Clicksharp Marketing

If you’re just getting started as a blogger, there’s some unfortunate news you ought to be aware of. Even though you may spend thirty minutes to an hour each day developing snappy blog content riddled with articulate witticisms and eloquent insight… it’s possible that a lot of your readers will only skim the content, or perhaps read only halfway through, or–take a deep breath–never look past the title.

Sometimes it feels like you’re Willy Loman with a bad case of writer’s block. But look on the bright side: there are a few reasons why this may be the best news you hear all day.

1) People can still forward your content on to friends and associates. While one of your goals is to get your message across, another is to get it in front of as many people as possible. And if one person doesn’t read the whole thing but forwards it on to five people, you still leave yourself in a position to succeed on both counts. That’s why using social media chicklets is so important.

2) Search engines will still pick up your information. Unlike most humans, the robots read everything! (almost.) Just do your best to make your blog SEO-friendly, and you have a self-guided marketing machine.

These points notwithstanding, there are also a few measures you can take to attract and hold more readers. Much of this is inspired by an August 2007 post by Vandelay Design entitled “10 Tips for Making Your Blog Posts More del.icio.us.” (Did Art Vandelay get out of the latex business?) If you are unfamiliar with the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us, this two-minute primer is well worth your time.

• Put some thought into your title. As discussed above, this is a major gatekeeper to the rest of your content; fail to grab your readers with your title and you risk getting lost among the millions of other blogs they could be reading. The words that appear in your blog post will also get a little extra attention from search engines compared to the rest of your post… so it’s worth your trouble to give this some thought.
• Use block quotes. Provided you credit the author (by naming them AND linking to them), and you don’t regurgitate an excessive amount of content, it is generally acceptable to quote other sources directly in your blog. Depending on the design and layout of your blog, this will stand out from the rest of your content, and will give your post a more academic look.
• Make lists. (What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name David Letterman?) If your reader is in a skimming mindset, lists are probably the very next thing that will grab attention after seeing the title. This kind of content is also very easy to cite if one of your readers is developing his or her own original content (after all, I’m citing Vandelay’s list right now).
• Brand yourself. Example - if you’re a restaurant owner looking to draw in your clientele, you wouldn’t serve the same old food… so don’t write the same old content. Instead, extract two or three things that make your restaurant unique, boil them down to more abstract concepts, and use these to find your voice. This applies to whatever business you’re in.

Coming soon - how you can use rich media to make your content even more memorable.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 @ 6:32 am on the category Blogging, Copy writing, SEO, Small business, Social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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