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00:00:01
Your Way to a Successful Blogging Strategy
54 Plays5 years ago
In this episode, we're having a conversation about blogging. Alanna interviews Stacy to get down to the nitty gritty of what makes a successful blog. Stacy is a top-notch writer and has all the tips and tricks you need to know for blogging. The information shared in this episode should be useful to new and seasoned blog writers.
Here's what Stacy discusses:
- Benefits of blogging
- How to identify a topic
- Types of blogs to write
- The use of external resources
- Things to be cognizant of when writing
- Blogging SEO tips
- Tools to use in blogging
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About The B2B Mix Show:
The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let's talk!
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Transcript
Introduction to B2B Mix Show
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Elena and Stacey. In each episode, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your sales and marketing strategy. We'll share what we know along with advice from industry experts who will join us on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hey
Importance of Blogging in Digital Strategy
00:00:20
Speaker
everybody, this is Stacey Jackson. And I'm Elena Jackson. We are the co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And in case you still haven't heard, we are also sisters. Today's topic is all about blogging because today a lot of people are put into a situation because of COVID-19 where they've realized, oh, I need to get more digital. I need to have a better digital strategy. And blogging is a huge part of that. And blogging is huge for SEO.
00:00:49
Speaker
But some of you, maybe like me, where you
00:00:53
Speaker
When you were growing up, maybe you were not a big reader or researcher, and you did the CliffsNotes in high school for all of your book reports. And you could just kind of use a lot of filler words to try and get by and get that 600 word count or whatever it was that you had to do for your papers. 600 words today doesn't seem like that much when you're used to writing. But in high school, it sure felt like a lot.
00:01:21
Speaker
But, you know, for for some people, maybe maybe writing doesn't come naturally to them. And there's you you kind of feel like I don't even know what to do right now. And for me, it didn't start off easy because, you know, I was one of those people, like I said, I was the Cliff Notes girl. I did not like to read. I didn't like to research. I didn't like to do those kind of things that you kind of need to do when you're writing a blog post.
00:01:49
Speaker
So I learned when we started our company that, you know, writing isn't that bad. And luckily I had a great teacher in Stacy because she is an awesome writer. And she, Stacy's one of those people that loves to research. She loves to find all kinds
Challenges and Benefits of Blogging
00:02:07
Speaker
of stuff. And she sends articles all the time and, and she's always researching. And if she thinks, if, if you,
00:02:13
Speaker
tell her she's wrong about something, she's gonna go online, research it and find that article to prove that she was right. And so she's just one of those, it just says natural to her to do the research, to want to write and to want to do blogging and writing and all those kinds of things. For me, I'm all about like, I'll write a social media post and I'm good. I love doing social and those short pieces. I'm decent with writing, I'm good at it, but I am not nearly as good as Stacy.
00:02:43
Speaker
which brings me to our guest Stacy. She is going to be our guest today and give us all the tips and tricks that we need to know about blogging. And, um, even if you're a seasoned writer, we see seasoned writers all the time, not following some of these things. So listen in and take down some notes, right? Take this advice that she asked for you because she knows what she's talking about people and she can help you take your blogging to the next level. So.
00:03:13
Speaker
Here we go. All right, so let's get into the nitty gritty of blogging. So to start off with, what are some of the benefits of a blog? What can people expect as a result and get out of doing blogging on their website? So the benefits of doing a blog for your company include just awareness. You'll get more social shares.
