Developing high quality blogs for your company is among the most helpful strategies of marketing that you will get. However, it is always forgotten. Studies indicate that small businesses in Singapore that create blogs for their businesses consistently get 126% more leads than companies that don’t and receive 55% more new visitors on their websites. But writing a blog only is not enough; you might be sending inaccurate information about your brand.
Blogging can enhance the online visibility of your business, increase traffic to your site, and boost your brand authority in your area of business. WordPress reports that more than 400 million read blogs each month. If you don’t own a blog for your company, you are missing the chance to generate a massive audience and an opportunity to convert your audience into buying clients.
Creating excellent blog posts comes down to a single point of beginning: you require to start writing your articles. Also, optimisation of blogs is crucial to small businesses to ensure that many individuals read your posts.
First, let us highlight how a company blog can assist your business. Then, we will look at some rules for creating engaging content.
Benefits of Business Blogs
Blogging has several benefits for your company website. You can develop articles about your business, which can assist in establishing your brand authority in your business niche. If your clients have a question, they can always refer to your blog posts for answers. Additionally, blogging can establish conversations between you and your potential and existing customers.
One of the primary reasons that a business writes a blog article is to increase traffic to their website. In fact, research shows that companies that have blogs in Singapore generate 55% more traffic than companies without blogs. That brings about the opportunity to promote your company’s services and products, attract new clients, and enhance the bottom line of your company.
Blogging is also a digital marketing technique that assists in enhancing the ranking of your business website in the search engine results pages – SERPs. You want your company to rank at the top of the first page in the search engine results, not on other pages. Consider that: If you were looking for a particular product, would you navigate through the results pages or you would click on the top-ranking results?
11 Blogging Rules for Businesses
After deciding that you require to start a business blog, or if you require to boost your existing blog, you can consider using these 11 rules of business blogging.
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Give Your Posts an Eye-Catching and Captivating Title
Keep in mind that your potential audience will only come across the title, and maybe the meta description first, and they need to be attractive enough to attract them to click on your blog post – so, ensure your title is attractive. Playing with the words shows to be very effective – it elicits understanding but entices enough to draw the interest of your audience. Titles that are based on questions are also excellent, as well as titles that contain a number.
Your title should also contain your keywords, and it should be short too. Titles are not only essential in attracting the attention of your readers, but they also attract the eyes of the search engines. Studies show that posts with titles that contain between six and thirteen words generate the most traffic.
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Be the Leader, Don’t Follow
The process of creating your blog post should be grounded on a genuine intention to reach a particular group of individuals with an article that improves their lives – not publishing and revolving around favourite tales that you think will go viral and generate you a lot of followers and potential customers.
Your content must be original and authentic. Ensure that you develop content that your audience would like to read and share – no less.
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Blog Consistently
You don’t require to have an ideal element of blogging, but you should remain consistent. Do not post ten articles in a single week and then post nothing for the three months that follow. Your blog is likely to go off if you are not consistent.
The more regular your posting is, the more straightforward your business marketing strategy will be. You can consider creating a blogging schedule to ensure consistency.
Various studies in Singapore show that posting at least four times per week or 16 times each month is the most effective method. Businesses that publish more than 16 blog posts every month generate 3.5 more traffic than businesses that publish between zero to five articles per month.
That does not mean that you need to dedicate all your time to creating blog posts. Your primary job is to ensure that your business is running smoothly, not writing articles about it. But, allocating a little time to write blogs when efficient is beneficial to the growth of your company. If possible, you can hire an employee to ensure that your company blog is always updated.
So, ensure that your blog is updated with fresh content at least for times per week. Your blogs should cover various topics, including assisting small and medium-sized business owners in coming up with their growth strategies, managing workers, understanding your products and services, etc.
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Carry out Keyword Research
You already understand that what your articles entail should be relevant to your area of business. However, you are also required to target what your audience is searching for. What is the need for having a blog that does not have readers? Remember to research your keywords.
Keyword research involves searching for popular keywords that your potential audience is searching for in the search engines. For instance, “how to use social media for advertising a business” is something that your audience search. If you are a digital marketing agency, you could write a blog post titled “Learn how you can advertise your business on social media with these ten simple tips.”
Include your keywords in the title of your article and throughout your article. With that, your blog posts are more likely to rank better on the search engines, and individuals can find them. Additionally, researching your keywords can also assist in generating ideas on what to write about.
