Blogs

Blogging used to be just a method for stating your opinion, but now blogs are used to educate, to review, and to sell. In fact, many internet marketers base their entire business around blogging. As an extension to your website, blogs offer you the opportunity to communicate with the world.  And generally the topics you communicate on are your area of expertise. Blogging should provide content that's interesting and useful.  Another advantage with blogs is they can help the "Search Engine Optimisation" of your website.  An example of this is a mortgage broker client of ours. His website struggles to match it with the big mortgage brokerage companies in Google search results because he simply does not get the traffic to his site.  The answer to this is to tailor his blogs to his geographic location, the blogs are more local customer orientated.  He will talk about local property, new property / land releases, housing prices etc. and will mention Torquay or Geelong in the blogs more often so they rank better when prospective clients who may search for "Mortgage Brokers Geelong" or "Home Loan Torquay". 

A great blog will almost certainly utilise the following four components.

1. Be extremely useful

It all starts with the topic of the post. You need to consider your reader, and aim the topic of your post at your reader. You blog shouldn't be self indulgent.  You must consider your readers needs, wants, hopes and dreams? What problems do they have in their life that you can solve?
Now choose a topic that will solve one of their problems, help them achieve something they've always wanted to achieve. Create a resource for them an extremely useful set of practical tips, links, tools to solve that problem.

The more practical your tips, the better. It’s not enough to say that the keys to losing weight are eating less and exercising more. Those are both difficult things to do. Give the reader extremely useful ways of doing those things, and you’ve created a resource.

2. Have a great headline

Copywriters often talk about spending half the time to write the blog on writing the headline.  On average 8 our of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will will read the rest.  The headline is the most important few words in your post. Why? Because most readers will read your post in a feed reader (think Bloglines or Google Reader) or come across it on a site like Tweeter or another blog that links to your post. In all of these examples, just about the only thing they’ll see before making a decision about whether to read the post is your headline. If the headline is catchy, they’ll read more. If it’s not, you’ve just lost a reader. 

3. Make the post visually not intimidating.

You’ve got a great topic, a seductive headline, and an extremely useful post. Your reader decides to give your post a few seconds of their time.
But then they come upon the post, and it’s a huge block of text, and they think, “This is going to take a good chunk of my time.” Your reader, of course, is a very busy person, and doesn’t have 20 minutes to devote to each post. In fact, even if they do have a spare 20 minutes, they won’t give those 20 minutes to yours unless they are convinced that it’s going to be extremely useful.  The old saying "an image is worth a thousand words", is very true.  While blogs are predominantly word based, if an image is better than using a couple of hundred words to describe something, then show the image.  Having images in your blog can also break the text up and make the blog seem shorter and easier to read making it more visually appealing.

4. Write in a plain, concise, common-sense style.

Once your reader decides to spend some time with your post, they are going to want to read it without too much work. The key to that: simplicity. Write in a way that comes naturally, your blog is an extension of your personality. Readers enjoy writing that is conversational, without being wordy. Write in a way that speaks to your reader, not down to them, and doesn’t confuse them with jargon and acronyms and technical stuff.
Pretend that you’re having a conversation with a friend, and write like that. Then go back and edit out sentences and words that are unnecessary, and revise sentences that aren’t clear.  Do this, and your reader will not only read the post, but will likely stick around long enough to become a long-term reader.

Many people also feel that blogs create an intimate atmosphere for learning and research. A blog can create a simple credibility that can help sell your products because it helps create an "Every person" aura, that is, a stripped down, hype-free way to talk about products.

Inspired by 'How to Create Killer Content' by Leo Babauta