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Blogging & Content Category
Is this the reason your blog posts look boring?
You’ve checked all the boxes for your blog:
- Great catchy headline
- Valuable content
- Subtle mentions of your business
- Links to your previous work scattered through
- Clear call to action
Done, done and done. But why is it no one seems to “see” your posts? When you post to social media, if you’re hearing crickets this could be why:
You’re not using images in your posts or they’re yawn-making!
Pretty as a picture
We are visual creatures by nature – just take a look around at all the ads and your favourite glossy mag. Bright, engaging pictures!
Using pictures in your blog can lift your posts, entice visitors and draw readers in. Take advantage of our visual nature, play to it and make your posts as eye catching as you can.
“I’m not a designer”
Honey, neither am I – and you don’t have to be! I’m going to share with you some of my favourite resources for fast, effective image creation on your blog as well a few no no’s.
If you’re writing how-to articles, using images or photos to explain the steps to your reader or demonstrate a point will help make it easier to understand. Try adding screenshots you’ve annotated like this:
There are loads of different apps for this – try Skitch (MAC or Windows) or Awesome Screenshot to start with.
Images for SEO
Images also help with SEO if you title them correctly because they will be listed in search results.
It is essential that you re-title your images to something related to your post and keywords. Don’t, for the love of all that is good, leave an image with a title like DCM20011023 – have you ever searched Google for that? Nope, me neither and neither will anyone else.
Don’t forget to add the alt title as well. If for whatever reason your reader can’t see images, this is the text which will replace the image. BUT it is also how a search engine “sees” a picture. If you don’t add a description, Google can’t read it. Keep it simple, just a few words with one keyword is fine.
Which images to use?
There are loads of sources for images online, a big no no is to sift through Google Images or another website and just copy what you find. You could get in trouble for using an image that you don’t have rights to and really – it’s just not cool.
If you can use your own photos – great! Instagram is quick n easy for that, plus it’s a social network in its own right, so you get more bang for your buck. Just be careful if you have other people in your shot.
I love Death by Stock just because well, I don’t like boring stock photos! Here is the link to their resources plus they send you a new packages of beeyootiful pics every month.
Customise.
Once you have your pic, make it your own – crop it, add text, turn it upside down, whatever makes it YOU. I love PicMonkey because it’s super easy to use and if you get stuck there are tutorials on the site as well as loads on YouTube.
Not only can you use it for your blog post, re-purpose it for your SM updates too (tip: Square pics are best for this).
Your turn.
Over to you, find one of your blog posts – create an image to go with it and upload it to Facebook. I bet you get more clicks than before. Let me know how you get on in the comments below (if you can post your image, do it!). Or, if you have a go-to resource for image creation and editing share in the comments.
Nail this to get more readers for your blog
There are some people’s blog you’ll read no matter what (like mine, right?!). You know that you’ll either A) enjoy or B) get value from what they write. Ideally, you’ll get both.
How did I get here?!
But what about those other articles you read online? Y’know, when you pop on your computer or smart device to look for something specific and then it’s half an hour later and you’re reading something totally unrelated? Something you may have had little or no interest in previously? Why are you reading it? How did you even get there?
I can tell you now what it will probably have been. The headline. I mentioned attention grabbing headlines recently and wanted to give you a little bit of extra info.
Which type are you?
There is a difference between the attention grabbing headline and one that ranks high in Google.
An attention grabbing headline is more in line with the glossy mag type – it may not be something people type into a Google search but it’s either something they want to learn about or are interested in or is so enticing that they HAVE to have a look. Like this….now tell me – has your attention been lovingly grabbed?
The high ranking Google headlines need keywords and answer your clients’ specific questions. For instance my blog, “What Does FF Mean on Twitter” regularly pulls in 1000s of visits a month because it’s a keyword term that people actually type into Google Search. My blog comes up number 1 out of 20.5 million results!