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Target the Optimized Length for Your Articles
What is the ideal length of an average blog article? Your blog article requires to be long enough to capture all the information that needs to be conveyed to your audience. And you need to ensure that all your keywords can fit in without making the entire article a succession of keywords.
Your blog posts should contain quality and detailed content that you can pride yourself. Always ask yourself whether your content is one that you would like to read.
Normally, lengthy articles rank better in the search engines results pages. Research shows that the top 10 results on search engines consist of articles that have an average of more than 2,000 words. But before you begin rebuking me, remember that I am also as busy as you, and not every post that requires to be such long. Give priority to quality rather than quantity.
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Incorporate Visuals
Adding videos and images in your blogs can assist the readers in engaging more with your webpages. For most people, the spans of attention are very short. And, we need them to understand the key takeaways after they finish reading our articles.
Studies show that people remember 65% of the information when written content is combined with visuals while 10% of the total information get retained when there are no visuals in the content.
You can include a visual like a chart or an infographic to emphasise on the key takeaways from your blog posts. That can result in more time being spent on your blog page, and users will remember your content more easily.
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Address Questions from Your Clients
Another source of topics for your blog can come directly from your clients. When your clients ask questions about certain issues that are related to your industry, you can note the ideas and develop new topics for your blog articles.
Answering questions from your customers using blog articles assist you to kill two birds with a single stone. By answering the various questions that your clients ask, you create actionable content that can attract others with such questions.
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Invite Guest Posts
Sure, blogging can consume much of your time. Whether you need to relieve some of the time needed to create blogs or you need a new voice on your blog, you can invite guests to contribute articles or content to your blog.
Adding a fresh viewpoint on the topics that are related to your business can be informing. You might get a fresh perspective on various topics. You can invite an influencer or leader in your business niche to create an article for you or even conduct an interview with a leader in your industry and publish the interview questions and responses on your blog for the readers to see.
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Conduct A Summary of Industry News
A business owner needs to understand what is happening in both their business and the entire industry. The elements that are hurting and benefiting other key players in your area of business will have significance in your business. While it is difficult to regulate all those external elements, you can manage how your company responds to them. The way your business responds to those factors might create part of your competitive advantage.
The other idea for business marketing is by publishing weekly or monthly roundups. You can post the articles that you think your target audience might get interested in reading from the past week or month, give their summary, and describe how each of them could be of assistance to them.
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Be Authentic
Be human, include fun, and accept your mistakes. Individuals don’t like reading content that is generated by robots. Instead, they want your content to be personalised without crossing the line or being inappropriate.
A blog should never address your audience; it should speak with the audience instead. So, ensure that your blog acts as a starter of conversations to engage with your audience and establish excellent business relationships.
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Include A Call-to-Action and Measure the Results
You should ensure that your article convinces the audience to do a single specific thing – connect to your website, give feedback, subscribe to your email list, sign up to receive updates, participate in a competition, etc. Blogs that provide interesting content but do not have a call to action are like attractive roads that come to nothing.
Also, you will need to use some sort of analytics tool to your blog so that you can monitor how the audience interacts with your content, their demographics, the time each user stays on your site, and other relevant information that can assist you in determining what works best.
Do not concentrate on the unimportant aspects. Many businesses are more focused on how many followers they have and the number of likes they get. Your objective is to build yourself as a reliable expert, establish trust and get customers into your cycle of sales. All the impersonal metrics will not occupy the place of a few customer relationships.
Also, do not forget to include links to other articles that you have written as well as articles from other key industry players in your blog posts.
What Is Evergreen Content and Why You Should Post It On Your Blog
You already know that content marketing is a vital tool to add to your marketing strategy. It is one of the most effective strategies for marketing a website, business, or e-commerce store. However, not all content is created equal. To successfully use content marketing, you need to know the best content to put out at the right time.
One type of content that is guaranteed to boost your results is evergreen content.
What Is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content is optimised content that is sustainable and lasts over time. Evergreen content goes beyond the current buzz and news to address topics that are always relevant to readers.
In other words, evergreen content is content that stands the test of time and remains up-to-date and popular over time. Such content remains fresh for the reader for months or years after it was written.
Evergreen content is primarily written in evergreen formats such as:
How-To Articles or Step-By-Step Guides.
