It’s one thing if you think your business blog content is great. It’s another matter entirely if your audience does. In order for content marketing to be successful, you need to craft content that really grabs your readers and makes them want to do something after reading it.
But you’re not a marketer, are you? You’re an entrepreneur. And so you may not know how to write this kind of engaging content. Let’s look at a few proven strategies that can help you get started.
- Know What Your Customers are Interested In
This is a bit chicken-and-egg, but once you have some blog content published, you can look at your blog analytics to see which topics got the most views, clicks, and shares. These are topics you need to expand upon or dive into more thoroughly.
Take a moment to look at your analytics right now (we’ll wait). What were the top three blog posts over the past year? Now brainstorm a list of related topics you could write to further cover that category. Congratulations. You now have more content that you know your readers will like!
- Make It Simple to Share
You can’t expect people to automatically share your content, especially if they have to copy and paste the link from your blog to their social profiles. To make it easier, include a sharing widget (AddThis is a good one) so that all they have to do is click to share to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera.
You can also add verbiage at the end of each post to remind readers to share: Like this post? Please share it on your favorite social network by clicking the link below.
- Have a Purpose With Each Post
The bulk of your blog content will be to educate your audience on the subject matter that you’re an expert on, but beyond that, what are you hoping to do? Get email signups? Get people to download your new whitepaper? Have them buy from you?
Have a goal for each post (and each post can have a different goal if you’d like). If you want whitepaper downloads, include a call to action at the end of the post with a link to the landing page. If you want to drive sales of a particular product, make that post about how useful that product is, then link to it.
- Include Visually-Appealing Images
One of the best ways to engage your audience is by including professional stock photos with each post. Photo subscriptions can be fairly inexpensive (look to Stock Unlimited for great selection and a low price), so find an image that illustrates what the post is about and upload it into WordPress.
Images of people, especially with plain backgrounds, draw attention, as do humorous photos (think: a dog wearing glasses).
The secret to engaging content is to pay attention to what you’re publishing and ensure that it always targets your audience in a relevant way.
Image: StockUnlimited