A blog can offer interested parties and customers added value, anchor the operating company in their memory and increase the company’s success.
Value of information and regularity are important success factors. But what characterizes a successful blog?* Source: Statista.com
Table of contents
In this article, we discuss the success factors of quality, regularity and incentive and provide practical tips for implementation.
A blog is customer service
Ideally, companies are experts in their field. With a lot of know-how and experience. If you bundle this expertise in a blog, interested parties and customers can find answers to their questions independently. The blog becomes part of the consulting service.
The advantage: A blog article only needs to be written once. Subsequently, it can advise readers on an ongoing basis without causing any effort.
In order to successfully implement this service concept, we have identified four success factors for you: quality, regularity, structure and incentive.
Quality as the No. 1 success factor
If a consultant is unable to express himself or appears incompetent, the prospective customer will quickly leave. It’s similar with a blog.
But what makes a good blog article?
The value of a message depends on various factors:
- How up-to-date is the content of the blog article?
- Does the information affect the reader acutely, in the medium or long term?
- Is the information generally known, in specialist circles or not yet known at all?
- How long is the information relevant?
- Does the content have spatial relevance?
- Does the information concern the reader in his city? His country? His core market?
- Is spatial relevance foreseeable in the near future?
- Does the information have a benefit for the reader even without spatial relevance?
- How dynamic is the information it contains?
- What is the impact of the information on the reader?
- What is the potential profit or avoidable loss?
- How easy is it for the reader to derive actions from this information?
The information content indicates how in-depth or broad an article is.
We speak of depth when an article sheds light on a specific topic down to the smallest detail. A blog article about a new camera describes the technical aspects in detail, right down to the sensor.
We talk about breadth when an article highlights the impact of one topic on as many surrounding topics as possible. A blog article about a new camera only superficially describes the technical aspects, but in comparison to ten other cameras.
An article that only discusses the market launch of a new camera without going into technical details or other camera models – i.e. that has neither depth nor breadth – could be described as shallow.
However, if this is the first camera from a promising new manufacturer, the information content is still remarkable. Unless everyone has already reported on it before you.
If you have to read 1000 words to understand how to spread a sandwich, the information density is poor.
Explaining how to make the perfect Wiener schnitzel in 100 words is probably impossible. The information density would be very high, the content probably incomprehensible.
Information density is a trade-off between readability, understandability and appreciation. Because: (reading) time is money.
A well-structured blog article makes it easy for the reader to grasp the content. You can take the following aspects into account.
Structure/chapter
The essential information of a blog article should already be visible when scrolling through it.
This is not the only reason why it is advisable to divide articles into paragraphs with headings.
Introduction
The introduction must arouse the reader’s interest. What is the article about and what can the reader expect?
Table of contents
The table of contents provides a rough overview. If the individual paragraphs are linked, the table of contents also serves as navigation.
Images/graphics
Whenever possible and reasonable, graphics or photographs should liven up the blog. Textual wastelands look intimidating, boring and unkind.
Design/functionality
People prefer to read an appealing blog. But only if the content is right. Form follows function: Better an ugly blog with groundbreaking content than the other way around.
It’s not what you say, but how you say it. Your language makes the blog.
“It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.” It’s not so much what you write about, but rather how you write:
- Avoid using complex foreign and technical terms.
- Where it makes sense to use technical terms, explain them.
- Avoid long, convoluted sentences.
- Do not write your content in nominal style*. The verbal style is easier to read.
- Avoid empty phrases and filler words.
- Pay attention to spelling and grammar.
- Explain complex things by drawing a vivid comparison with everyday life (
- Complex things can often be explained by vivid comparisons from everyday life.
* The widespread nominal style is one of the most common reasons for language that is difficult to understand. It is known from official language, technical language and scientific texts.
Do you remember the number at the beginning of this article? Depending on how fast you read, a few thousand blog articles have been published since then.
Advantages:
- Due to the huge range on offer, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find well-researched and trustworthy content. Once a reader has found a reliable source on a topic, he is more likely to remain loyal to it.