00:03:40
Speaker
As long as you've done a good job writing your blogs, of course, and you'll get referral links back. So somebody really liked your blog. They link to it. That gives you more traffic and you could increase your search engine ranking. So you'll get that organic search. Those are just a few benefits. You've also created, um,
00:04:02
Speaker
content for your sales team and other people to share when they feel like it could help answer a customer's problem. And you've given your customers something to come back to and read and get information from it. If you're writing and remembering to write for people who are now customers so that you continually engage them post sale. And so since there's obviously a lot of benefit that you can get out of
00:04:30
Speaker
writing a blog and fresh content. Some companies might be thinking, well, then I should just write for the sake of writing and just always have new content out there, whether or not it's great in adding value. As long as I've got new content out there, that's good. Is that a good way of looking at it or a bad way? I would say it's not the best way.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, it would be great if you could have constantly created content that that is, you know, stellar quality all the time. But maybe just something happens sometimes and you're not going to get it done. I admit I've been really bad with our company's blog as far as getting anything
00:05:12
Speaker
new out in the past month, but it's better to guilty to, you know, it's better to take a little time and do something well with your blog rather than just hastily crank out a thousand words and slap it up on the site. That's that's not good. Google probably isn't going to reward you and neither will your readers. Right.
00:05:39
Speaker
And people probably won't come back. Right. If it's just you're just putting stuff out there for the sake of putting it out there. So a lot of people just kind of don't know where to start. And some people are just starting off with doing a blog and.
00:05:54
Speaker
Again, they're kind of like stumped on, well, I'll just talk about my product or my service because it's what I know. It's easy. I can just write about it. And that's really not the best approach to take because no one wants to be at a party and talk to somebody and all they talk about is themselves. So it's kind of the same. No one wants to come to your blog and only hear about you. You've got to get them there by talking about different kinds of topics, but how
00:06:22
Speaker
Do you know what those topics are? How do you figure out, oh, hey, I'm going to write about this, and this will be a good one. What's the process that you should go through to figure out those topics?
Crafting Quality Blog Content
00:06:33
Speaker
So it's really important that you think about what are the things that my customers are facing and the issues they have right now. And you can do that by picking up the phone or shooting an email over to a trusted customer that you have a good rapport with. You can read trade magazines or trade websites that focus on your industry or your vertical, your niche. You can also
00:07:00
Speaker
Just take a look at what people are talking about in industry-specific groups online. Look at what your competitors are posting.
00:07:11
Speaker
Also, think about using a tool like Ubersuggest or Answer the Public or even SEMrush if you've got a subscription to that and do a little research on keywords. What are people searching for right now that you may not have realized? Oh, there's another great tool called Exploding Topics where you can get some ideas about keyword searches that are just exploding right now and see what
00:07:35
Speaker
maybe aligned with your business and your the problems you solve and those could be terrific posts for you to write up and then you can be a little bit better assured that the things you're writing are gonna resonate with readers and answer questions and if you use the right calls to action your blog they could even help generate leads.
00:07:58
Speaker
So I like that you said, talk to your customers. So that's a good idea to find out things that they are dealing with and topics that they are interested in because chances are if one of your customers is interested in a specific topic, then a lot of your other customers are going to be interested in it.
00:08:19
Speaker
So I like that. And then also, um, along those same lines, what do you think about talking to your sales reps and getting some ideas for maybe things that they're encountering when they had those sales calls? Is that a good way to kind of come up with some topics? Yes, that's definitely something that marketers should be doing anyway is, um,
00:08:43
Speaker
getting a feel from the sales team, what are the day-to-day things you hear from customers and what kind of content do you need to be able to share with customers because they're the ones that talk more often than you as a marketer to these people and they hear specific questions or concerns or they see what people are sharing on their own LinkedIn feeds. So they'll have a pretty good, if they're a good salesperson, have a pretty good
00:09:13
Speaker
feel for what the people that you're trying to reach are most concerned about right now. And then you can craft content for those people. And you can even help craft content that your sales reps can write under their own names and maybe publish on either the corporate blog or their LinkedIn profile. Yeah, that's a good idea. And probably if you're
00:09:35
Speaker
Finding out from them topics to write about and you write about them, then the chances of them actually sharing them and using that content is going to be higher, right? Right. They'll feel like you heard them, that you took their recommendation and
00:09:53
Speaker
implemented it and they'll feel more like they'll be more receptive to sharing the content you create if they had a hand in helping you create it. Right. And that's always a good thing because the more you get people sharing that content, the more people are going to be aware of it.
