Blogging

Article Writing: 4 Article Ideas for Your Website

Content—the word is thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean? Content can refer to anything from sales pitches, to product information, to policies.

From a content marketing standpoint, articles are a great type of content that businesses can use to build a following for their website. By creating articles that customers can connect with, businesses can relate to their customers on a personal level and provide them with interesting information. Businesses will often employ a writer to specialize in creating this type of content. But what should you write?

Editorials

Editorials, or opinion pieces, are a great way for writers to connect with your audience. Writing opinion pieces about various issues can help you communicate your company’s values to your prospects. Indeed, if you have firm and clear views, this can create very strong feelings of connection and loyalty to your company. Just be sure that you’re prepared for a backlash should your opinions prove unpopular. Some ill-considered remarks by Guido Barilla to a radio interviewer resulted in a firestorm of bad publicity and calls by gay rights groups to boycott their pasta.

How-To

The great thing about the Internet is that it can teach you how to do anything. Why not incorporate this into your business? Articles that describe how to use your product, how to use products that relate to your business, and articles that help your customers achieve their business, work, or personal goals are always going to be popular.

Feature Articles

Feature articles are creative pieces that can focus on any aspect of your business. These long form pieces could focus on your company’s home city, or highlight the accomplishments of your top five customers. You could do a feature on a cause that your company supports or even discuss a fun aspect of your company’s culture. Feature articles are all about connecting on a human level with your customers.

Reviews

Another great way to gain a following is to post your thoughts about products, services, books, movies, or music as well as reviews on your own products and services. Reviews are a great way to connect to your audience and to show them that your business is open to comments and suggestions. Reviews are also a slightly safer alternative to editorials in that they’re a good way to generate a conversation, but less likely to incite a boycott. Again, though, make sure you know and understand your customers. It’s not a very good idea to post a bad review of the latest Justin Bieber single if your customers are all huge fans.

The article is a valuable tool that can help promote your business online. The more content you post to your business’s website, the more visible your site will be to potential customers. Since this is such an essential part of marketing online, it is important that content be posted regularly and to the highest standards.

Benefits of Blogging for Your Business

With the expansion of online businesses, you may be researching how an online presence can benefit your company or how you can make money blogging. In fact, there are numerous benefits of blogging that you may never have considered.

Increase your client base

One of the major benefits of blogging for your business is that you can attract a whole range of customers who may not have heard of you otherwise. Blogs are one of the top ways to advertise to the online community. This is particularly true if your target audience is young adults or those in their twenties and thirties. Fewer people are listening to the radio and looking at print newspapers, so only using such media will limit your audience.

Gain feedback

One of the greatest benefits of blogging is that it creates a community around a shared interest. This not only offers great ways to network within your field, but it also helps you connect with your clients. Comments and feedback sections will let your customers tell you what they like and what needs work. Nothing is perfect, and if you want to appeal to a larger customer base, you’ll want to take in feedback to improve your product.

Network with like-minded professionals

You never know when your blog will attract the right person with the right connections. Networking is a top way to bring in more clients, and it also helps you to obtain larger contracts and better connections in your field. A reader may have some helpful advice that could be just what you’ve been seeking. These networks may also provide you with the newest information to keep updated with progress and innovation in your field. You can then expand on this knowledge in your own blog writing.

Show your expertise

Writing blogs is a great way to broadcast to clients, and potential clients, what you know about your profession. This is also one of blogging’s biggest benefits. If clients can research your business and scope out your services before committing to any purchase, they’re more likely to contact you than other businesses without an online presence.

The more you blog and the more readers you get, the better your company appears to an outsider. The knowledge and prowess that you’ve acquired in your field will be demonstrated to anyone who encounters your blog. This can lead to growth beyond a wide client base, such as awards in your field or consulting positions.

Personalize and humanize

One of the more personal benefits of blogging is that adding a blog to your social media offers more of a human aspect than a 140-character Twitter post. One of the big benefits of blogging is that it gives your business a voice, style, tone, and personality that will make it easier for customers to connect with your business. When you create this voice, make sure it’s genuine and honest. If your customers think you’re putting on a mask to sell a few products, they may feel turned off.

Five Tips for Writing Blogs

Writing a blog that attracts every reader is a difficult, often elusive, task. However, there are many benefits of blogging, and your blogs can appeal to the majority of your audience. Read on to learn five tips to keep in mind the next time you are writing a blog for your website.

Be consistent

Choose your topic, and write on that topic only. Many bloggers try to include too much information in too small a space. Remember, though, that all your ideas are worthwhile, and you should write them down to use another time.

Consistency allows your readers to stay focused on the post. As well, saving your extra ideas ensures that you have a treasury of topics for future blog writing, giving you the ability to plan. For example, which blog topics are best for the season? Which topics are similar and, therefore, should you post separately?

Avoid monotony

Experiment with new fonts, graphics, and clips. Change the overall aesthetic of your blog from time to time, such as every season, to avoid boring your readers.

When it comes to the content of your blog writing, it is true that some similarities are inevitable, but you should avoid too much overlap. Your audience might think that you do not take the time to write about new ideas if you simply add slight twists to the same blog. Furthermore, you do not want to appear as if you have little to say; this is a good (and bad!) way to lose readership.

Leverage past work

Post links to the work you have already done. You have probably written about the foundations of your field in past blogs, so take advantage of your website’s flexibility and your previous work. When you write about something that you have already discussed in a previous blog, include a link to that post. You can also place links and tabs in the page margins to connect your readers to relevant and related posts that you have written in the past.

Not only will posting links to previous blogs prevent repetition, but it also expands your readers’ knowledge of you and your business. Posting links shows your readers that they can relate the information to other blogs on your website, and it encourages them to read those blogs as well.

Take advantage of social media

Be sure to utilize every social media outlet available. When you are writing a blog, your primary concern is to ensure continuous readership. Share your blogs on Facebook and Twitter, as well as any other form of social media that your business uses.

Use social media to get old blogs out there, too. You can use websites and applications that will post on your behalf to each social media outlet connected to your business. Use these tools to schedule daily blog posts, whether they are current or seasonable “oldies but goodies.”

Start writing blogs with pizzazz

Titles are the first thing a reader sees, but they could be the last if they do not grab your reader’s attention. The first step to attracting readers may be obvious, but it is definitely worth pointing out: you need a catchy title.

Create quick, engaging titles that get the point across in as few words as possible, and do not forget that questions interest readers. Whether they read your entire blog or not, readers are likely to be curious about the question you have posed in the title.

Curious about why you would continue to blog for your business, given that it takes a lot of effort to get it right? Check out our free ebook below.