How to Unleash Blogging for Better Conversion

Blogging is a free-flowing source of information and people read lots of rich and valuable research. More than three fourths of the digital marketers in the world blog frequently. Content Marketing has become the main source of attracting people to your website and by presenting useful information that help your readers it converts your readers into your subscribers.

Most marketers know that blogs have insane potential to turn your visitors into your customers. But, conversions through blogging thus depends on various other factors other than the content you write.

To convert your blog into a lead magnet there are many components that need to fix for optimizing your blog for better lead generation or conversion.

Create a proper blog structure

First and foremost, you need to create a proper blog structure, which is easy to navigate and provide all the option to subscribe any piece of information. Conversions through blogging depends heavily on your blog structure. The structure of a blog, in turn, is affected by various blog elements like:

Sticky Header: A sticky header will consist of all necessary information about the company services and products, culture, and working methodology. No matter how much you scroll down it will remain with the webpage on the top place. This makes users to find any service related information easily.

Blog Categories: The list of blog categories must be placed right below the header with a subscription on the right side. Giving an easy option for readers to navigate through different category section on your blog will make them to consider the content. That’s how they will subscribe it to get updates on regular basis.

Subscription Option: An easy subscription will always add new contacts to your lead generation sheet. Thus, providing an easy subscription box on the top of your blog post or at the right-side column of your blog homepage is considered most effective. However, you can pull more contacts by showing pop-ups on your blog on different time intervals.

Search Bar: The search bar should be placed just below the category section for the users to look up other pieces of content if they want to.

A blog structure defines the extent of good user experience (UX) and easy navigation and thus must be designed strategically.

Place Call-to-Action (CTA) to boost conversion

A Call-to-Action (CTA) if placed strategically have the potential to turn your blog into a lead generating machine.

Basically, a CTA is the box through which your users can join the readers community and that’s how you’ll be able to collect leads on your blog.

However, the placement of a CTA is based on user behavior. And a personalized CTA works 42% better than an untargeted one since that is created based on user behavior.

By analyzing the different behavior of users on your webpage or blog you can place a CTA in three different styles on your blog, which are as follow:

The Inline CTA is used correctly only if it is placed after ample information that has been given related to the CTA in the blog.

The Sidebar CTA is placed on the side of the blog, which is mainly for gated content subscription or other important events in the industry.

The Bottom CTA is placed after the entire blog post. Once a reader gets finished with post reading then it is a smart way to show him a way to subscribe the information on regular basis.

Isn’t it clever? To analyze different user behavior on your blog you can take help of Hotjar. The heatmap tool will show you different user actions on the different section on your blog. This will help you place CTA strategically on your blog homepage and posts.

Empower engagement on your blog post

Engagement on your blog shows the level of involvement, thus it is always good to interact with your audience. By letting your readers get in touch with your blog post through social network is a popular yet most effective way to engage people with the content. But, to achieve higher engagement level on your blog you need to place social sharing plugins at the right place.

Only 45% of marketers think that their Facebook efforts are effective. This is due to wrong placement of social sharing buttons and social engagement counter. The social sharing buttons can be placed on the sidebar and below the post.

The sidebar social sharing counter should be sticky so that the user gets the opportunity to share the content whenever he feels like without having to search for it.

You can also give an option to share your post on their social networks by placing a social sharing counter at the end of your post.

However, using the Click to Tweet plugin will increase the chances of the article being shared by providing a stat or fact within the post for the user to directly tweet it.

Integrate Optin Forms to collect more leads

Optin forms are the most efficient way to pull readers into your customer’s list.
The optin form needs to be integrated to the blog in a way that it doesn’t pop up before enough information has been provided to the reader.

An optin form must no doubt include the mandatory fields, but it also needs to be as short as possible. The optin form can be integrated in various sections in different styles.

An exit overlay pop up comes up when the user shows an intent to quit the blog page. The time intent pop up turns up after the user has spent certain amount of time on the blog page. The scroll intent CTA pops up after a certain extent of scrolling has been done by the reader. The sticky header and footer CTA pops up are placed in the header and footer respectively.