00:10:10
Speaker
So we know how to kind of figure out some topics to write about. What are some of the types of blogs that we should be writing? You know, like it should be how tos or something like that. What are some of the different types that seem to work well? So some different formats that I think a lot of companies should
00:10:32
Speaker
Consider when they're creating their blog content or thinking about their content calendar Include how to post which you know, you're not telling people necessarily how to use your product This is more about how to solve a problem and oh by the way, we can help solve that problem but remember it's not me me me post it's here's the problem and
00:10:57
Speaker
Here's how to solve it. And then you can have a call to action for a free trial to your product or something like that. But make sure your how-to is not super salesy marketing. You want to be helpful and not just pushing your product on somebody.
00:11:15
Speaker
Another type of post might be that you might consider would be a list based post and a list based post. Is a little bit different from a how to post how to post can include a list of steps but a list based post is more maybe a list of resources that people should consider so if.
00:11:35
Speaker
you sell widgets, maybe you want to give a top 10 list of widget cleaners. You're not selling cleaners, but you want to give a shout out to all the people that sell cleaners that help people maintain your products. That could be a list-based post. Or you might even do a list-based post for something a little more fun. I mean, right now, people are stuck at home that aren't used to working at home. So maybe you do a fun list-based post of the top
00:12:03
Speaker
20 songs that every widget lover needs to listen to while working at home or something fun like that. And you can use Spotify to build your playlist. And what would your top song be? I don't know. I think it probably changes daily. What about yours? Yeah, mine is back and forth between all different kinds of genres. I don't necessarily have a specific one, but I believe you and Kim had a tribal scream song that you guys used to
00:12:33
Speaker
That was when I got laid off in 2011. Oh, and Kim is our other sister, by the way. Yes. And I would come over because Kim always worked from home on Fridays and I would look for a job while she worked from home. And we would listen to Led Zeppelin and Ozzy Osbourne and do our tribal, not tribal, but primal scream Fridays with those songs. So Crazy Train, we go.
00:13:04
Speaker
and the Led Zeppelin. Hopefully we can't get sued for just those terrible renditions. Sometimes a good song just gets you going. Yeah, and that's a good idea to do those things. I've seen some people on social talking lately about what are you listening to while you're working. And so it's definitely
00:13:27
Speaker
a list base like that would be an interesting one that I think people can relate to and have some fun with. So while you may not be talking about your company, you're still building that relationship with those people that are coming to your site and checking out your blog.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, building a connection. So sorry, I, it stayed on top of it, but kind of went a little sideways, but that's okay. But also I had a question about list base. So as far as a list base goes, should it be straight up, you know, one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, 10. And it's just like a one to two words or one sentence, or should it be, you know, this
00:14:07
Speaker
here's this list of this and then here's a paragraph to go with this one item. What's the process for these? What's the best way? Or does it vary?
Types and Strategies for Blog Posts
00:14:18
Speaker
I think it can vary and it really depends on your audience and their familiarity with a topic and even the length of your list. So if you're given a list of 500
00:14:37
Speaker
video options or online software. I probably wouldn't write more than a sentence for each, but if it's a top 10 list of ways to use Facebook ads, then you probably want to get a little more in-depth to help people understand what each item on your list and
00:14:58
Speaker
is and ways that you can use that strategy on Facebook. So I think it really depends on the type of list, the audience, and the number of items. Yeah, so like in your example just now, the Facebook ad thing, you don't want your item just to be use an image.
00:15:17
Speaker
Right. You want to give them a little bit more information on what the image dimension should be, you know, what, how much writing you should have on the image and things like that. So I think those are good points to make for the list base. So you have two more that you wanted to talk about or first thing on any of them. If you look at your post and you read it as though you're new to the industry or new to your
00:15:46
Speaker
this topic and you were to read it and then you couldn't understand what the heck you were trying to get across then you need to revise it. Yeah or have somebody else read it that because sometimes when we reread our own you're right are so much into it so having a third party read it kind of can help you but have somebody that you know will just be honest with you. Yes. Oh that was great. Right. You don't want a yes man or woman reading it.