People are constantly using search engines to find answers. One of the ways you can serve them is by breaking down timeless issues into actionable steps on different topics in your area of specialization. One example of an evergreen how-to article is “how to fry an egg.” This article is an evergreen piece because the process of frying an egg has not changed in decades, but people are still eating eggs and would like to know how to fry their eggs by themselves.
How to guides have no time stamps. For instance, a ‘how to change a car tyre’ guide will be relevant whenever a user looks up the subject, whether they do so tomorrow or a year from now.
Articles Supported by Statistical Proof
When you add statistical proof as evidence to support your points, people are more likely to believe the information you are providing. You can easily add statistical proof to your articles by searching for results from surveys of reliable websites. A good example of an evergreen content piece that leverages statistical proof is Buzzsumo’s “why does 1% of Content marketing articles receive 30% of all shares?”
Listicles
Listicles are some of the most common types of articles you will find on the internet. These types of articles also can easily become evergreen depending on the items you choose to include in your list. An easy way to do this is to compile the best information on a particular topic and create an easy-to-follow list. Remember to include detailed commentary that is specific to your niche.
Here are a few content ideas for a listicle
- Best free and paid tools
- Best books for a specific goal
- Common mistakes in a particular niche
Encyclopedic Content
You can create timeless content by producing detailed ‘everything you need to know’ articles or a glossary of standard terms in your niche.
These formats work well with evergreen content. However, this doesn’t mean that all content that uses any of the formats is evergreen. For instance, a listicle about ’10 best holiday treats to make for Christmas’ is not evergreen because it is only relevant once a year. To produce evergreen content, you must combine evergreen article styles with evergreen information.
Now. Let’s look at how you can create evergreen content for your blog
How to Create Evergreen Content
Write for Beginners
Evergreen content is almost always addressed to beginners because people search for tips on things they don’t know much about. If you are looking to educate yourself on a specific topic or learn a new skill, you are a beginner in the area. Even if you know a few things about the area, you still need some background information to help lay the foundation for what you will learn later.
When creating evergreen content, keep in mind that most people will land on it because they used a certain keyword when searching for information online. Such people might not know that your blog exists or that you have previously written about the topic before. For this reason, you must always start your posts by explaining the principal terms.
For instance, when we started this article, we explained what evergreen content is. If we just assumed that you knew what evergreen content is, you might have had difficulties understanding everything the rest of this article.
Be Precise
Most bloggers make the mistake of making their content general. They believe that for content to be evergreen, it must appeal to a broad audience. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When people search for content online, they are usually looking for something specific. If your content is general, people might not get much value from it. For instance, someone searching about tourist destinations might find the topic ‘top 10 destinations to visit too general. Such a piece of content stands no chance of becoming evergreen.
However, suppose you narrow the topic down to ‘top 10 tourist destinations in New Zealand,’ or top destinations for wine lovers. In that case, you target a more specific audience and raise the chances of your content going evergreen. Narrowing down a topic as much as possible is what makes it valuable and evergreen.
Show Your Authority
When dealing with serious topics, you must show authority by making your content referable. Don’t just give your personal experience. Add in facts that support what you are saying and demonstrate that you have done extensive research before sitting down to compile the content. A post that is drowning in speculation stands no chance of becoming evergreen.
Instead of insinuating or assuming things, dig for facts and statistics and add them to your content. When using statistics to support your claim, make sure you go for the ones that will be relevant or longer period. For instance, if you were writing about the top marketing tips for 2021, you should relate them to the past and make some predictions for the future to make the post attractive for years to come.
When you start to create evergreen content, you will notice that referable content will usually be longer. For example, think about a post explaining why high school students need to study programming. You would need to talk about the school and its programs before diving into career perspectives and average earnings. Covering all these topics extensively might require you to go well beyond 2,000 words, but the effort will pay off.
Use an Easy to Follow Format
For your content to become evergreen, it has to be written in a format that most people prefer. For example, even if you present your ideas well and back them up with facts and statistics, your content might still fail to attract the attention you want it to because you presented it in an essay format, which most people don’t like.
The most successful evergreen piecers follow the formats we discussed earlier. They are either top lists, how-to articles, reviews of popular products, or encyclopedic content.
You can also try presenting your content in a visual form such as a video or an infographic or even combine a few of these formats to attract and keep the attention of your target audience.
Revisit Your Posts
Even the most evergreen articles fade away with time. That doesn’t mean that you should leave it to die. Instead, you can revisit your post and freshen it up with a few updates. For instance, if you can remove outdated stats and replace them with newer ones that have the potential to last longer. You can also include new facts that have been discovered lately on the topic you are discussing.
