Writing your first blog post can be a daunting task for anyone (Including those who have a way with words)! Many of our customers believe that they do not have the time to post or worry that they won’t be able to connect with their audience, or they don’t have enough content about their brand to write about.
This post is to help you understand the importance of blogging on your website, and how it can help drive sales into your business and brand.
Where do I start content wise?
If you want to keep your audience on their toes, and those ‘bounce rates’ low then you need to post often and keep it exciting! (Who wants to read a script with no engagement right)?! Many of you will be wondering how to come up with a fresh topic for your blogs and readers – and what should you even write about in the first place?
The number one rule in order to conquer that question is to know your target audience. Once you know your audience you can then start to think about what they are currently talking about, what issues matter to them and what would be useful for them to read. For example: this post is able to provide insights into blogging, which is a topic many clients and potential clients are interested in within the Website industry.
Once you have established a connection to your audience, you are on the right path! The ability to engage is endless!
Make sure your chosen topics are also ones that you like to discuss with other people. If you genuinely feel enthusiastic and engaged, it will come across in your writing, and your audience will respond to that in a positive way! I mean, if you really wanted to, you can include what you just had for your dessert earlier in the day (Trifle over here)!
Keywords, and why do I need them?
If you want your blog to get found on the popular search engines, which I am sure most of you do, then you must be specific and do your research on what people are searching in order to find you. Keywords are phrases such as “Website Design Peterlee”, “Peterlee Business Tips”, “Printing Peterlee” (They will help me there)!
Make sure you induce your keywords throughout your blog post text as this is what “Google’s’ robots are looking for).
Another tip on how to get the best from your keyword research is by using Google Keyword Planner, this will find and show you monthly search volume, view the level of competition, and see other suggested words and phrases. You may also search the keywords you have chosen in any search engine and see what comes up in the results, this may give you an indication of related keywords others are using, don’t be afraid to use them too!
Are you ready to Blog!
You should be pretty much ready to begin your first blog post! Why not log into that wordpress backend and click on ‘Posts’ to get started!
(Just a quick note: when writing a blog post for WordPress, I personally find it a lot easier to write it in WordPress direct! This means you ave full control over the layout and format – trust me, it saves time!
So, to get started, all you need to do is click on Posts > Add New from your dashboard – this will take you to a page where you can start writing. The functions are straight forward! If you get stuck you can follow our bullet points below. (Or just drop us a message, always happy to help)!
- Create a title – In order to do this, you will see a big white box at the top of your screen, just type something engaging such as “Writing your first WordPress blog Post”
- Add external and internal links to your content – Highlight the text you want to hyperlink, click on the hyperlink icon at the top of the screen, and insert the url of the website you want to link to – simple!
- Add media – In order to add media, just press the “Add Media” button at the top left of the page to insert photos, infographics, videos and more and drag in your files! You can also set an featured image on the post on the right hand panel – this will be the display icon on the blog post itself.
- View and edit the snippet. At the bottom of the page, you will find an area where you can preview the snippet that will show up in search engine results and edit it if need be.
- Preview your post. Before you hit the “publish” button, you can preview your post and see what everyone else will see, make sure everything looks good before pressing publish.