00:16:13
Speaker
You need somebody that's going to say this sucked and you need to change it so that you get the best out of it. Um, another, another couple types of posts. Uh, first off the curated collection posts. I, I like these when you're, especially when you're trying to prove a point or even disprove a point that you want to drill, bring home with your audience. So if you wanted to talk about why, um,
00:16:41
Speaker
whatever, why blogging is the best type of online marketing, then you'd probably want to bring in items from authoritative sources like Ann Hanley. Is that her name?
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, I totally blanked on it then. Something from the Content Marketing Institute, other people that you can curate that content in and show that other experts in this area agree and it helps build up your expertise because you've
00:17:16
Speaker
you recognize who are the most authoritative speakers or thinkers in a certain area. And also when you do that, you can reach out to these people that you've quoted or curated into your content and say, hey, so and so I shared your advice on whatever it was. And they might even share that post on social media then and help get you some extra love out there on social and some visits to your site.
00:17:42
Speaker
Right. Because who doesn't like to be mentioned? Right. Recognized. And sometimes you might be surprised at the level of someone like Anne Hanley or even Larry Kim when we mentioned him in one of our posts, he agreed to be on our podcast. So don't be afraid to reach out and tell somebody that you appreciate their work and
00:18:05
Speaker
wanted to mention them in your post because you never know what can come of that. Right. Another type of blog post that you could consider doing and it does require you to be able to act quickly is newsjacking posts. So like the whole work from home thing that started at the beginning of this month end of last month.
00:18:28
Speaker
People jumped on board doing a newsjacking, like how to work from home if you're in sales, if you sell sales software, like one of our customers, they wrote about salespeople working from home. Another one of our customers that deals with people who work out in the field, how to be safe when you're having field visits.
00:18:48
Speaker
in a customer's home. So there were different ways that they were able to newsjack that work-from-home news story. But there's all kinds of things that you can, as long as you think about it and really give it a little bit of creative thought, even if it's crazy, you might be able to find a good angle for newsjacking a
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah. And like you said, that is something you may want to turn around more quickly because it's time sensitive related to that hot item that's happening right now. Right. So what are your thoughts on using external sources in your blogs? And, you know, a lot of people, I have seen a lot of writing where
00:19:29
Speaker
No external resources are used to support what they're talking about and to me I feel like they should be unless it's like an opinion and opinion piece but I feel like you should try to support what you're saying so that it's
00:19:48
Speaker
comes across as, you know, this isn't just me saying this, this is, this is what's happening in the industry. Do you, do you think that that's something that a lot of people miss the mark on? And do you think it's something that we should, brighter should be doing?
00:20:02
Speaker
I do think it's something that people should, for the most part, be doing. If you are a recognized expert, then you probably don't need to always rely on some other authority. Right. And if it's an opinion piece or if it's just general knowledge within your industry. But otherwise, especially if you're going to say some kind of statistic that you're going to throw out there, you need to back it up with the link to
00:20:30
Speaker
the research that you're quoting. And the one thing that is my pet peeve is don't link to an article that mentions research, link to the original source of the research. I know you're going to say that. I can't stand that. It's like, well, how do I know these people are telling the truth about what this research study said? Go link to that actual research study. And if you can't find it online, then don't mention it. Don't use it.
00:20:58
Speaker
Because then you as the reader, if you want to verify that, is this true? You know, that's a great stat. You know, is this true? And then if you go to that link and it's just some other person's blog that wrote it and they link to some other blog and it's never, it's like chasing, going down the rabbit hole.
00:21:19
Speaker
of where the heck did this actually come from? Is it legit? Right. And you don't want to make your customers look like dummies by resharing that stat or whatever. And then somebody saying, dude, you are way off with this. This is not right. So then you're making yourself look dumb and you're making your customer look dumb that went and shared it. So
00:21:45
Speaker
Always always always add your sources and for stuff and for the most part i mean there might be some long standing things that never change like a.