Optimize the loading speed of your blog

The content and the design of an entire blog page will go down the drain if the blog page doesn’t load fast. More than 40% of people abandon a webpage if it takes more than 3 seconds to load thus, a webpage must load within or less than 3 seconds.
Google introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to optimize webpages for mobile devices with quick loading speed. Google AMP has been introduced keeping both speed and mobile first approach in mind. Integrating Google AMP to your website will not only push your page up the SERP but will also make sure than it comes up in a carousel, on top, that only accommodates AMP pages.

Wrapping up

To create a conversion oriented blog, you must fix your blog with above mentioned inbound marketing tips.

These elements and tips must be used keeping your audience in mind. The blog structure, the placement of CTAs, optin forms and social sharing buttons play a huge role in giving the user a good experience on your blog page which in turns boosts ROI easily.

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Engaging and Delighting Customers with Video

Customer retention and growth are key parts of any business, but it’s becoming more difficult than ever to retain your customers. The key to customer success is not just in forming great relationships, but in delivering an exceptional experience throughout the entire customer life cycle.

My name is Rebecca Rogez, and in this Chalk Talk, we’ll discuss how you can use video to create a remarkable customer experience that helps drive satisfaction and build brand advocacy for your business.

Customer success and customer service are both so important for turning your customers into advocates. Video can be used to help enhance your customers’ experience and build brand advocacy because it’s human and it’s authentic. It helps you to create personal connections quickly and easily.

Video is also a great tool for education and support, and it’s the best medium to help bring your customer stories to life. In customer success, video is so impactful, because it helps make your communication more personal. When new customers sign on with your business, you can use video to welcome them to the team. Whether it’s from the new customer success manager, the account executive, or the CEO, video helps a customer put a face to a name. Video also helps to communicate how excited you are to be working with them and how passionate you are about what you do. It really is the next best thing to being there in person.

These videos don’t have to be high Hollywood production quality. With tools like Vidyard, you can create and send quick, authentic videos to help establish that human connection from your first point of contact.

Onboarding New Customers with Video

Video can also be used to help onboard and train new customers. While this doesn’t necessarily replace in-person training or conversations, on-demand training assets are great to have because they can be shared with other stakeholders and with new users as they join the business. After onboarding is complete, video can be used throughout the entire customer life cycle. Any time you think about sending an email or making a phone call, you can create a video!

Two ways video is especially effective in ongoing communications is when there’s things like new product or feature releases.

Reps can send a personalized video to their customers telling them about the new release and how it impacts them. This can help with adoption, because you’re showing the customer what the new feature is and how to use it rather than relying on them to find the information out themselves.

The second way that you can use video in ongoing communications most effectively is if there’s ever an account transfer that needs to happen, or if you need to bring someone else from the business into your day-to-day interactions. This makes the transition much smoother, and it shows the customer who it is that they’re going to be working with.

Video for Customer Support & Training

In customer service, video provides a better way to connect, share, and educate. Video has always been a great complement to any kind of technical or educational content. That’s why video fits great inside of a knowledge base or a product guide. These videos can be higher-level explainer videos, or you can have more simple how-to videos. Again, just like in customer success, these videos do not have to be high-quality production. You can use animation or you can use something like a screen capture to get across how to do something.

One of the great ways to use screen capture in customer service and support is using it to help solve support tickets or cases. Customers can submit a ticket, and reps can respond back with a video showing the customer how to do what they’re trying to do. This provides a better customer experience, because the customer knows someone is working with them and trying to help them, and it can help support reps close tickets more easily. They’re not waiting on the back and forth that often comes with emails or with chats. For more advanced users, you can add interactive elements into your videos, like a form at the end that say did this video help to support, or help to resolve your issue. Customers can then click yes or no, and tickets can get closed faster.

Sharing New Product Updates

Finally, video can also be used in customer marketing and advocacy efforts. In monthly customer communications, very similar to the customer success model, the marketing team can complement any text-based email with video. It’s much more powerful to have somebody from the company explaining a new feature release or sharing company news than it is to read about it in text. Video can also be used to help activate your advocates and really bring your customer’s stories to life. These videos don’t necessarily have to be high production quality testimonial videos that you see on a lot of businesses’ websites. You can have customers create authentic, short selfie videos, where they provide feedback, answer questions, or provide references.

