Are blogging and social media an integral part of your marketing practices? If not, they should be. Blogging is a vital component of your online client relationship building and retention. That’s why you ought to give it the time and effort it deserves to help grow your business and reach new audiences.

For blogging to work for your business, you need to put some effort into it. There are certain practices you shouldn’t ignore if you want your blog to become an overnight sensation.

About Us page

A quick Internet search will help you realize how important the About page of your blog is. It’s the most visited page on blog sites, because visitors want to know who’s behind these words. They want to know what you believe in, what you think about different topics, and what your overall mindset might be.

For some blogs, depending on what the blog is about, there’s often another page that gets at least as many views: one that provides the details related to the business. For instance, a photographer’s site will have the gallery or portfolio pages getting the most views; a technical blog site will often get the most clicks through to its FAQ page.

Put some thought into how you structure and enrich your About page. Set the tone for your blog, tell people who you are, give them a reason to stick around and read more, and then give them the final reassuring pat on the shoulder by providing testimonials and other forms of proof about what you’re claiming to be and excel at.

Even if it’s a business blog it should get personal. The use of narratives is not an approach exclusively used for personal blogs. Share a story and people will pay attention. They will empathize.

Keep it short and sweet

Resist the temptation to cram your sidebar with unnecessary pages.

Focus on a couple of things besides your frequent new blog post. It should be kept clean, minimal and only with what really matters. Don’t repeat things people can find on your official business site.

Don’t create junk keyword posts for the sake of ranking

Your blog should offer real value to your visitors. Give them insights, highlights, and top-of-the-line information that’s also keyword-rich.

There’s no reason to create meaningless posts for the sake of SEO. If you offer good, quality content, your content will eventually become popular and rank well.

People get frustrated when businesses get obsessed with SEO and offer nothing but information-light content stuffed with keywords. Stand out by offering relevant, informative content your visitors will benefit from and will want to share with others. This way your online community will expand, and the ways they engage with your business will improve.

Proofread

There’s no bigger turn-off than bad grammar. People who don’t pay attention to grammar mistakes are seen as careless, or not well educated. In both of these cases you’re not being a good advertisement for your business or yourself. Grammar matters, and even if you’ve got a more casual approach to your online content, make sure it’s free of mistakes in language or spelling.

A business blog reflects the company it represents, and so the language used does affect public opinion about the company. It would be a shame to lose your hard-earned authority status due to an easily-fixed grammatical mistake or misspelling. Proofread your content diligently and always double-check your posts before publication to avoid embarrassing situations.

Online content helps improve user engagement on social media platforms, remind consumers of your presence, authority and relevancy, and boost sales and profits – when done correctly.

Writing promotional public relations (PR) content for social media, blogs, websites, and other marketing purposes has its own set of rules you will have to follow. Apart from style, language, and other tips, there are practical parameters you need to adopt to instantly improve your PR-related content writing. We share 5 of them in this article.

Be alert and rested but not hyped.

Coffee is good, don’t get me wrong. But depending on caffeine to brainstorm ideas and create engaging copy is a deal with the devil.

You don’t want to grow dependent on (I decided to avoid the phrase “addicted to”) caffeine, because any level of productivity that depends solely on chemical stimulation is at best an erratic one. Instead, get up from your desk and stretch every 20 minutes, hydrate regularly, and take brief walks around the office to get the blood and ideas flowing. Caffeine is overrated.

Immerse yourself in inspiration.

Sitting at the same desk day after day will eventually have a toll on your writing, which will end up stale and derivative, just like your unchanging surroundings. To spice up your writing and give it more impact, amp up the “new” factor. Sit in the lobby with your laptop, go to an empty meeting room, or go up on the rooftop to write. Whatever breaks your routine will be enough to activate more innovative and imaginative writing.

Check your email often

You didn’t believe I’d actually say that, did you? But when I say “often” I mean “only on a regular schedule.” You don’t need to click every thirty seconds to see if you have new messages – that’s just procrastination. When you set a schedule for checking into the computer, you’ll keep yourself from being distracted.

Keep all electronic distractions away. Switch off your phone, sign out of social media, block the tempting websites you’ve visited so often. You know the drill. The fewer distractions you’re struggling with, the more relaxed and prolific you’ll be. If you know you have important messages coming in, set your timer to check every hour, but no more often.

Cultivate your empathy

Marketing has many principles you should follow, but only one is timeless and overlaps all mediums.

The most important principle is learning to really understand your audience and give them what they’re after. In other words, to empathize with them. Online marketing is different from conventional marketing in some ways, but you still need to listen to your audience, understand their concerns, fears, and desires, and, through your PR writing, deliver a message that resonates with them.

Get more emotionally intelligent and you will increase your social sensitivity. You will be able to grasp what lies beneath what’s being said and what people actually starve for.

This will help you deliver PR writing that will emotionally resonate with your audience and make them more eager to hear you out.

Give it the time it deserves

Sure, you have many other urgent tasks to handle, and spending 3 hours on a blog post seems like a luxury no one can afford, especially you. If you want PR writing that converts clients and increases sales, however, you need to give content the attention and time it deserves.

If it sounds impossible, go for quality instead of quantity. Post less often, but make sure when you do post, it’s something that is worthwhile. Each post you publish needs to provide answers to people, food for thought, or a new viral video to share with friends. Quality will never let you down, so devote ample time to your PR writing. Don’t regard it as an unimportant task, because it won’t pay off.

To recap, don’t depend on caffeine to keep you going, avoid as many distractions as possible, change your environment often, immerse yourself in inspiring contexts, and don’t ever take writing too lightly.

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