Marketing Success: 5 Tips for Better Blogging

Reaching readers with your website can feel like a struggle, but it doesn’t need to. Here are five tips for blogging as successful outreach.

1. Not just boring ‘news’ headlines, please!

As authors, or indeed any product seller it is very easy to bombard every marketing channel you own with news and sales pitches for your latest and greatest. In today’s online space where ads appear on everything from social media to website sidebars and even just minutes apart in your favourite YouTube series, it can turn a lot of people away. Quite frankly we are bored and disconnected.

The number one question you need to solve with every marketing effort is “what is in it for me?” Every potential blog post reader will need to feel compelled to hit the read more button on your blog.

There are several things your reader wants from you; connection, engagement and entertainment. There is so much you could write about to keep people coming back to your blog!

Try a couple of these ideas and see how they resonate and draw people in.

• Write an essay on your writing journey with a book or a character

• Write a short story to showcase your genre of writing and give readers a taste of your books

• Write about what inspires you

If you write non-fiction books then consider writing about your overarching topic to cement yourself as an expert in your arena.

2. Create content that draws in traffic daily

Whilst most of your articles will feel topical and live very much in the moment, there is another type of blog post that will generate traffic for years to come: evergreen content.

Evergreen content is an article that holds the same relevance today, as it did five years ago and will still hold relevance in five years time. Oftentimes these are tutorials, resource lists, topic glossaries and reviews.

In the non-fiction realm, this type of content will feel easy to create, but what if you write fiction?

A rather fun way to create a blog post that will generate traffic for years to come if you are a fiction writer is exclusive content. Let’s say you have a set of children’s characters who make up a universe, each with their own book only sometimes appearing in other stories. If there is a time arch across your series, exclusive content might include the adventures of a particular character in a period of time not covered by your next book. Readers who fall in love with your characters will become obsessed with details and connections. You could promote the content at the end of your next book and in your other marketing and as your readership grows this unique website content will attract lots of attention.

3. Choose your frequency wisely

Deadlines are deadlines and your creative process takes as long as it takes. This means you are already too aware of how much spare time you have to dedicate to blogging. If you can only commit to a monthly blog post, then stick to it, do not overload yourself with more writing.

4. Make it easy to browse, share and comment on your content

Making it easy to interact with your content will give you more chance of eliciting your desired result: more readers consuming your articles. 

• Make sure your blog becomes a link on your website’s main navigational menu

• Enable a comment box, even if you choose to review these posts

• Use a widget to share other blog posts that might be of related interest

• Create sharing buttons for social media and email, so that readers can tell their friends about your work

5. Improve your Google ranking chances

Search engines, like Google love fresh content, it allows them to sift through and rank what they deem as relevant search results on a subject to internet users. Blogging frequency helps with this, but it is not your only tool.

Google bots like to read content in a traditionally written way, so make sure you use headers appropriately. They also like additional content like images or video. If you use these make sure they load quickly, to avoid reader frustration.

Most importantly keep on topic. If you usually write about cats, don’t start writing about rabbits. This confusing change will flummox both readers and search engines leaving your website readership tracking downwards.

Blogging is an incredibly useful marketing tool that you have full ownership of. It is a great way to gain readers from multiple locations, keep them focused, subscribed and turning them into book buyers.

This series was written by Sara Millis, a freelance content marketer helping small businesses build their customer base with a simple, no-fluff strategy. You can find out more at www.myindielifeblog.net