This information can be used internally with the team or it can be shared externally as on-demand reference materials. You do always have the option to have the high quality production case studies, which are always great because they really help people to feel what your customer is saying. You get much more out of hearing someone say something than you do by reading an article or paragraph that they might have written.

Hopefully all of these ways have shown you how you can use video to help enhance your customer experience and build brand advocacy for your business. My name’s Rebecca, and this has been a Vidyard Chalk Talk.

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Why Blogging will Remain an Important Content Marketing Tactic for Businesses in the Future

The popularity of blogging is on the rise. Even though the number of internet users who engaged with blogs on computers in the United States has decreased from 32.58 million in Autumn 2013 to 29.1 million in Spring 2016, it doesn’t mean blogs have become less popular among online users.1

Rather, there has simply been a shift towards using another device when it comes to reading or contributing to blogs. The following graph visualises the increase in number of internet users who read or contributed to blogs on smartphone from Autumn 2013 to Spring 2016.

But why are these numbers important to you as a business owner? According to Statista, the number of bloggers in 2020 will increase to up to 31.7 million in the United States, which shows the potential other people see in blogging as an important channel in which to reach a global audience.

In case you haven’t started blogging yet, think about all the potential readers you could connect with by establishing a blog for your business.

As part of your content marketing strategy, developing a blog for your business can do even more than just increasing your brand awareness, building trust, or driving more traffic to your website.

Keeping the 9 tips from the video in mind, you might also want to consider the following questions before starting your business blog.

WHAT are you going to write about in your blog?
What is your audience interested in? Analyze your customers questions and use them as inspiration for your blog content. Chances are, you already have a couple of good topics to use for your next blog post. Pro tip: write about what you know.

WHO are you creating content for?
Define your target audience and always keep them in mind when searching for a new topic or creating your next blog post.

WHY are you covering this particular topic?
Why is it relevant today and what do you expect your audience to take away from it? Use your blog as a platform to educate, inform and entertain your audience about topics not only related to your products but also focussing on broader topics in your industry. This will help you finding even more engaging subjects to write about and, at the same time, it will help hold your readers’ interest.

WHICH media works best?
For each blog post, what represents your content the best? Be aware of the fact that most blog posts are only scanned by the readers. It’s not a secret that adding visual elements to your posts makes them much more aesthetically appealing and more likely to be read in whole. Pictures, videos, and maps, for instance, can help engage your readers for much longer, thus, increasing the duration of each session on your website.

WHERE will you promote your blog and website?
Choose the media and channel you want use to share it with your audience. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or Instagram strongly depends on your industry and business. Again, think about what media will suit your audience and content the best.

WHEN will your posts go online?
When you publish your content is another subtle point to consider if you want your blog to succeed. Several sources recommend many different days and times that seem to be best for publishing blog posts. Instead of looking at arbitrary proposals, analyse your industry and see what works best for your individual topics. Remember, frequency is key! Keep up with your work and publish content on a regular basis. Not only will it help your readers know when to expect new content but also creates a structure to follow when planning and scheduling your next topics and posts.

In case you are interested in other relevant topics related to blogging and enhancing your online presence, check out this information about web design gathered by Market Inspector.

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4 Tips for Creating A Killer Video Voicemail

Using video in email outreach is something that we’ve seen a lot of success with. Whether you’re in sales trying to book more meetings, in marketing communications trying to convey your message, or even in higher education trying to connect with your students, people enjoy something that has been crafted and personalized for them. However, the battle doesn’t end with getting people to click play! Making the content meaningful and engaging is what really brings your message across and helps ensures you get a satisfying 100% watched notification.