- Since there are countless blog posts on every topic, you also have countless opportunities to analyze posts and learn from the mistakes of others.
- The flood of content is “forcing” the major search engines to increasingly train their algorithms on the quality of content in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. As a result, vast amounts of content written solely to improve search engine rankings are becoming null and void.
- The blogging boom has made WordPress the most popular content management system(market share 63% worldwide). Beginners can therefore find numerous tutorials and help to start their own blog.
Regularity creates trust
Imagine if the news were broadcast every day, but not at the same time. Image and credibility would immediately be tarnished.
Patience is a virtue and a successful blog is hard but rewarding work. It will take a lot of perseverance to achieve the desired success.
If you decide to start a blog, you should allow for a few months before you see your first successes. During this phase, it is important to hang in there and publish articles regularly.
One detailed article per week is enough. However, you should always post this one article on the same day of the week and ideally at the same time of day*.
Why it is so important to publish articles regularly:
- Regularly appearing articles show the reader that the author is serious, has a plan and takes a structured approach to blogging.
- By publishing articles regularly, the reader gets used to the interval at which new articles appear.
- Search engines also value continuity. The more reliably articles are published at the same interval, the higher search engines rate the degree of professionalism.
Set incentives to start the dialog
With informative, appealing articles, you can accomplish part of your consulting services via your blog. However, a blog offers even more opportunities to deepen your relationships with customers and prospects.
The comment function gives your readers the chance to get in touch with you informally. Feedback from your readers can be invaluable for the further development of your blog. It’s best to take the initiative:
- Ask your readers for their opinion or experience. The more specific you ask, the easier it is for the reader to answer. Instead of: “What is your opinion on this topic?”, ask: “What has stopped you from starting a blog so far?” Or: “Which blog system have you already had positive or negative experiences with?”
- Ask if something in your article is unclear or if there is interest in covering a certain aspect in more detail. For example, at the end of an article about camera sensors, you could add the following incentive: “If you want to know how the demosaicing of a CCD sensor works in detail, leave a comment. If you are interested, I will be happy to write an article about it.”
- Future developments are also an excellent topic for discussion. “Will WordPress still be the most widely used CMS in five years’ time? Which provider could topple the top dog from the throne?”
- If you revise your blog aesthetically or functionally, this is worth an article. Take the opportunity to ask your readers whether the improvements are being received as they were intended. For example: “When redesigning our blog, we wanted to improve readability and make it easier on the eyes. That’s why we opted for a dark background and a white font color. Don’t you think it’s easier to read now?” Or: As every minute counts these days, we have built in a function for you that calculates the estimated reading time of an article. This gives you an idea in advance of how much content you can expect. Is reading time a decisive criterion for you? We look forward to your feedback.”
Practical tips for your blog
To get you started, we have put together five practical tips for your blog. We will continue to expand this section over time.
Search engines love content and keywords. The temptation to trick the Google algorithm with cleverly written blog articles and thereby improve your own ranking is there.
Many blogs only exist for this one reason. Forget it: Google and co. invest billions in their algorithm to expose empty, bogus texts that are only intended to improve pagerank (the ranking in the search results).
Write for your prospects and customers and use the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert on your topic. Everything else is, sooner or later, wasted effort.
Ideally, a post is read hundreds or thousands of times over the course of time – but only written once.
The simpler, easier to understand and more interesting an article is written, the more often it will be clicked on, read and recommended.
It is therefore worth proofreading an article thoroughly. You may also revise previously published articles over time or add new insights, information or images/graphics.
Impressive linguistic acrobatics can make you sound clever – but is it all that clever? Resist the temptation to distinguish yourself through verbal excellence and complex sentence structure. Instead, score points with apt comparisons and vivid language.
Not only your readers will appreciate it if you back up facts with sources. Search engines are smart too, and they will notice if you don’t link to a page outside your blog even once in 50 articles. After all, the Internet is supposed to connect us.
- Ask yourself: “How would I explain this to my grandmother?”
- Draw comparisons to everyday situations that are generally known.
- Explain facts using easy-to-understand examples
- Visualize the facts using graphics
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