So we are hypocrites. Absolute, straight out, hypocrites. We at Gettingraphic are a website design company. For years we have preached to our clients the power of blogging. Blog! Blog! Blog! We say! Well, we have a confession to make. This, as embarrassing as it to admit, is our very first blog post. There we said it! We are a website design company and we do not blog. Admitting is the first step they say. We all know why we don’t blog. Lack of time, resources, we are graphic designers not writers blah, blah, blah. These are all legitimate excuses but excuses certainly aren’t increasing our internet presence. So let’s remind ourselves why do we need to blog? Maybe then we will be compelled to press on and finish this post.
Why Blog?
Google loves new content. Blogging is an easy way to accomplish this. Search engines are constantly looking for fresh new information to send their readers. The more information you have floating out there in web space, the better chance you have of your next big client finding you. One of the biggest barriers to effectively using social media to drive traffic to a website is lack of fresh, relevant content. Fresh relevant content=increased traffic=more greenbacks for your business.
What should be included in my blog?
- An appealing keyword title
The title is the first thing people will see when they do a google search. It needs to grab their attention! Matt from SMR Digital says, “The title should include a relevant keyword as this is a necessity for SEO.” (In case you don’t know what SEO is, it stands for search engine optimization. We think we just came up with a future blog topic). - Images and videos
Let’s face it, people love to see pictures and watch videos. So just do it. Don’t forget to tag your images with a descriptive term. The more engaging your blog is, the better results you will receive. - Aesthetically pleasing text
The formatting of your text is key to the readability of your post whether it’s on a mobile device, laptop, tablet or desktop. Your content should be relevant and interesting to the reader. (And literate of course) - Relevant links
There are generally two types of links, internal and external. An internal link would be something that sends the reader to a page on your website or to another blog post. For example, if we told you to check out our brand identity page (go ahead go check it out now), we would be posting an internal link. External links would be sending the reader to other sources of information. Yes you are driving traffic to someone else’s website but showing your customer value is sometimes more important and hey maybe you just earned some karma points. - A call-to-action
Now that you have someone’s attention, what do you want them to do? Complete a contact form, call you, sign up for a newsletter or direct them to another page on your website. This is your opportunity to direct the reader where you want them to go. Be nice please. - Aim for #1
Now you have written your first blog post, everything only goes up from here. As your blog grows, you might want to start to considering how you can get more readers onto your page. There are so many ways to promote your blog; social media, friends, word of mouth. However, I would highly recommend building up your knowledge on SEO campaigns. If you can understand it and implement it effectively, it will help you get your blog post, to the top of page one on Google, what could be cooler?! If you want some more tips on this why don’t you check out something like the John King company. They can tell you how to start up a SEO company.
How long should my blog be?
We sat down with Online Visibility Pros the other day and discussed this very topic. They suggested blogging at least twice a month at 1000 words a pop. Yowza! (We are only at 717 as we speak). Serpiq created a chart that looks at the correlation of the amount of words published and the top ten results from Google. Their study showed (http://blog.serpiq.com/how-important-is-content-length-why-data-driven-seo-trumps-guru-opinions/) that the higher the average content length was, the higher the Google ranking. There are also studies that show that people may only read 20-28% of a post (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/) but that longer content gets shared more frequently through social media outlets.
On the other hand, there is another school of thought that recommends more frequent posts with fewer words in the ball park of 500. So what is a blogger to do? Focus on grabbing the attention of your reader and make sure your post contains all the aforementioned elements. Write what you can, get your point across but just do it!
Now you’ve written your blog, edited it, spell checked it and it’s ready to go. Now what?
How do you promote your blog?
The whole idea behind blogging is to drive traffic to your website with the ultimate goal of the generation of business. Forbes published an article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/05/13/39-actionable-ideas-for-driving-traffic-to-your-website/) that provides 39 action items to promote your blog. They suggest submitting your blog to Alltop, Triberr, and Stumbleupon in addition to linking and promoting your blog to other social media like Facebook and Linkedin.
There you have it, our very first blog post.
Surprisingly it wasn’t as painful as anticipated. No one lost any sleep over this and no injuries were inflicted. We won’t quit our day job as graphic designers and become professional bloggers but we might write a second post.
Oh, we almost forgot the ever important picture (See #2 above). Maybe it’s not the most relevant picture to our topic but it made you look! How can anyone resist that face!