But how do you do that? Let’s start with an example and break down what works:

The Hook

Whether it’s a pop song or a sales video, you have to have a hook to get people engaged. The best way to do this with video is to introduce yourself, tell them why you are reaching out, and what about them made you want to reach out in particular. For example, in the video above, I mentioned their title and some of their responsibilities that I found on LinkedIn. If you are going for a more account based approach, you can mention a piece of news like a successful funding round. Showing you researched shows you care!

Your Attitude

Like my eighth grade teacher told me, any good presentation requires a positive attitude. This is easy to show in video format, as relaxed, open body language, facial expressions, and hand motions make for a better experience than rigidity. Protip: Speak with a smile, it goes a long way.

Showing Value

A question you should always ask yourself before filming a video for someone is: “Why?” – as in, “Why should this person want to start a conversation with you?”, “Why are you reaching out to them?”, or “Why should they keep watching?” In a limited amount of time, you need to touch on where your solution could fit into their initiatives or solve their pain points. In the video above, I mentioned speeding up the sales cycle, booking more meetings, and reengaging with cold contacts as being of interest to many sales leaders. Again, research is key!

Calls-to-Action

There are two calls-to-action that you should consider placing at the end of your video.

Verbal calls-to-action are centered around what you’re looking to gain from the person you have sent the video to. Are you looking to learn more about their business, to schedule a demo, or just introduce yourself? Make your intentions known at the end of the video so that your contact understands what next steps would be.

Visual calls-to-action determine what happens when your video is finished. Depending on your expectations with the contact, a variety of events can play once the video ends in order to streamline the communications process. For example having another video, like a microdemo or Chalk Talk play right after is a good way to give more information to your prospect. Having a scheduling event, like Calendly, works wonders when trying to book meetings:

And a newsletter/event signup can bring key individuals to your tradeshows and booths with greater efficiency.

Our team has tried numerous techniques with our video voicemails, and have come to the conclusion that with these four steps, any team can start engaging better with video! If you’d like to start succeeding with your own video voicemails, download Viewedit today.

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Humanizing Your Brand Through Content Creation

If you want to stand out in today’s busy online marketplace, you need to find a way to make your brand more human. Creating consistent content that is both valuable and engaging is one of the best ways to show consumers that there are real people behind your brand who care about their needs and challenges. Here are some of the top tactics that you can use to humanize your brand through content creation:

1. Establish a unique brand voice.

To differentiate your company from all the other brands in your industry, you should first develop a unique brand voice. Your brand voice allows consumers to understand your company’s personality better. Not to mention, it enables you to create content that is more consistent, which can help with building brand recognition in the marketplace.

One way that you can start to develop your unique brand voice is by imagining your company as a fictional character. If your company was a person, who would it be? Give the character a name, a physical appearance, and some personal qualities. What does it like or dislike? Is it calm or more energetic? The avatar that you develop will help you better understand what type of personality your brand has. Once you have a more defined idea of the character you would like to present to your target market, you can work on developing a distinct voice that communicates that personality.

After you’ve developed your brand voice, it’s important to ensure that the people in your organization who create content all understand this voice. This way, it will carry through all your content assets. Creating a brand guide is one of the best ways to make sure that your team creates content that is consistent with your brand. In your guide, include details about your brand identity, including a style guide for content.

2. Publish content consistently.

Another way that you can humanize your brand is by publishing content consistently. Humans are always in conversation with one another, communicating their ideas and sharing their take on what’s going on around them. If you want to be a part of this conversation and show consumers that there are real people behind your brand, you need to think of content creation as an ongoing process.

Create a content calendar to ensure that your brand is consistently creating and publishing content. Whether you use a simple spreadsheet in Google Docs or choose to utilize a content calendar app or program, there are a few things that you will need to include:

Content Topics – Brainstorm with your team to determine which content topics are most valuable to your target market. Consider what questions consumers might have, challenges consumers face, or what’s new in your industry.

Content Formats – Once you have topics that will be of interest to your audience, you’ll need to identify which formats are best suited for these topics. For instance, is it better to create a blog or a video? Don’t forget that many of content assets can be repurposed later.

Parties Responsible – One of the biggest challenges of publishing content consistently is having enough resources to create a variety of content over time. Be sure that your content calendar makes it clear who is creating which pieces of content.

