The most important type of content for marketing your business today is arguably the content you put on your website’s blog. This is the content that will attract visitors via the search engine traffic that the keyword-rich content will generate when your audience makes a search.

Studies show that blogging about your business, products and services at least twenty times per month will allow you to get five times more traffic than if you don’t. This is according to a study done by HubSpot.com. You can literally double your website traffic in six months if you keep it up.

But, if you want the visitors to stick to your blog and read it more than once, it’s important to make your blog posts visually pleasing. Putting images in your blog posts will break up the text to make your blog more attractive. In addition, it can help further explain the meaning of the content that you place on your blog. Taking the time to choose a relevant image will make your blog look more professional, too.

There are many ways you can find appropriate images.

Take Photos Yourself

You can produce perfectly good images by using your iPhone to take relevant pictures. If you have a digital camera, that’s another way to take pictures. If you want to take pictures of products, make yourself a portable light box or try taking the pictures outside in natural light.

If you’re handy, you could try making a very inexpensive photo light box with instructions you can find here. If you don’t want to make your own and don’t mind spending a little more money, you could get one like this from Amazon.

Get Creative

An image doesn’t have to be a photograph; it can be an attractive arrangement of a quote from your blog post made into a .jpg file with a beautiful and colorful background. This is a great way to add interest as well as call out an important point within your blog post. It looks attractive and helps explain meaning to your readers. I use WordSwag on my iPhone and Canva on my Mac for that sort of thing.

Hire Someone

There are plenty of graphic designers on sites like Fiverr, as well as other sites that you can hire to help you come up with appropriate graphics for your blog posts. They may be better at coming up with ideas than you, and it’s perfectly okay to hire someone. If you outsource your blog posts, ask your writer if they can help you with images.

Look on Stock Photo Sites

There are quite a few stock photo sites, like pixabay.com, Morguefile.com, and depositphotos.com, that you can use to find appropriate images to use on your blog. The first two of those sites are free and their images are in the public domain, the last one is paid but relatively inexpensive. No matter where you get your images from, make sure to check the license rules to ensure that you have a right to use the image. You do NOT want a lawyer hassling you for some image you grabbed off of Google because you were too busy or lazy to check usage rights.

You want to use images, but don’t go overboard with them. Remember to consider loading time, so use smaller images. As well as that, remember to use the “alt” tags on the images so that if the image doesn’t show up for some reason it will tell the reader what the image is. This is also another way to alert search engines about the subject of your website.

Most of the images I use on this blog I find on Pixabay.com, but I am branching out this year. I will include more of my own images with upcoming posts. If you know of other good sources for free or inexpensive images people can use for blogging, please share them below.

 

 

 

There is a movement to “Blog with Integrity” which is a basic standard bloggers should follow. You can learn more at www.blogwithintegrity.com where most of this list was found. You can even grab a badge for your own blog after signing the pledge. See an example here on my blog and sign the pledge here if you would like.

Be Honest

If you aren’t earning a million dollars yet, don’t tell people that you are. It’s okay to admit that you’re learning to and struggling. If you have a food blog and didn’t actually try a particular recipe, don’t say you did. The best way to ensure that your audience trusts you is to be trustworthy and honest about everything you say.

Don’t Plagiarize

Some people still don’t understand what plagiarism is. If you aren’t sure, and don’t assume that you know, please read more about what plagiarism is. It’s simply not okay to use other people’s work without asking, crediting, and/or paying for the privilege. That includes photographs, art work, blog posts, articles on the news, and so forth. When you write something or have it written, run it through a plagiarism checker like Copyscape or Grammarly. More information about plagiarism can be found here, Copyscape here and Grammarly here.

Don’t Spam Anyone

Many blogs are often sent automatically to email subscribers. Be sure to use a double opt-in form for newsletter subscribers and explain that they will receive blog updates, and then ensure that your blogs themselves can’t be considered spam. Monitor the comments on your blog for spam to help protect your visitors from those who would harm them.

Disclose Financial Relationships

If you have been paid to provide a particular review, or you will receive income if your readers click through to buy something from a particular review, it is important that you disclose it openly. There is nothing wrong with earning money on your blog and there is no reason to hide it. Disclose everything and be transparent.

Be Willing to Admit Mistakes

It happens. You try out a product or service and love it, but maybe you didn’t dig deep enough and did not realize they had terrible customer service, or were unscrupulous in other ways. It’s okay to come out and say so later and admit that you made a mistake. The more open you are about your imperfections, the more people will trust you.

Be Respectful

Even if you are calling out another blogger or business owner about something you disagree with, it is important to do so in a professional, respectful manner. Call out the idea, not the person. There is never a reason to be nasty or rude to anyone. If someone makes a comment you do not like on your blog, remember – people are watching to see how you will react. Keep it respectful even when others don’t.

Allow Contrary Comments and Feedback

Receiving criticism is hard. It can hurt very badly and for some of us, even make us cry. But, it’s important to allow disagreements and contrary opinions on your comment streams. Delete spam, but let other people have their own views; it won’t take away from yours.

Take Responsibility

If you’ve recommended a product that turned out to be a dud, and the owners of the product will not stand up and do what’s right, it’s up to you to do something to make it better. Take responsibility for your words, too. If you said something wrong, or that was taken wrong, step back and admit your part in any problems. Whether your blog is written by you only, ghost written, or you have rewritten PLR on the blog, it’s your responsibility to fact check, check for plagiarism and ensure the truth of all the content you distribute.

