Content Marketing — Why Your Blogposts Are Not Ranking High & How To Make Them Better
Are you spending lots of time writing blogposts that don’t get any engagement? Or are you spending lots of money on outsourcing your content development and getting a very low ROI.
If this is you and you are wondering what you are doing wrong then this blogpost is for you.
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer actions. For content marketing to work you have to create killer content. Blogging is one form of content marketing.
WHY IS BLOGGING IMPORTANT
If you think that your company does not need a blog, think again.
Still not convinced, then here are 4 reasons why a company blog is a must have:
1. Blogs help your Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Without a blog, your overall ranking on search engines like Google can tank.
2. Blogs help position you as an expert/authority in your field:
While blogposts help with your SEO score which ranks your online authority, they are also great to show your potential and existing customers that you have in-depth knowledge of your field, which helps build trust in your brand, services and / or products.
3. Blogs give you content for Social Media:
Blogposts can be broken down into small chunks that form useful content for your social media channels.
4. Blogs are great to embed Gated Content:
Blogposts are a great way to embed gated content. Gated content is content that people share their contact details to access. Gated content could be industry reports, case studies or templates, which you can integrate into a blog post. This is an amazing way to collect contact details for inbound marketing and grow your mailing list instantly.
HOW DO I KNOW MY BLOGPOST IS A WINNER?
They say “Content is King”, but just churning out content isn’t “KING” it’s just a waste of time and resources. I personally think the statement should go “The right kind of content is king”.
So how do you make sure you have the right kind of content? Well there are certain elements that make a piece of content golden and you’re in luck because I’m generous today — let’s go through them one by one.
1. A KILLER TOPIC AND TITLE
It sounds crazy to say that your blogpost starts and ends with just your title, but its true. If your title does not lure me in, then you’ve failed before even starting.
So how do you come up with a killer topic and a killer title to match it?
What if you are not inspired? To constantly drop good content, you can’t rely on inspiration alone, you have to have in-depth knowledge of the subject matter.
So step one is to figure out what you want to write about and then subscribe to blogs, newsletters, and publications that focus on the topic — totally immerse yourself in content around the topic and soon you will become a pro if you aren’t one yet.
So now to the killer title — think about what the pain points of your audience are — what are the things they are really concerned about and how does the topic address or even solve these issues? Include keywords that describe the pain points to lure them in.
Here are some examples:
- How your Social Media affects your company’s Google Search Rank
2. How does content marketing support digital marketing?
3. How your website security can affect your digital footprint
4. Brand Management is not just for retail brands — here’s why African professional service providers need to embrace Brand Marketing
2. BEING A TOPICAL NINJA
Have you read those blogposts that leave you more confused than your before you started reading? I’m sure you haven’t gone back to those blogs. In order to truly master a topic, it is key to have in-depth knowledge about it.
You have to read about your topic, practice what you’ve read and build relevant experience on the topic over time.
Diligently working on these three things will slowly turn you into a subject matter expert. My personal rule — I don’t write about anything I don’t understand. In the case where you are outsourcing your content development, please make sure that you are dealing with professional copywriters who either already have good knowledge on the topic or are willing to acquire the knowledge through research.
3. KNOWING WHO YOU ARE WRITING FOR
It’s important to know who you are writing for? Let me tell you who I am writing for — I am writing this blogpost for people who blog and struggle with content generation, for staff of companies that require them to write blogposts as part of their KPIs, as well as CEOs and CMOs who pay for blogs to be written for them, yet they are not getting any result.
So let’s try a little exercise shall we? You’ll need something to write — I want you to imagine who you are writing for. Here are a few questions to guide you
- Is the person male or female?
- How old is this person?
- Is the person single or married?
- Is the person religious or unreligious?
- How much disposable income does the person have?
- How busy are they?
- What kind of job do they have?
- What level are they in their organization?
- Do they manage a team?
The list is endless, to be honest, but just keep on going until you can give this hypothetical person you are writing for a name.
To learn more about your target demographic check out this blogpost we published in July.
Now that you know who you are writing for make sure that your blog posts focus on this exact person.
4. STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE!
Structuring your posts properly is that secret sauce that takes your readers from the beginning of the blogpost, all the way to the end of the blogpost. It’s the reason why you have come this far into reading this blogpost.
The elements of a well-structured blog post are
1. Title
2. Introduction
3. Lead in
4. Main points
5. Conclusion
….and lots of pictures sprinkled in between.
Studies have shown that most people are drawn in by your title, once they click they swiftly glance over your first paragraph, which is your introduction and then jump all the way down to your last paragraph, which is your conclusion. If they like what they see they will go back up and start skimming through the rest.
It’s important that you have a lead-in — your lead-in is a really brief overview of what your post is about and has to really reel people in. For your main points, bullet points or numbers are a great way to segment your post and allow readers to read sections they are most interested in.
To make sure your blogpost doesn’t look like a page in the Economist, make sure you sprinkle some AMAZING pictures all over that ish. They can be topical, infographics, or simply fun and abstract like some of mine.
For high-quality free images check out Unsplash, Pexel, Pixabay or Freepik.
5. EAT SOME HUMBLE PIE
Please proofread your blog post and if possible give it to someone else to glance over before you publish it. Ask them not only to check for grammatical errors and typos, ask them whether they think the post is properly structured and makes sense to them.
Now, this is where humble pie will take you from good to great — take on suggestions and criticism and make amendments — sometimes this means turning it all on its head — but guess what — the output will be better and help you convert some more potentials to customers.
If you don’t have anyone to help you proof, here are some great tools that I use:
And that’s it folks….in conclusion, blogging is not easy work, especially if you’ve just started, but being consistent, providing value and remaining knowledgeable and using the tips I’ve shared will surely improve your posts.
If you have any specific questions regarding your blogposts or if you’ve tried the tips and they’ve worked, please leave me a comment.