Publish and Due Dates – Your content calendar should also include due dates and publish dates for each piece of content. Make sure that your due dates allow enough time for review and editing before publication.

Promotional Plan – How do you plan to promote this content after it’s finished? Be sure to include whether the content is gated or not and which organic or paid channels you will be using to publish and share your content. You can promote content on social media, through email, PPC ads, and more. It can help to include a blog update CTA on your site.

It’s best to keep your content calendar to a three-month period. This gives you enough time to plan and get your resources together, but it isn’t planned so far ahead that you can’t respond to important trends or news in your industry. By clearly laying out when you will publish new content, you can help make sure that your content creation is consistent.

3. Tell a story.

Humans are social creatures who want to feel a personal connection. If you want to capture your audience’s attention and build real relationships, you’ll need to do more than just write powerful headlines. Your content needs to tell a story that will help consumers better understand what your brand is all about.

When it comes to brand storytelling, you want to be detailed. It is much harder for people to connect to a story that is abstract. Your stories should be from a specific person’s point of view. They should include lots of rich details that help the consumer better understand and connect with the character(s). Use specific scenarios that the consumer can connect with. For instance, you might discuss a challenge that your consumer faces or doubts that they may have.

Don’t be afraid to tell a story that brings out an emotional reaction. Whether you are aiming to appeal to the consumer’s nostalgia, make them laugh, or make a connection through fear, the more emotional appeal your story has, the better. Through your choice of details and words, you can work to evoke emotions that help consumers better connect with your brand and understand the value of your products and services.

4. Build relationships through social media content.

Creating conversation is an important part of humanizing your brand. While businesses can’t exactly converse with their clients, the people behind the brand can. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram provide the perfect platform for starting conversations that will help your company build stronger relationships with prospects and customers.

Start by developing social media content that is engaging and invites others to participate. This can be as simple as asking your followers a question on Facebook or developing a fun Twitter survey. You can also develop social media contests that ask your followers and fans to submit their own content. By sharing user-generated content on your own social media pages, you help humanize your brand by showing consumers how your products or services are helping real people.

In addition to creating engaging content, you will also need to engage in conversations on social media with your consumers. Remember, it’s important that your brand voice carries through in all your communications, including social media content. Though social media is a less formal platform, you don’t want to lose sight of your brand personality. For instance, if your company has a brand that speaks in the voice of a young professional, be sure to carry this tone throughout your conversations with consumers on social media platforms.

Using the strategies outlined in this post, you can start creating content that works to humanize your brand. By showing consumers there are real people behind your business, you will be able to differentiate your company and demonstrate what sets you apart from the rest.

Original post: Humanizing Your Brand Through Content Creation

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Best Practices for Prospecting with Video

Personal video messages are a great way to stand out and to boost response rates when prospecting new customers. But to do it right, it takes more than just pressing record and reading the same old script. My name is Tyler Lessard, and in this Chalk Talk we’ll discuss the latest best practices for creating personal video messages proven to convert.

Top sales teams are using personal video messages to boost their response rates by up to five times, and they’re doing that by creating messages that are personal, relevant, and specific to that individual. Perhaps most importantly they are creating messages that are human, that showcase that there’s a real person on the other side of that message to help create empathy with that prospective buyer. They’re not only creating the right types of messages, but they’re using different types of messages at different stages of their sales cadence to test different things and to see what may resonate best with each individual prospect.

So let’s talk about the types of messages and how you can use them at different stages of your sales cadence to maximize your response rates.

Sales Selfies

The first types of messages that we see people using today are the webcam or selfie videos. This is where you simply click record using a tool like those that Vidyard provides, on your laptop to record a quick personal message It might simply be an introductory message, like “Hi, my name’s Tyler. I’m from Vidyard. And we’re helping businesses like yours solve problems A, B, or C.” Simply having a human talking on camera as opposed to a long text-based email can help you boost response rates.

But what can help you boost it even more is by having something like a whiteboard where you can write the individual person’s name or their company name right inside a specific message. This works because it can create a thumbnail image for your video that gives that person a visual cue that this message is just for them, and it hasn’t come from some automated email marketing blast.

