Blogging Is A Fundamental Part Of Any Successful Inbound Marketing Program.

It’s a perfect way to share your message, it benefits your SEO, and it helps increase traffic to your website.

Blogging has evolved over the years, turning a fun way to provide and receive information, into a top marketing strategy. In fact, 55% of marketers say blogging is their number one inbound marketing priority.

 

These are my top five blogging tips for 2019!

1) Keep It Short to Medium in Length

Blogs can be any length, but for 2019 we are recommending keeping them on the shorter side, around 750 words.

As many people access information through their mobile devices, the ability to skim a document and absorb the information is paramount.

People tend to look up information in short spurts while waiting in line, taking a quick break, or during those in-between moments in life when they have a little extra time. A shorter blog increases your chances that your information gets to the people who want to read it.

If you have a subject that requires more length, consider breaking the blog into several parts instead and publish them separately. If a reader is interested, they will look forward to reading part 2.

Additionally, shorter blogs allow you to keep your focus on a single subject – and 750 words is more than enough to demonstrate your expertise and show you can provide value, which is your main goal here.

Looking to increase performance metrics on your blog? 4 Best Practices to Boost Blog Performance

 

2) Use Visuals

Remember, blogs are fundamentally a visual medium. That’s one thing that a lot of companies forget – but the simple truth is that nobody wants to read a wall of text. As part of my tips for blogging in 2019, here are the parts of visuals you should pay attention to:

  • Use Video: Video is becoming an increasingly popular medium to deliver content and messages. Video content is 50 times more likely to drive organic search results than plain text.
  • Use Good Images: A good image can make or break your blog. Pictures can be used to set a mood, demonstrate a point, or help guide people through the page. Be sure it’s a good match for the content.
  • Use Headings: Using headings helps break content down into easily-read sections. More importantly, however, they make it easy to glance through the content and find the most relevant parts to your readers.
  • Call Out Important Sentences: If you’re making a particularly important point, you can call out the sentence with your formatting to draw attention to it.
  • Break up your paragraphs: A large block of text can be harder to absorb. Leaving white space between blocks of text is more visually pleasing and less daunting to the reader.

Make it easy for people to find pertinent information – and be creative with photos, videos, graphics, infographics, use of white space, and whatever else makes sense for your business.

3) Be Thoughtful and Provide Value

What kind of information is genuinely helpful for your audience? Ultimately, every blog should be focused on your audience and a topic they care about.

If you’re not sure what matters to them, it’s helpful to create some buyer personas to define your target audience and make sure you’re speaking directly to them.

The more help you give people when they visit your site, the better the impression you’re going to make. That correlates directly to your overall success, and creates happy customers who will want to come back for more.

Would you like to increase your inbound marketing efforts? We can help!

 

4) Frequency

This one’s a little more challenging – because it’s all on you. If you can blog well and provide value five times a week, then go ahead and do that. If you can only manage a good blog twice a month, then aim for that schedule. You don’t want to blog to meet an arbitrary quota – a few good posts are better than a lot of bad ones.

However, you should keep in mind that search engines like Google generally value new content. If you’re trying to use blogging as part of a marketing strategy, you’ll want to set (and keep) some kind of regular schedule.

There are tactics to help keep the pace you set for your blogs without putting the full burden on one person. Try hiring freelance writers, encouraging employees to write a blog on their niche expertise, or outsourcing some/or all of your marketing efforts.

5) Evergreen and Current Blogs

As the last of our tips for blogging in 2019, it’s best to aim for a mix of evergreen (always useful) and current (time-sensitive) blogs.

Some businesses do the same thing year-round and can focus on evergreen material, while others are tied to some kind of cycle (seasons, schools, tax time, etc.) and want to have fresh new content right when people need their services the most.

Either way aim for a good mix of evergreen and time-sensitive content, in whatever ratio that makes sense for your business. 

Know you want to get to work on your blog? 4 Things Every Blog Should Include

 

What about you? Have you noticed any popular blog trends that you find appealing and customer-oriented? Please leave me a note in the comments.

Thanks for stopping by,

Laura

Editors note: This blog, originally published in 2017, has been updated and edited in 2019.