There’s nothing quite like the feeling that comes with seeing a hard-fought blog post do its business. Whether it’s generating conversation, improving customer retention or boosting overall conversions, a quality blog post really can do wonders for your business.
But at the same time, it’s not as if this comes as standard with every blog post. Quite to the contrary, you usually find that most don’t perform nearly as well as you had hoped.
On the plus side, there are various ways and means by which you can get much more from the time and effort you spend on blogging. Get into any of the following three positive habits and you might just find the return far outweighs the investment:
1. Edit and Amend
First of all, it’s worth remembering that the accuracy and overall readability of your blog posts will determine whether or not anyone bothers. Simply publishing a blog post and leaving it to its own devices really isn’t the way to go. Instead, it can be valuable to revisit recent posts from time to time, in order to assess their overall quality and value. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that once a post has been published, you cannot edit and amend it in any way you like. Quite simply, you can. From grammatical errors to factual inaccuracies to key points you forgot to include the first time around, don’t be afraid to polish off and perfect your blog posts at any time. If you make any significant changes, feel free to bring these to the attention of your readers in a new post featuring the relevant links and/or information.
2. Share Snippets
If you publish an outstanding blog post on your website, this doesn’t mean you then have to copy and paste the exact same piece on each of your other online assets. It can be far more effective to post links to the blog entry, along with unique snippets, edited extract or your own commentary. For example, you publish a post on your website, you place a link on social media and you accompany it with a paragraph explaining why you chose this topic. Or perhaps, directly ask your social media fans and followers what they think of the subject and whether they agree with your views. Instead of simply re-publishing the same post, it’s a case of telling them you’ve published something elsewhere and giving them every reason to check it out.
3. Use Conversations
Last but not least, pretty much everything you need to know to create engaging and effective blog posts should be right there in front of you. Specifically, all you need to do is take a look at what your audience members are talking about on social media, in order to determine what kinds of topics to focus on. Along with getting directly involved in these conversations, you can also use them as inspiration for your blog posts. Of course, this only works if you are willing to pen posts in real time, given the way in which what’s hot today could be yesterday’s news tomorrow.
Chris Jenkinson works for a UK marketing company providing marketing support to businesses.