When somebody sees their company name or perhaps a message that simply says “Hi Joanne,” they know that I’ve recorded this specifically for them, and therefore are much more likely to respond. Now the whiteboard works really well because I can simply wipe this off, write the next name in, and record my next video. It’s a very efficient way to do highly-personalized communications at scale.

Now, you can use a webcam video to introduce yourself and the problem you’re solving, but you can also use it as a way to introduce a related resource. You may already be sending emails to introduce the new ebook your company’s released, or an upcoming webinar or a new video that you’ve launched. What if instead of just writing a text-based email telling somebody they should check it out, what if you record a quick message introducing the resource and explaining why it’s relevant to them, and why you think they may find value in it. That can be a great way to not only boost response rates to that related asset, but you might also find value in the people that engage in your video. They may not take the next action, but you know they’ve now watched it, they know who you are, and you’ve created a much better connection with them than just being one of 100 text-based emails that they tend to ignore.

When you’re doing these selfie or webcam videos, consider your lighting and your audio and your surroundings to make sure the videos look and feel professional. Smile, be friendly, be casual. This is the time to create a personal connection, not to read a script and to be stiff on camera.

And finally, think about what your thumbnail image is going to be. That could make the difference between a click-through and not, so use tricks like the whiteboard. One of our reps was selling to a shoe company and they genuinely held up one of that company’s shoes on camera. And sure enough, that person clicked through because they were interested to see what that person was talking about. Be creative and think about what that visual cue is to get them to connect!

Sharing Your Screen

The second type of personal video message you can create is the screen capture video. And this is where you use a screen recording tool like those provided by Vidyard to record something relevant to that individual. Use it as a visual cue in your thumbnail image, and show that this is something they want to watch.

So for example, you may want to pull up a website that might be relevant to the conversation. It could be your website, it could be a customer success story, it could be a product page, and this gives you an opportunity to talk about how that’s relevant to them. But what works even better is bringing up their website. Imagine you work at GE and you get a video in your inbox with GE’s website and somebody in the corner talking about it. Now, that might generate a response because that person is very interested and curious – what is this person talking about and why are they on my website? But then you quickly convert the messaging into how you can help them solve a related problem, and bring it all home.

The other thing you can try, probably not early on in your cadence and use it with discretion, is pulling up their competitor’s website to talk about how that company is doing something interesting or how you’ve helped them solve a specific problem. That just might get their attention!

The other types of videos you can do are pulling up a social profile or a social article that is relevant to that individual. Let’s say I’m prospecting Karen Smith at GE, and I go onto Karen’s LinkedIn profile and I record a quick video of myself in the corner scrolling through her LinkedIn profile. But what I’m doing is quickly saying, “Karen, I see that this is your role in this company. Based on that, I may be able to help you do A, B, or C. I’d love to chat to learn a little bit more about what problems you’re trying to solve.” That can be a great way to visually get Karen to click, because when she sees her own LinkedIn profile she’s going to be curious. But then quickly convert the messaging into something that’s relevant to the conversation you want to have. You can also pull up a social share or an online article that they recently engaged in, to share your perspective on that article and again to transition back to the conversation you want to have.

These are all ways to give somebody a visual cue in that thumbnail image that this message is specific and individual to them, which is the big magic to helping drive your response rates up by three, four, or maybe even five times.

Getting the Timing Right

With respect to when to use these types of videos in your sales cadence, early on in your sales cadence think about doing a website capture video but at a company level. So let’s say I’m prospecting GE. I might do a video when I’m on GE’s site, but then send it to 10, 15, 20 people at that account to see who’s going to engage in it. It’s a very efficient way to do a scalable, personalized message to multiple people at the same account.

The next thing I may want to try is a webcam video to introduce myself. Now, I’m getting a bit more personal and talking specifically to that individual – how I can help their role and solve some specific problems for them? As I move through, I may have sent an email, left a voicemail, and maybe I now bring up their LinkedIn profile or a recent article that they commented on or shared. This is now a much more personal connection, and I’m going to talk about how I can help them with the related problem or something that’s specific to them as an individual.

