Believe it or not, blogs are still worth creating. But, do you know how to create a blog worth reading? Blogs help draw more traffic to your business, and if done correctly, convey your expertise and knowledge.
It’s a fine line between the obvious push of your product/service as well as being too repetitive with your topics. Even if you already have a blog for your business, this post is worth the read (or skim, which we’ll get to later!). Why settle for an ‘ok’ blog when you create a great and effective one?
Create A Plan
Every month, 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages. That’s a LOT of interest in blogs, but how are you going to stand out amongst the sea of them?
The simple answer is to start small, but ask yourself these questions while creating your plan:
- What is the purpose of your blog?
- How do you want your blog to appear visually?
- How do you want your blogs to sound?
- When do you want to post?
Step 1: Find Your Purpose
For the sake of this blog, we’re looking at blogging for your business/brand as opposed to monetizing blogging as a business itself. For instance, if you run a digital marketing agency, then your purpose for blogs is to share your knowledge and expertise.
A great example of a brand blog is Williams Sonoma (you can find their blog here). They share recipes with drool-worthy photos that include their products as well. You can, of course, click on the links within the posts to purchase the products. Why this works: their high-end kitchen gadgets are matched with picture-perfect photos of what we all wish to create in our own kitchens.
[Source: Examples from Williams Sonoma’s blog]
The blog for footwear company Toms (below) does something similar. They create blogs that tie into the products they sell.
[Source: Toms Blog]
Other examples are Forbes and Sprout Social. Both share blogs full of industry tips and insight – very informative and reliable sources for information. In the end, your purpose needs to remain at the forefront of blogging. It’s very easy to stray from that, and then you’re creating a bit of chaos within your blog image.
Step 2: Visualize
Creating a blog worth reading also leans into how your blog is seen. It’s easy for this to be an afterthought, but it shouldn’t be. These two simple tips make a big impact:
- Have a consistent color scheme. These can be colors within the same family that you rotate or one standard set of colors. Your section headers should reflect this and your font should remain the same.
- Keep the main blog image theme (that is seen when people search) consistent. As you can see by the example below, the image changes, but the theme stays the same.
Anytime someone comes across your blog, they should know it’s yours. For example, the B Squared Media blogs have a consistent look (pictured below). If you go to our blog page, you will see the cohesiveness in imagery as well as topics that we cover.
[Source: B Squared Media Blogs]
Step 3: Tone of Voice
The tone of voice is very important for creating your business blog. This goes hand-in-hand with the visual aspect of your blog. How do you want to sound? Playful, cheeky, sophisticated, serious, or bubbly and fun?
Once you’ve nailed down your brand’s vibe, you need to make sure anyone blogging for you is aware of the tone you’d like to convey. Of course, everyone has a different writing style – that’s the great part of having multiple bloggers, you get a variety! But in the end, there should be a common thread with the tone.
Another important thing to note is that while blogs are still relevant, a whopping 43% admit to skimming a blog. What does that mean for you? It means get to the point! You can easily do this by using bullet points, making important statements bold, and keeping the paragraphs short.
If you go to the Forbes blog, you expect no-nonsense information. If you visit Peloton’s blog, you expect fitness information. And if you visit The Onion’s blog, you can expect snarky and silly blogs.
Start Blogging
Now that you have our tips on how to create a blog worth reading, it’s time to get to work! In addition to having a streamlined appearance and tone of voice, make sure you promote your blog as well. This can be done on your social media platforms and via your email distribution list.
Additionally, you will want to have a regular schedule. Will these be posted once a week? Once a month? Either way, always post them on the same day, at the same time. This helps to keep you on a regular schedule for planning ahead as well as leads your community to know when a new blog is dropping.
One last thing to note is that you want your blog to be search engine optimized (SEO). If you’re unsure how that works, you can read this tutorial from Yoast.
What have you done to create a blog worth reading? Let us know in the comments!
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