn in by feeling you have something to say that they want to know.
4. Describe – titles should describe what readers will get from the main post.
5. Use key words – this will maximise the power of titles in SEO.
6. Put effort in – it’s a mini advert for your post, so double check that the title is going to do everything it can to maximise chances that people will engage with your post.

Happy blogging!

If podcasts are your thing, you may like to listen to the following Revitalise & Grow podcasts episodes which discuss blogging and owned media in more detail:

Making sense of owned media

How to start a blog for your business

If you understand the importance of blogging but simply don’t have the time or resource to make it happen, connect with us to discuss how we can help you with an owned media strategy to position you as a thought leader, drive traffic to your website and ultimately increase sales.