So you want to start a blog. From both a content marketing and branding standpoint, that’s fantastic news! A blog is a resource you totally control and one you can use to express yourself, communicate with your audience, and promote whatever goods and services you have on deck.
The problem is this: with some 2 million blog posts written every day, how in the world are you going to stand out?
Lucky you, we’ve got 4 pretty good ideas.
Be a Disruptor
You’re a unique person with unique experiences and a unique voice, so it stands to reason that you should have something fairly unique to say to your readers. Say it. Be different. Approach tired subjects from a new angle or use a gimmick as a way to grab people’s attention (just make sure you have something of substance handy to help keep people interested once you have them looking your way).
- Trying to figure out how to compete with all the how-to car mechanic videos on YouTube? Do you repairs dressed like a clown or with a bluegrass band playing live in the background.
- Want to write about politics but fear the niche is saturated? Talk presidential debates or argue against the death penalty while baking cupcakes for the first every politically themed food blog.
Use Images
Did you know that including colored visuals increases your audience’s desire to read your blog by a whopping 80 percent? That’s a massive jump in readership, all because you made an effort to add pictures. It makes sense; would you rather sift through a blog about helicopter use in action flicks or simply snort back laughter while viewing an awesome graphic like this one:
1mage courtesy of https://DavidStilesBlog.com
Smart business owners know that people like the pretty pictures, too. Why else would nearly 75 percent of bloggers surveyed say that they already include some kind of image in their content?
Think Evergreen
You might be tempted to write about trending topics or current events in hopes that strategy will get you increased visibility, but there are major issues with that tactic.
- When a topic is trending, it means that lots of people are writing about it, making it that much harder for you to rank and get noticed.
- That topic might not even be in your niche, thereby weakening your brand (or at least not helping you grow it).
- That blog will only be good right now and then it’s already outdated.
Evergreen content, on the other hand, is useful today, tomorrow, next year, and (hopefully) beyond. You can regularly repost your evergreen content on social media and breathe it back to life. Quite often, it’ll catch fire and start attracting traffic months after it was originally posted. A great example of a technology blog with evergreen content is https://www.ippio.com/
As digital guru Jeff Bullas wisely put it, “Evergreen is what sticks.” Evergreen content doesn’t go stale or become irrelevant. Write content that sticks and your blog will become a resource that really matters.
Solve Your Reader’s Problems
When you start a blog and are ready to start blogging, look at each blog as an opportunity to solve a problem.
My blog was going to help me get rich, become an authority in my field, get my name out there, boost traffic to my website… the self-serving list went on and on and on. All of those wants and desires are fine – after all, we’re not in business to fail, now are we? – but little did I know that I was going about achieving those goals in the worst way possible.
Focusing on yourself is a recipe for disaster. Very few people can carry off pure egotism with any kind of real success, and even those folks provide a service by being incredibly entertaining. And that’s the key – they’re solving their users’ problems by relieving their boredom. To write blogs that totally slay, you need to solve your readers’ problems, whatever those problems happen to be.
Are you ready to find success by problem solving using the power of the written word? As it turns out, winning may be just a blog post (or two) away.
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