Blogging is an amazing business tool, and a great way to share your brand, your expertise, and build relationships with current and new clients. Blogs are also a source of fresh content. And, we all know how much the search engines love fresh content.
Give 'Em What They Want: Write what your readership and target market wants to read. If you are a business coach who continually writes pet tips, not only will you confuse your audience, you'll probably lose them. Make sure your content is beneficial, value-added and relevant to your industry or business.
Pull Readers in With a Good Headline: Catchy headlines are all the rage these days and, YES, having a clever, attention-grabbing headline is important. However, I caution bloggers to not go so over board with this methodology that their blog post headlines are misleading or overly "hype-filled." If your headlines are filled with "!" and more rah-rah than a high school cheerleading squad, your readership will quickly tire of your tactics and move on to greener pastures. And, for the love of everything that is good and right, please do NOT end your headline with "and you'll never guess what happened next!"
It's Not All About You: Not too long ago I shared a tip about the 80/20 Rule in regards to social media. Guess what? Blogging is social media, so this rule applies to what you share in your blog content as well. The 80/20 Rule refers to the tactic of sharing 20% of your own information and 80% of information from other sources. To continually blast your readership with post after post that is 'all about you' is not only off-putting, it will often cost you readers.
Connect the Dots: Let's say you just created the best blog post you have ever written in your business career. Your new post is dripping with awesomeness and is aching to be shared with the world. That's fine and dandy, but unless you work to "connect the dots," or share your awesomeness via ALL of your social media channels, your stellar work may not be discovered. Business professionals need to remember that every time they create a new article, it needs to be pushed out over social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. Once your blog post is shared on Facebook, it can be pushed to Twitter using the share buttons you have on your own blog. You can also add a plug-in like Click to Tweet so you can share specific tidbits of your post. Don't forget to add your post as a long post on LinkedIn and then share it from there as well. If you're not taking advantage of great scheduling platforms like Hootsuite or Buffer, you're missing out on some great tools that will make getting your content out to the masses easily. Spread the word and gain more readers.