00:21:59
Speaker
the laws of physics or something, even those change, depending on the research. But everything else is being studied all the time and stats are changing. So keep your sources that you quote, at least within the past two years, be recent, you know. So in 2020, we should not be quoting something from
00:22:22
Speaker
No, and probably not even 2017, you know? Right, right. Yeah. Because things just change so much. Right. And you want to make sure that the information you're providing to your readers is the most recent and accurate. Right. Hey folks, let's take a break to hear about today's sponsor. And we are back.
00:22:52
Speaker
So when writing, there are all kinds of things that you need to be cognizant of while you're writing and things that you need to be thinking about. And, you know, like, for example, you might want to know who, who your audience is that you're writing to, because that's going to make a difference in
00:23:13
Speaker
what happens throughout your article that you're writing. So what are some of the things that you should be thinking about as you're walking through and writing? Should you make an outline? What are some of those things that you need to keep in mind?
Setting Objectives and Using Outlines
00:23:28
Speaker
It depends. Sometimes I don't work with an outline because it's something I just know pretty well and I know what I want to say. But other times, especially if it's new subject matter or working with a newer client, I will definitely outline. It just depends on how familiar you are with the subject and knowing what your end goal is for that.
00:23:50
Speaker
that blog post, but whether you formally outline or just think it through, you should always think about what is the goal for this blog? What am I trying to communicate? And if you can't think of an actual real business point to the blog, then don't bother writing it because it's probably just, let's just write something to write something.
00:24:13
Speaker
Another thing when you're thinking about that story and what you want to tell, I mean, obviously you don't want to write for the search engine, but it does help once you get that topic down. Go research keywords around that subject matter. See what Uber suggests or SEMrush or answer the public.
00:24:33
Speaker
Have as far as related keywords and those might give you some interesting sections that you wouldn't normally thought about but it's definitely things people are asking about or searching about so you want to include that kind of information into your.
00:24:47
Speaker
your blog post and whether you outline it or just have a flow in mind, make sure that you're writing a post that once it's formatted and out there, it's skimmable. You want to use headings, use bullet points when necessary. Don't write extremely long paragraphs and don't write run on sentences.
00:25:10
Speaker
It's just annoying for people who have to edit it or people who have to read it. And skimmable is huge because first of all, people don't have a lot of time to sit there and read every blog. And a lot of times for me, I just want to be able to look at it and quickly grab, okay, this, this, this, this. Okay, good. I got it. I don't want to sit there and read a novel because it's just, I mean, unless you're like,
00:25:40
Speaker
an amazing writer who's going to keep me at every turn during a blog, which is not typical. Most blogs just aren't going to just, it's not like reading a fantasy book or something like that. It's, but you want it to be skimmable so you can quickly just grab those golden nuggets out of it, right? I mean, that's huge because
00:26:04
Speaker
It's going to keep them coming back. Oh, I can easily digest this information that they're sharing with me. And not everybody likes to read, you know? So that's one thing to keep in mind for those that maybe don't just like to sit around and read stuff like you, who loves to read and loves to research. Not everybody is like that. So you want to make it easy to digest for those people. Yeah, definitely. I think one thing that I see sometimes people do is they try and make it
00:26:32
Speaker
Let's make our blog super fun and entertaining and they miss the point on busy work. People aren't coming here to be entertained, right? They want data or details or how to do something. So yeah, make your writing.
00:26:50
Speaker
interesting, but don't get so over involved in glamorizing it. Yeah. And you can do those fun posts once a while, but not every single time where it's just, you feel like you're not really getting the most out of it when you come to read it.
00:27:08
Speaker
Right. And sometimes I do like to read a funny post or something, but if I'm trying to find out how to build a time machine or whatever, I don't want a bunch of jokes from Doc Brown about Flux Capacitor. I just want to know the steps to build the dang Flux Capacitor. Right. So what other things like should you be adding images?
00:27:34
Speaker
Definitely. If you're the writer, like I write sometimes for people through a platform called Clear Voice, so they aren't necessarily Jackson Martin clients, but just I enjoy doing that. And one of the things they ask you to do is include images. So.