Ideally your blog posts want to be a mix of both Google ranked and attention grabbing – mine lean more towards the attention grabbers.
Eeek – check out the stats!
According to blog God, Brian Clark of Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read a blog headline, but the number who will actually read the article drops to 2 out of 10.
If you flip those figures from the position of a blogging business owner, that’s a scary thought. And, if you feel that your blog gathers more dust bunnies than comments or shares it can make you feel like giving up writing altogether.
But, NO! You’re a modern entrepreneur – you don’t give up that easily – facing and overcoming challenges is what business is all about. So what does it take to get your blog read and appreciated?
Get them where you want them.
Well, before anyone can read, appreciate, comment on and share your blog with their friends and wider social circle – and they will, believe it – you gotta get them to the page, and THAT you’re going to do with a killer headline.
Not only is the headline there to entice people (your ideal clients) to read, the title is also an ideal opportunity to add some keywords to attract more people when they type a search term in to Google (more about that here).
Creating a great headline that also helps you get found in Google can be a tricky balancing act but worth spending time on.
Would YOU read it?
Try looking at your headline objectively, as if you had no idea what the blog was about – would you read on? Does it encourage you to click? If your headline is too vague, too long or too boring then you can say sayonara to those readers because no one is going to read your hard work. Bummer!
One of the best resources you can use to help you write headlines is Copyblogger’s “How to Write Magnetic Headlines” – I bet you’ve already clicked it, see how good they are?!
So next time you’re browsing online and find yourself driven to read something check out the headline with new eyes and even take a note of what appealed to you – if you read it, chances are so would 1000s of others.
I’d love to know what your most popular headlines have been – let me know in the comments below.
It’s not what you’ve got it’s what you do with it that counts…
I’m certain we’ve all heard phrases similar to “it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it that counts” and I can tell you, I 100% agree. It’s about content, right?
Do less, do it well
I was talking to a client recently who wanted to create 3 blogs a week – I LOVE the enthusiasm and applaud her for that but that’s a big commitment to take on and unless your blog IS business it’s not the best use of your time.
Take the example of high end luxury goods, Hermes don’t produce 100’s of different styles of bag, they do less, they do it well and they do it expensively!
Producing loads of content isn’t the answer to getting exposure for your business – it’s in the promotion.
Work it, baby
So, your time would be better used writing 1 shit-hot article then promoting the H out of it. Sharing regularly on social media (not just once), your business network and subscriber list (you know what I think about having one of those), plus enlist the help of your community to share it for you so that you can reach as many people as possible or try guest posting.
Tip: Every time you write your blog for example think of 3 different social media headlines to go with it – it takes minutes and already you’ve got 3 times the exposure from the same piece of content.
Right under their noses..
Fantastically written blogs which give value to your clients, set you up as an expert in your field as well as showing your personality are, it goes without saying, gold.
I’ve written before about how to make them easy to find and how to keep people reading them.
But as well as that you want to be putting it out there where your regular peeps can see it without even having to look for it. Let’s recap what that means:
- regular sharing on social media
- guest posting
- enlisting the help of your community to share it for you so you can reach as many people as possible
- sending fresh new content to your list regularly (you can get mine here *wink*)
It’s not a dirty word
Promotion doesn’t mean you have to beat people over the head with your latest offering and it doesn’t have to be annoying.
It does have to be about making your content work hard for you, after all you worked hard for it. With a few tweaks the same blog can work for you on different platforms and for different audiences.
There’s not much point in having 3 blogs that no one reads because you haven’t had time to promoe them properly, right?
Kerching!
The time you save by creating less will mean you have more time to focus on client prospecting activities that will get you more immediate results cashflow-wise. That’s always welcome, not to mention necessary and working with your clients is (presumably) what you really love doing.
Over to you
So go back to your blogs and write 3 more headlines you could use with each one, then schedule them to be posted over the next few weeks, let us know in the comments below how you get on.