A successful blog is fuelled by well-written, valuable content.
But valuable to whom? You may have your own perspective on what you want to achieve through your blog content, but your main goal should be to solve a problem that your audience has.
When writing for your audience, start by asking yourself 3 questions:
- What are their concerns? This will be based on your understanding of your ideal client persona or avatar. The clearer you are about your ideal customer’s demographics, preferences, fears, concerns, the more you’ll be able to target your content to solve their problems. Amy Porterfield has some useful tips on finding your perfect client.
- What?s the change you want to inspire in them? To gain new insight into your industry? To think about something differently? To apply new knowledge gained? It?s not always about your product or service. It?s about building a relationship.
- What information is useful to them? The key word is useful. Think about new developments in your sector, anything topical in the news, facts and statistics. Create a Google Alert for topics to help you keep up with current developments. Including external links to stats or reports will boost your credibility and is great for Google.
Answering these three questions will set you up for your blog writing. There are many different directions you could take with your blog post. Some examples of blog post types that are popular include:
- how-to’s
- lists
- opinion pieces
- case studies
- analysis
- product reviews
- etc.
Another key to success is consistency. Search engines need fresh content, and so does your audience. Building up a store of content ideas on your phone or in a spreadsheet is helpful for this.
Stuck for ideas? Do your research. Google AdWords is a good place to start to find out what your audience is searching for, by doing a keyword search. There are also some free content idea generator tools that may be useful for getting the creative juices flowing.
Understanding and writing for your audience is one side of the coin. In the next post, we?ll be looking at the other side: finding your voice.
Photo credit: Andrew Seaman