How to write a brilliant blog…

One of the best ways to communicate your business message to potential customers is to write a blog, but how do you make sure it’s read? Read on for our ‘Top Tiger Tips’ on making your blog successful:

Find your focus

• You must first decide whom your target audience is and what they want to read about.
• This will also set the tone and language style for your blogs.
• You can then be the ‘voice’ that offers your audience relevant, useful, appropriate and interesting information.

Be yourself

• Blog readers like to hear a personality, not a newspaper feed.
• Express your own thoughts and feelings about the topics you are writing about so readers get to know you.
• Remember, people buy into people and they do business with people they like.

The title

• It has to have a great header to make people click onto blog in the first place.
• Keep it short, catchy and to the point.
• Ensure it sums up what your blog is about.

The content

• The start of the blog needs to summarise what the blog is about so people can decide whether its worth their time to read it all. Your aim is to ‘hook’ the reader and entice them to read on.
• The middle section lists your main points / facts / information.
• The end sums up the main message and links back to the reader on a personal level (i.e. If you would like more information on how this can benefit you…)

Points to consider

• Keep it relevant to your industry, write about up-to-date, current affairs.
• Be factual and honest.
• Ensure it’s well written, articulate and flows together well.

Double check spelling and grammar

• Double check your work, and then ask another team member to check your work. Be diligent!

Reference your material

• If you quote facts, make a note of where the information has come from and add as a reference point within the blog.

Use hyper-links

• In your blog, if there is a subject that you briefly refer to and have written about it in detail before, you can link the word or phrase that covers that subject back to your previous blog.
• You can also link to a completely different website as long as it’s relevant and doesn’t conflict with your services (you don’t want to send potential clients to your competitors). For example as we’ve mentioned hyperlinks, you may now wish to find out how you hyper-link a word on your WordPress website… well guess what, you can find that out by clicking here.

Include images

• You may be engaging your readers with your content and sparkling personality but they also need visual stimulation.
• Make sure that you source legal, quality images that are size-appropriate and relevant to the topic that you are discussing.

Use Social Media to share your blog

• Anything that makes it easier for existing and potential readers to find your blog is a must.
• Social media has a much further reach than your blog due to hashtags and the ability to promote (pay for) posts, so add it to all of your social media platforms and spread the word.

Set yourself a target

• Blogs should be sent out regularly to keep your audience interested and alert Google that you are an ‘active’ website.
• Start out by posting a quarterly or monthly blog and if you wish to do more and are able to remain consistent then go for it. You’ll soon find what suits you and establish a routine.

Don’t be negative

• Readers will open your blog to be motivated and educated, they do not want to read negative, moaning content that is uninspiring… everyone prefers a happy ending!
• The only exception to this rule is if you are extremely talented and the blog is written in an entertaining, amusing, funny manner that manages to be light hearted at the same time as being negative.

Break up your text

• Long paragraphs are hard to read and digest, especially on computers.
• Break content up into smaller blocks with headers and bullet points wherever possible.

Respond to blog comments

• This is an opportunity to engage with your readers so make sure you reply to blogs that require a response.

 We hope that this helps to give you some pointers on successful blogging and we would love to hear your feedback on any other points that we may have missed in this blog.