If you chose the right topics and purposefully created the article to be evergreen, you should not have to do too many alterations to the content.
You should also reference your evergreen content in your newer posts. For example, when writing a post about recent makeup trends, you can reference a post about choosing the right makeup for your skin type. You should also ensure that you add at least one evergreen piece when you are recommending articles similar to the one your readers are currently reading on the blog.
Inspire Some Action
People love reading content that teaches them new things. Evergreen content goes beyond imparting knowledge to inspiring your readers to take action.
Your evergreen pieces should let your readers learn new things while at the same time providing them with a course of action they can implement as soon they are done reading. For instance, if you are writing a post about depression, you can show the reader some things they can do at the moment to ease their symptoms. Such a piece is not likely to fade away anytime soon because people will always need that information.
Repurpose Your Content
Evergreen content is great for your blog, but that is not the only place to post it. You can also promote it on social media. Since this content is always fresh, you can keep promoting it on your social pages without re-writing it.
Now, you must be wondering why you should keep asking your followers to keep re-reading the same content repeatedly. Well, even though most of your followers have already read the content, you are still gaining more following, and these people can also benefit from your evergreen pieces.
Add a few evergreen pieces to your monthly social media plan so you can keep attracting your audience towards them. Remember to respond to the comments and encourage your readers to share their thoughts with you.
Why You Should Post Evergreen Content On Your Blog
You know what evergreen content is and how to create it, but why should you do it? Here are afew reasons to add evergreen content to your blog.
Evergreen Content Boosts Search Rankings
When creating content, ranking high on search engines should not be your only concern. However, that does not mean you should ignore SEO. You see, most people will only look at the first page of results when they search for something online. This means that if you don’t rank among the first few posts, people will rarely visit your website or see your posts.
By posting evergreen connect on your blog, you boost your Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) score on google. Google uses the E-A-T score to decide where your blog will rank. The higher your score, the higher you will rank.
So how will evergreen content help with your E-A-T scores? Well, evergreen content positions you as an authority in your niche. When people read well-written and comprehensive information from you, they start to see you as an expert and leader in your industry. They are more likely to seek more information from your website than your competitors.
However, please note that the Expertise you need to secure an excellent E-A-T score widely depends on the subject you are discussing.
For instance, if you are writing about health and fitness, you are likely to rank higher if you are a qualified doctor than if you are just a general member of the public making a general observation. This is because search engines recognize how important it is for someone to be qualified before offering advice on such topics.
This means that if you are experienced in your industry, you are more likely to appear on the first page of google searches if you produce evergreen content.
Evergreen Content Keeps Your Business Relevant
As we mentioned, creating content is not just about ranking high on search engines. It’s more about the value your content provides for your audience.
Evergreen content helps you provide your readers with valuable and relevant content. Providing value translates to lower bounce rates as people stay longer on your web pages.
Because evergreen content stays relevant for long periods, you can use it to show search engines that readers find your articles useful hence boosting your overall search rankings, making it possible for more people to read your content. This cycle will keep your business relevant even in the most competitive digital spaces.
Evergreen Content Draws in Organic Traffic
Organic traffic refers to the people who visit your website because they found you on a search results page without clicking through a paid ad.
Evergreen content can help you build more organic traffic because most evergreen articles answer questions that people are already interested in finding an answer to. Since there is already a sustained level of interest in the topics that fit well with evergreen content, you will likely see more organic traffic landing on your website.
Final Verdict
Creating great blog posts for your company is among the most beneficial digital marketing strategies available. Studies show that businesses that have blogs generate more leads and new visitors to their website than those without blogs. But just composing a blog is not enough – if your content is not interesting, dynamic, and unique, you might be conveying the wrong information about your brand. You need to think of what your audience is looking for.
Adding evergreen content to your blog is an excellent idea as it will position you as an authority, bring more organic traffic and boost your search engine rankings. However, this is not to say that it is the only content on your blog. Topical and timely pieces are also crucial to your audience and serve your short-term marketing campaigns perfectly. Your content strategy should therefore include a well-balanced mixture of the two types of content.
Coming with excellent content ideas is possible, even for the challenging industries. Apply these new rules to your business blog and the outcome will stand out. We hope you are now ready to start your blogging!
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