Even if you don’t want to sign the pledge, there is something to be said about blogging with integrity. The main point being that you will feel good about your business, you’ll be proud to tell people what you do, and you’ll feel good about every penny you earn and every piece of content that you put out into the world.

Let me know if you have questions.

Don’t Blog Just to Blog, Blog to Grow Your Business

If you’re serious about growing your small business, and potential customers are looking for businesses like yours on the internet, you need to be blogging. If you’re running a convenience store, you probably don’t need to spend time blogging. But for almost every other type of small business I can think of, you need to be blogging. It’s the quickest way to share your expertise with the world while helping people know, like and trust you. The number one reason people don’t buy is they are afraid of making the wrong buying decision, that they will spend money and not get the solution they’re after. You can reduce that fear by showing up and helping out through blogging.

But what makes a good blog post? One that helps your readers get information they need to make an informed buying decision while getting to know, like and trust you. If you just sit down, write and publish anything that comes to mind, you aren’t likely to get what you really want out of blogging. If you’re like me, you probably don’t want to spend time blogging if there is no return on your investment of time, so if you’re going to spend time blogging you might as well do it right. If you want to engage with your readers, your blog post should be a good read. Here are some important things to consider.

Identify Your Audience

First, and most important, you need to make sure you have a identified your audience—who is reading your blog and why? Ask yourself what your audience wants to know about. This is similar to identifying your target market. I recommend you decide on a specific avatar or persona you’re writing to and write to that person. Pick a prototypical customer and create a story/scenario around them. For instance, if you’re a business coach you might decide that your avatar is a 43 year old single mom with 2 teenagers, a 13 year old boy and a 16 year old girl. She works full time selling residential real estate and makes $54,000 per year but wants to make six figures by the time her 13 year old is ready to go to college. Your avatar/persona is smart and hard working but she has a hard time staying organized and has not idea how to make the leap from $54K to $100K or more. Now, when you’re writing your blog post, write to that avatar.

 

• What does she need?
• What is she thinking about?
• What are her pains and how can you help her overcome them?
• What are her goals and how can you help her achieve them?

Once you pick your avatar/persona, remember that you’re having a conversation with her/your audience, so you want to keep it conversational. Write as if you are speaking to someone. I think it’s helpful if you read your post out loud before publishing to see if it goes along with how you would talk naturally. Would you really say things like that in real life? If not, consider revising. I will admit this is hard for me. As a guy with an English degree, I was taught to write very differently. Remember when your English teacher told you to write only in the third person (“one does not use ‘I’ or ‘you’ in a proper essay. One uses the third person only.”)? I do, and the writing was awkward and ridiculous sounding at times. Don’t write like that.

Choosing a Topic

I recommend you start with a topic and even pick a working title. This isn’t necessarily the same title that will be put on the final post, but it helps to identify what you are writing about. Perhaps you want to write about making more money by improving your business skills (your topic). That’s pretty broad, isn’t it? So, let’s narrow down a specific challenge that people who want to make more money have, such as staying organized. Your working title could be “Staying Organized Can Help You Make More Money.” Your title may end up being “10 Tips for Staying Organized So You Can Make More Money” or “Organization Hacks for Busy Real Estate Professionals.” Your working title doesn’t have to be your final title, it just has to help you focus and narrow down your topic for writing.

Don’t Forget: Organization

Now that you have a title, do you start writing? Almost, but not quite. You need to organize your information next. Try using an outline before beginning to write. It doesn’t have to be hand written; just a guide of key points you want to go over, organized so that it makes sense to your reader. Now you can start writing. Expand on the key points of your outline and, if you need additional information, you can research and find more articles help your content feel full. Be sure to give credit where it is due if you quote any material or use a particular piece of data. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action for your readers. This is simply something to engage them and can range from entering into a contest to taking a survey to simply commenting on the subject below your post.

Polishing Your Blog Entry

Lastly, before posting your blog entry, you want to proofread and edit it. This kind of editing isn’t just for grammar and punctuation, though you need to do that too. Make sure your blog looks pleasing to the eye by including an image relevant to the post. You also want to keep the style of your blog post consistent with the rest of your blog. Don’t forget about optimizing your blog post for on-page SEO. I’ll be talking more about that in upcoming blog posts.

Publishing Your Work

Now you can publish your blog post. If you’re a perfectionist, you may not want to publish. You may be waiting for the golden light of Shakespearean inspiration to fall on you. You may may want to do 10 or 20 hours more research to make sure that your blog post is exhaustive and covers your subject from every conceivable angle. Don’t do that. Your blog post should be good, but it won’t be perfect. And if a reader complains to you because your blog posts aren’t perfect, you may not want that person as a customer anyway. Perfectionists can be really hard to please. Also, keep in mind that very few (if any) things you write will go viral. That’s OK. As long as you’re sharing your expertise and getting your potential customers to know, like and trust you, you’ve written a good blog post and your readers will appreciate you for it.

Finally, keep in mind that you don’t have to publish everything you’ve written. If you don’t like what you’ve written, set it aside and work on something else, then come back to it to see what is workable and what needs to be tossed. You want to be selective and post quality content. If you publish stuff that’s boring or badly done, you’ll lose your readers and maybe even turn off your potential customers.

If you’d like some help with your blogging, let me know. I’d be happy to read a blog post and give you some constructive feedback free of charge. I am here to help you. Really.