Is Your Corporate Blog Succeeding? Seven Best Practices You Should Follow

A blog is an important part of any well-rounded online marketing strategy. It can help you expand your organization’s online presence and drive brand awareness. However, creating a successful corporate blog isn’t easy. Whether your organization currently has a blog or is in the process of developing one, you can benefit from these seven best practices that can enhance your blog’s success.

Give Out Free Coupon Codes

Well, all coupon codes are free, technically. But giving out something to your readers makes them more likely that they’ll convert into loyal blog subscribers. You can give out promo codes for your own company’s product, or find some codes for popular merchants like GoDaddy. Here’s a good Priceline promo code website. If GoDaddy isn’t your thing, then feel free to check out Couponfeed.org, which has coupons for nearly every merchant imaginable. For coupons that are great for nearly every audience, click here for Ebay coupons. Almost everyone uses Ebay!

Grab the Reader’s Attention — Now

It’s true, website and blog visitors have a short attention span. In order to keep their attention, you must grab their interest immediately. You can accomplish this by creating a catchy headline and strong opening sentence, but don’t stop there. Maintain their interest throughout your entire blog post. Besides picking a good topic, you can keep visitors engaged by eliminating all fluff from your writing.

Don’t Worry About Word Count

 Many bloggers focus on writing within a specific word count, which can affect the quality and value of the finished copy. Make the word count of your blog posts your last priority, or completely eliminate it from your strategy. Instead, focus on delivering purposeful, valuable copy to your readers. When quality is your first priority, you can expect to get more traffic to your blog, as well as increased interaction from readers or subscribers.

 Always Edit

 Editing is a crucial part of creating professional-quality blog posts, but it is often ignored or rushed. Your visitors won’t take you seriously if they catch typos or grammatical errors in your writing, especially if you manage a corporate blog. You should ditch pointless or invaluable sentences from your final draft in order to provide quality content to your readers. If you have a tough time finding errors, give your writing a new look by changing the font while editing. This simple technique can help you notice more errors than you normally would.

Answer Questions

If you are running short on topics or don’t know where to start, think of questions that your audience might have. Questions can pertain to the industry you work in or the product or service you sell. After doing that, you can create blog posts that provide valuable answers or insights. This technique can be very successful for SEO purposes, and also helps your blog gain authority — an invaluable trait that every blog owner should aim to achieve.

 Presentation Matters

Even if you have the best blog posts on the Web, you won’t experience much success if they are not presented in an aesthetically-pleasing way. Break up your blog posts into short paragraphs that are roughly three to five sentences long. Don’t be afraid to use quotes, bullet points or lists as needed. Also, don’t forget to use relevant, high-quality images. These small changes can help you create more attractive blog posts that even the most impatient scanner will be drawn to.

 Get Your Readers Involved

 What do you want to get out of your corporate blog? Do you want your readers to comment, subscribe, or share your blog with their friends? Of course you do! The easiest way to get them to do this is to simply ask.  Include a strong call to action in each and every blog post you create. Keep it short and to the point. You can end a blog post in a call to action, such as asking the reader to share their opinion in a comment. Once you get people engaged with your blog, you must do your part. Continue conversations to drive social engagement on your blog.

 Use Keywords Naturally

 For a long time, keywords were the focus of content marketing strategies all over the world. They were overused and inserted inappropriately. Things have changed for the better and professional content strategists realize that keywords should be used sparingly. However, they still serve a valuable purpose when it comes to SEO. You should have a good understanding of the best keywords for your organization’s blog, and incorporate them into titles and posts naturally. Doing this will help people find your blog, but don’t overdo it. Keywords must be relevant to your topic.

 Whether you are new to blogging or just inexperienced, it can feel like foreign territory. However, with a little effort on your end and these useful tips, you can be on your way to creating a successful corporate blog that serves a valuable purpose.