00:27:51
Speaker
If you don't have someone who's in charge of formatting and publishing and choosing the images for you should try to go look for some images to go with your content i think it's a good practice even if somebody else is doing it just so that you can help. That publishing person cut down on their steps to but you definitely wanna picture for every couple hundred words.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah, it makes it, it breaks it up. It gives you some visual. It just, it adds to it. So what about the length? Because you hear, you know, keep it short, keep it long, keep it medium. What is their magic number?
00:28:31
Speaker
There are really, I guess there's a lot of different people saying different things on that, but for the most part, I kind of rely on what SEMrush's writing tool says, just as a general guideline. What that tool does is go out and look at the top posts that own that keyword right now and tell you, okay,
00:28:54
Speaker
to get all the top ranking posts or around X number of words. But some people like, I think Neil Patel has said that all of his posts are like 2000 words or whatever. So some people are definitely going crazy, not going crazy, but really hammering out the long form blog posts. Others are using a tool like SEMrush to write to the length of what, and just beyond what others who are ranking top for that.
00:29:24
Speaker
keyword or keyword phrase. So that's kind of the direction I go. But, you know, longer typically does seem to receive more Google love, I'd say. Which is funny because people have less time and don't want to read as much, but you have to write more to get found. Right. Which is why you need to make that blog post skimmable.
00:29:47
Speaker
Exactly. Sometimes you need it to be long for those search engines to find you, but you don't want to lose your reader's attention. So you got to make it skimmable.
00:29:59
Speaker
As far as like your CTAs, is that something that you should try to include as well? Have a CTA within the body of the blog? Should it be at the end? Do you mix it up? What's the best way for those and what kind of CTAs? And for those of you that may not know, a CTA is a call to action.
00:30:19
Speaker
So there's different ways that you can handle calls to action, and I guess it really depends on whether you wrote a fun post or an actual useful post. Not that fun posts aren't useful, they're definitely engaging, but as far as one that has a business purpose beyond engagement.
00:30:38
Speaker
We're HubSpot partners so we like to try to follow what HubSpot does and often in their posts they'll have a like a text-based call to action toward the top of their blog and close out the blog with a visual a graphical CTA so that's kind of reinforces
00:30:59
Speaker
the call to action by having it at the top and the bottom. They'll also have like a slide in little window for that same CTA a lot of times. And as far as what type. So it's the same CTA at the top and the bottom, right? Right. You don't want multiple CTAs throughout. Right. Because you should have one goal with the blog as far as the call to action goes.
00:31:24
Speaker
And then as far as what what your call to action should be, I think it should be for sure related to whatever the blog topic is. And that's how HubSpot does theirs. If they write a blog post about social media monitoring or creating a social media content calendar, then their CTA will likely be download our content calendar template. Or if you sell widgets, maybe your
00:31:54
Speaker
your CTA could be a guide to downloading, not a guide to downloading, a guide to cleaning your widgets or something crazy like that, whatever. And then if you use dynamic content on your site, then the next time they come back to a blog, it might be something further down the sales funnel that they get, like X reasons why our widgets are the easiest to clean or whatever. But it should definitely be related to whatever that topic you wrote. If you write about,
00:32:25
Speaker
Cute puppies and then site download our industrial widget cleaner. That doesn't make sense. Yeah, they kind of don't go right Yeah, and it could be like if you have a recorded webinar and you've gated it That could be your call to action if it's related to the topic or an ebook or anything like that. Mm-hmm so one of the major reasons for a blog is
00:32:49
Speaker
obviously to have fresh content that search engines can identify. And so it helps your SEO. So what are some of the basic SEO tips that someone can apply to their writing to make sure that they're kind of getting the most out of when they're writing a blog? So the big things with SEO and writing your blog is you want to try and pick a
Optimizing and Refreshing Content
00:33:16
Speaker
keyword that you're going to focus this blog around, a keyword topic. And if you've already got a blog post that's already ranking well for that keyword topic, then you don't need to write about it again. You need to go and refresh that existing post because you don't want two different pages competing for that same keyword. So that's what I would do in that case. But if it's a new keyword that you're focusing on,
00:33:42
Speaker
Just go do some research find out specific Other keywords that people are using so you want to use related keywords semantically related keywords That's how I believe Google refers to them and there's lots of tools you can use for that Uber suggests as I mentioned before answered the public SEM rush is a good Solution their writing tool will give you that or you can use you know their keyword magic tool just
00:34:13
Speaker
Another option would be Google that keyword that you want to focus on and read the posts of those who rank in the top three positions. What other words are they using that you would expect to see in a post about a certain topic? So if it's a post about, um, I don't know, sales software, you'd expect to see a mention of sales people, sales reps, cold calling. Those are the kinds of words you want to make sure are in your posts.
