graphic for 5 ways to kickstart your blog

The midpoint of 2019 is now upon us, so that means it's now time to reflect on your core marketing strategies, make adaptations, or eliminate them altogether.

One of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy is content. That means a successful blog can effectively increase your conversions, refine leads, and improve your online presence through search engine optimization (SEO). So knowing how to kickstart your blog is an important step.

With that said, how effective is your blog? Are you receiving healthy insights, and are you creating valuable content centered toward your target audience?

If you aren't getting the results you're expecting from your blog, keep reading to put these five high-performance content marketing tips to immediate use.

1. Write to Your Brand Tone

Writing quality content is an intricate process. It takes a tremendous amount of preparation and technique to make a person stop what they're doing and read your content, even if it's 300 words.

Web-users will typically only spend 15 seconds on your website. This means you only have a few seconds to gain the attention of your target audience. Therefore, the best way to grab their attention and retain it is to write in a way that appeals to them.

This is called writing to your brand tone. Every business, or brand, has a tone that resonates with their target audience. For example, a fashion retailer may use elegant and flowery language to appeal to their readers, while an IT firm's content will sound more technical and matter-of-fact.

To write exceptional content, you'll need to collaborate with your marketing team to establish a brand tone if you don't already have one. Time is precious, and you don't have a lot of it to wow your target audience.

Take this from Neil Patel, a serial entrepreneur and marketing expert, who accumulates millions of blog readers every day. What's his secret?

Patel knows his audience well. He understands that his blog is read primarily by marketers and entrepreneurs who are looking for authentic marketing tips to grow their business.

So, he writes practically to break down the best marketing solutions, while explaining each step he takes to gain solutions. You can do the same by writing in a way that will keep your readers glued to your website.

2. Use Keyword Tools to Improve Your Content

Creating well-written content is meaningless if it doesn't rank well online. Therefore, you can't have the mentality of mindlessly publishing content you didn't perform keyword research and optimization for.

Doing so will only set your entire content marketing strategy up for total failure. Instead, try using keyword tools to improve the quality and SEO performance of your content.

As such, you can help your content rank better by performing topic research and keyword optimization. Here are the tools to get both tasks done.

Ahrefs' Content Explorer tool allows users to easily find the most viral topics online. By typing in a simple keyword into the search bar and clicking "search", you can browse several topics you can build one of your blog posts from.

If the posts you've seen were liked enough to gain shares and traffic, you should use these posts as an inspiration for your next blog in the following ways.

Steampunk keyword tool machine used to kickstart your blog

Creating a longer post than your "inspiration piece", is a proven way to increase its ranking, according to marketing expert Brian Dean. Though, using more long-tail keywords that are relatively easy to rank for is also beneficial.

To generate a wide variety of long-tail keywords for your post, you can use Squirrly. This tool can produce dozens of long-tail keywords you place in your content, and the best part about it is that it's a WordPress plugin.

3. Write Long-Form Content

Writing longer content (2000+ words) is proven to aggregate more social shares, increased traffic, and a higher ranking on Google. Though, not everyone can pull out a chair, stay focused, and write a 2000 word blog post.

Even for a professional writer like myself, the process takes around three hours. Therefore, instead of telling you to just write long-form content, I'm going to give you a few tips on how you can get it done the right way without wasting your time.

The first rule is to always write an outline. Your outline should ideally include all of the points you plan to present in your article. Also, it should be a roadmap for writing your entire blog.

Here is an example of an outline for a complete guide to hiring a moving company.

  •         Introduction (100 Words)
  •         Making Calls (200 Words)
  •         Comparing Estimates (200 Words)
  •         Checking Reviews and Testimonials (200 Words)
  •         Engaging in Phone Meetings with Prospects (200 Words)
  •         Narrowing Down Choices (200 Words)
  •         Watching Out for Surprises (200 Words)
  •         Selecting the Right Company (200 Words)
  •         Preparing for Moving Day (200 Words)
  •         Conclusion (100 Words)

As you can see my outline indicates the word length for each point I plan on discussing in my article. Instead of writing directly from your research notes, you can work your way to creating long-form content by tackling each section at a time.

Furthermore, the second rule to creating long-form content is to provide context (I'll get to that down below) and examples. If you want to sound like an authority in your niche, you'll need to write your article from the perspective of an expert.

Doing so will make it much easier to write at least 1500 words. For example, writing a long post on creating great content is simple for me because I'm familiar with the subject. If you are truly an expert in your niche, you should feel the same.

4. Explain the How, Not the Why

Many blogs are often ignored because they're not practical or actionable in any type of way. These blogs produce general information that can be found anywhere.

To create content people will want to read, you'll have to dig deeper and share more of your expertise throughout your article. Like I explained in the previous section, writing valuable content should be straightforward if you are an expert in your niche.

Similar to how a car mechanic could talk for three hours about how to properly replace an engine, that same individual should be able to write an in-depth article on the same topic.

This is why it's important to hire a subject-matter expert if you plan to outsource your blog writing tasks. If you aren't a strong writer or if your blog's writer isn't particularly knowledgeable about your industry, that could be the reason why your blog isn't performing up to your standards.

5. Provide Plenty of Context

In-depth content must fall back on proven facts, real-world expertise, or statistics that prove your claims. Writing content that doesn't back up what you say will not only fail to reach your target audience, but it won't rank well either.

Think of it this way. What's more likely to be successful: a post about how to make a million dollars in a day or a post that explains step-by-step (with proof) on how to make a million dollars in 24 hours?

The answer is fairly obvious, and that's how your content should be. Use the internet to find statistics to support your findings. Create case studies that prove you're the best in your industry, and even include customer testimonials if you're writing content to sell products or services.

Doing this will make your readers believe what you're writing, and that's important for the bottom line of increasing your conversions and improving your ROI.

Kickstart Your Blog Today!

Creating amazing content is a straightforward process that requires diligent planning, research, and technique. It's 2019, and that likely means that your competitors have blogs of their own.

Following these tips is the first step of ensuring that your blog is more powerful than your competitors. And good luck to kickstart your blog today!

Writer Brandon LeeThis guest blog was written by Brandon Lee.

For more than a decade, Brandon has served as a content marketing specialist for hundreds of digital marketing, web design, and branding agencies. He has helped these businesses improve the direction and performance of their content marketing campaigns by creating valuable digital content from blog posts to whitepapers.

When he's not busy writing or providing consultations, Brandon loves to spend time with his wife, watch anime, and travel.

You can visit Brandon Lee's website at www.brandonleecm.com