And finally, late in my sales cadence, now’s the time to pull out maybe the competitor website video or one final selfie video with a custom message to see if I can get their attention before I move onto my next prospect.

So lots of different ways in which you can use personal video messages to stand out, to create thumbnails that people just can’t resist, and to boost your response rates by up to five times.

My name is Tyler Lessard, and this has been a Vidyard Chalk Talk.

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Five Basic Steps for a Successful Blog

Let’s cut to the chase! Below you’ll find the five basic steps you need to make your blog a successful one.

1) Think about who your audience will be

It’s always better to target your blog for a particular audience. You can then focus to write something which could help your audience immensely. For example, if you are well-versed into internet marketing, you should target people who are just new to the world of internet marketing and eager to learn from scratch. But try to choose a niche which is expandable so that you can find more and more topics to write on. Don’t shy away from sharing all your secrets. Write every bit of useful information, you can think of, to make your blog stand out. It’s an old saying that “Knowledge grows, the more you give away”. So give away everything like a good teacher and you will get much more in return in the form of ever growing audience.

2) Engage your readers

Write your content so that it perfectly makes sense to reflect the title of your post. In other words, you should not go off topic while writing, otherwise, users may leave your blog. Also, think of what other topics you can write and link internally from the existing post so that it is highly likely that the user will click on that internal link. This is important to do to engage your reader for a longer period of time on the site. You can also use external links (links given to third party websites) on some texts which need more detailed explanation. This way users can click on the external links to find the required information related to those texts. Whether the users click on external or internal links, both are signs of user engagement and so good for SEO (search engine optimization).

3) Take care of your content

You should be honest in your approach while writing. Simply publishing the duplicate or re-written content is not going to help, as search engines like Google already have the technology to filter out the duplicate content pages from their search results, and so the duplicate content won’t give you any organic traffic . Another important thing is to provide an evidence of whatever you are writing, by referring to the original source in the form of an external link. This is specifically important if your content is based on some research work and requires authenticity. Content based on your imaginations and personal experiences, however, will not need any authenticity. Also, make sure you know about emotional intelligence while writing, else you may face the criticism in the online community.

4) Participate in online communities

So what are online communities? There are numerous other blogs, forums, discussion boards, FAQ sites, like Stack Overflow, where users can interact with each other to discuss their problems and also share their knowledge and experiences. All such platforms are a part of online communities. Just keep flooding your website with content is not going to help much to generate traffic. Just like you link to third party websites from your own blog, other websites should also link to your blog pages so that your blog can rank better in search engines like Google. This is how Google’s technology works to rank different websites in their search results but user experience (as already mentioned in step 2) is more important for Google than getting links.

You should put all the great efforts so that more and more websites or blogs link to your own blog pages. It doesn’t matter which blog page they link. This is only possible when you participate in online communities to popularize your content and then someone could link your content as a good resource for their website or may be out of sympathy if you requested a link to them. Someone may even ask for money to link your website but then paying for links is against Google webmaster guidelines and so that should be avoided.

5) Take care of the technical aspects

Professionalism is very important to impress anyone you want to. Most of the bloggers make use of readymade templates to create their blog using WordPress. This results in a similar kind of design (like other WordPress blogs over the internet) which doesn’t look professional. If you have money to spend, you should not use these open source website creation tools like WordPress.com or Blogger.com and get the blog done from scratch with your desired design from some individual web designer and programmer or some web developer company who does this. You can hire a lot of such web developers on sites like freelance.com and upwork.com.

It’s also possible to create a blog without CMS or publishing tools. The guys from People HR Blog have done that. For every post, they have used a unique graphic or image which is not copied from anywhere. It’s easier to get links for your blog with a professional design and content.

Also, make sure to get your blog done with responsive design so that it is compatible with all the latest devices and browsers. Also, make sure to ask the developer to make the site load faster by eliminating all the errors (if any) as mentioned by PageSpeed Insights tool by Google. Hope that helps.

Original post: Five Basic Steps for a Successful Blog

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