00:34:41
Speaker
And then just some other things you want to make sure that that keyword that you're trying to focus on is in your title in your First paragraph you want to use it in your alt Text for your images you want to make sure it's in your keyword. I mean not your keyword in here URL Make sure it's in your SEO title if you're h1 the title that people see on the page versus what the
00:35:11
Speaker
search agencies behind the scenes. If your H1 is different from your SEO title, then I mean, it would help a little bit to have that keyword in your H1 title.
00:35:24
Speaker
I'm not sure, you know, there might be a reason why you can't do that for whatever reason is, just make sure it's at least in the SEO title. Yeah. Like if you wanted it to be more of a catchy title that gets someone's attention, it might not be in that title that people see at the top of the page, but it would be, you would want, so you would want to make sure it's in that SEO title, which is not seen right on that page as like the actual title.
00:35:49
Speaker
But it will be seen in the search results. So you want to make sure it looks good and still makes sense. And when people hit your page after clicking through, they're not like, what the hell is this? So it needs to at least align. You can be creative and have that H1 be a little bit different. But in that SEO title, make sure that keyword is as close to the front of the title and includes the keyword you're trying to hit. And then
00:36:16
Speaker
important too is don't over stuff your copy with the same keyword or then it just looks like you're working too hard to try and get Google to love you and not satisfy. Right. And that's where those semantically related keywords come into play so that you don't have to keep using that same keyword over and over again.
00:36:36
Speaker
But you do want it in those, in certain areas, like within the body of your blog, you want it in the first paragraph and then maybe in one of the headings. But maybe, but that's probably about all in the actual text that you would want it. And then the rest would be using those semantically related keywords, right?
00:36:55
Speaker
Well, it depends on the length of your blog post too. If it's a very lengthy one, you'd probably want to work in more uses of it. It just really depends. Well, that's true. That's true. And then your meta description, while that doesn't necessarily impact your SEO, it does impact oftentimes whether somebody's going to click through and read it. So you want to write something that uses that keyword that you think it's the likely one they're going to search for.
00:37:21
Speaker
So just make sure it's got that keyword, it's well written, and it gives kind of a little call to action to, hey, learn more, read more, or something that piques their interest to make them want to click through to your result in search. Real quick, I just wanted to add to your basic SEO stuff is to add some internal links within your post. That was one thing we forgot to mention. That's always a good thing to help boost your SEO is some internal linking.
00:37:48
Speaker
As far as getting your blog to where it needs to be and be ready to go out to the world and be wonderful, what are some tools that people can use? You've already mentioned a few tools during, throughout the conversation, but what are some of the other tools and just a list of tools that maybe you use to help get your writing to a better point?
Writing Tools for Quality Improvement
00:38:09
Speaker
Well, first of all, nothing will replace having another person read it. So you always want to make sure that you have a buddy that can proofread your post. But before you hand it off to that other person, you might want to use some of these tools that I like to use. Grammarly is a great tool. I mean, can I just do a slow clap for Grammarly? Yeah.
00:38:33
Speaker
because it's awesome. It is. Okay, sorry. Now it's not always 100% correct. Sometimes you'll read it and it's like, what's that? So don't just blindly accept everything, but it's pretty darn accurate. And it's, it's definitely one that is worth paying for. Then there's the Hemingway app and it does some grammar checking, but the best, the thing I like best about it is it really helps you see where you've overcomplicated a, um,
00:39:03
Speaker
piece of content. It shows you where your sentences are way too complex or your paragraphs are too long. It helps you break it up and make it more easy to read and digest. It definitely helps simplify your blogging and other types of writing. And if your stuff is too hard to read, people aren't going to read it. Right. So that's a great one. Yeah. I mean,
00:39:26
Speaker
You want to write it for the level of your audience, but you don't want to overcomplicate it. So it doesn't need to be PhD level most of the time. Probably eighth grade level is fine.
00:39:40
Speaker
SEMrush, I mentioned, I really, really like their writing assistant tool that helps you not only identify where you might need to break up paragraphs, but it also tells you if you've not mentioned semantically related keywords that someone would expect to see, it tells you what your
00:40:01
Speaker
Target word count should be so it's a terrific tool then some a wordpress plugin that you might consider is Yoast it will also tell you about your Complexity of your writing it will check to make sure that you've SEOed your post as far as using keywords in it appropriately and including it in the title and your alt image text
00:40:27
Speaker
So there's lots of nice tools out there that you really like, Laina.
00:40:34
Speaker
Um, well, Grammarly, obviously. Uh, and, uh, but as far as like just writing the Grammarly and Hemingway would, and the SEM rush thing would be my, my top ones. And then once you're getting it ready to publish it, like if you use WordPress, using that Yoast is, is big. Um, so I would say if you have all of these tools and most of these tools are free, um, not all of them, but a lot of them, you can get a free version.
00:41:02
Speaker
of them, but there it definitely helps with your writing and getting a piece that your audience can relate to more. So any final tips for anyone that is blogging? Maybe they've been blogging for a while, but they're not doing it right. Or maybe they're new to blogging. So the biggest things that I would encourage people to do is
00:41:29
Speaker
If you're new to blogging, don't freak out if you feel like, oh, I'm not a writer, I can't write. If you can put together a good memo or an email that makes sense, then you probably can get by writing your blog for your company. If you've got the budget though, maybe
00:41:48
Speaker
Take some of that off your plate and use your writing skills to write an outline and outsource it to an agency like us or to a service like Clear Voice. Just keep it so that you don't go crazy trying to fill the blog monster content. So that's my my biggest thing for newcomers, people who have been blogging that maybe feel like, well, not seeing the
00:42:19
Speaker
activity that I'd hope to see. I think the best thing to do would be do a content audit of your blog, look at what has received the most views, and then start digging into, okay, this got a lot of views.
00:42:33
Speaker
why did it not turn into people visiting my pricing page or whatever the call to action should have been. And maybe you'll find out, oh, we wrote about topics that really didn't make sense for this audience or the topics that we did write about that should have made sense to this audience where we're too overly promotional or you'll gain some insights by
00:42:55
Speaker
taking a deep dive into looking at all those older posts. And then you'll want to clean up the poor performing ones, refresh the best ones, and maybe consolidate some of the mediocre ones into a single post.
00:43:10
Speaker
Now you have all the main details that you need to know to get started with writing a good post from someone that I think is one of the best writers. So take this information and apply it to your blogging strategy. If you want to get in touch with me or Stacey, you can hit us up on social. On Twitter, you can find Stacey at Stacey underscore Jax. That's S-T-A-C-Y underscore J-A-X.
00:43:34
Speaker
And you can find me at Alayna underscore Jax, that's A-L-A-N-N-A underscore J-A-X. And if you're not a Twitter fan, you can always look us up on LinkedIn. And finally, don't forget, you can also leave us a voicemail on the Anchor mobile app or on our anchor.fm show page.
00:43:57
Speaker
The B2B Mix Show is hosted by Stacy Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, Jackson Marketing. If you need help with your B2B inbound marketing efforts, visit us at JacksonMarketingServices.com.