You put a lot of work into your company’s content strategy. You have a blog, perhaps a video channel, maybe a podcast, some long-form content. But low-quality content can ruin your reputation despite even the strongest strategy.

Don’t let low-quality content be the downfall of your brand’s reputation. Here’s how you can identify it, avoid it, and do better.

What Constitutes Low-Quality Content?

First, what exactly is “low-quality content?” Here are some common examples or warning signs:

• All, or part, of your content is plagiarized.
• The content confuses popularity and credibility.
• Your content is difficult for your target audience to understand.
• Your content serves no purpose beyond self-interest.
• Content is too “shallow” in nature.

Now, why is this kind of low-quality content a problem?

How Low-Quality Content Can Hurt Your Reputation (& What You Can Do About It)

If you want to protect your professional or brand reputation, first you need to understand these common types of problem content you might come across.

Plagiarism

When someone hears the word “plagiarism,” they often think of the wholesale copying of someone else’s work. This is true. It’s a type of theft that can cost you professional credibility.

However, plagiarism can also include unauthorized rewrites or other derivative works without the copyright holder’s consent.

If you publish plagiarized content and you’re found out, not only do you risk a lawsuit for the copyright violation, but your customers or other target audience could lose trust in you and your brand. Once trust is lost, it’s not easily regained.

A Note on Plagiarism Checkers:

You might think plagiarism would be easy to detect. And you might think running your content creators’ work through plagiarism checkers is the answer.

It isn’t.

First, if you insist on doing this, do it quietly. Never advertise for a freelance writer telling them you’re going to use Copyscape or a similar tool.

That wouldn’t only be unprofessional and disrespectful on your part (implying they can’t be trusted before you build a relationship). It also demonstrates ignorance.

These tools can alert you if someone copies another’s work directly. But they won’t protect you against those who unethically rewrite someone else’s content or create another unauthorized derivative work. This can get you into just as much trouble.

A far better course of action is to make sure you only hire professionals. That means paying them appropriately.

When clients cut corners with their budget, they often end up with creators who cut corners in their content.

The Content Confuses Popularity and Credibility

Sometimes low-quality content masquerades as high-quality content by sourcing quotes, statistics, or other information from popular sources.

For example, you might assume linking to a popular blogger in your niche is a good move. You might even think it adds to your credibility. Chances are good your SEO pro told you to do this.

Here’s the thing though:

Popularity does not equal credibility. And someone’s ability to attract their own audience in no way reflects on their expertise doing anything else.

It’s not uncommon for even highly-popular blogs to publish bad information. I’ve personally caught a top blogger in the copywriting space plagiarizing from a book. Another very popular blogger didn’t vet their guest posts well, and their site is now littered with bad statistics, improper sourcing, and flat-out false claims the data they cite doesn’t even back up.

Even if most readers of a popular blog don’t always have these insights, you can bet others in their industry are aware. And when you cite people like that as a credible source because you mistook their popularity for credibility, you risk being seen as guilty by association.

You can avoid this by incorporating sourcing guidelines in your brand’s style guidelines.

Credible sources should be primary whenever possible. For example, instead of linking to a blogger who wrote about a new industry report, link to the person or organization who did the study in the first place.

When linking to popular sources, always ask what value it adds for your target audience. What more will they learn? Is there a reason your content isn’t already providing this information? Are you only citing a source because you hope it will get you some attention?

Focus on citing true experts instead – professional researchers, professors, journal articles with peer-reviewed studies, and even government organizations where you need relevant data. Leave other sources for when there’s a specific reason to talk about them, such as recommending a site or resource to your audience.

Your Content is Difficult to Consume

Another sign you might have a low-quality content problem is if its consumers can’t actually get through it or don’t engage with it.

For example, if you have a company blog, make sure your blogger is a native speaker (or equivalent) of the language of your target audience. Close is not good enough.

If you write your own content and you’re not a native speaker of that language, hire an editor who is.

You could also have a problem if your content is unnecessarily long and you target an audience with a shorter attention span.

Or you might have accessibility issues.

Or maybe you’re releasing content in a medium your audience doesn’t consume (maybe they’re not into podcasts or white papers or whatever your pet content project is).

Your Content Serves No Purpose Beyond Self-Interest

High-quality content isn’t about you. It’s not about your company. It’s not about your brand.

Instead, high-quality content is about what you, your company, or your brand do for others. The emphasis should always be on the interests of your target market.

For example, no one wants to read your company blog when all you do is announce company news. There are better mediums for that (press releases for example).

The same is true if your blog exists solely for SEO purposes to rank your website higher in Google’s rankings. That might be your goal. But it isn’t the goal of your readers.

Great content should benefit you. But it does that by benefiting its consumers first.

Content is Too “Shallow” in Nature

Another sign you might have a low-quality content problem is that your content is “shallow.”

What is “shallow” content?

It’s not about content length. Very short content can sometimes be complete (such as providing a definition for a term people often have to look up).

“Shallow” content is content that lacks substance.

Even a 2000-word article can be shallow content if it loosely touches on several topics but never actually answers readers’ questions about any of them. So don’t confuse long content with substantive content.

This all goes back to making sure your content has a purpose (and meets that purpose). Shallow content leaves readers wanting more, but not in a good way.

High-quality content is a choice. And it’s a choice that can help you build and preserve your professional reputation. While low-quality content might sometimes feel like an easy fix for an immediate problem, it’s never worth the reputational price you could pay.

The post Reputational Risks of Low-Quality Content appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

People read differently on the web than they might in print. Readers often visually scan an article, your marketing copy, or a blog post before (or in lieu of) reading your material in full. That’s why it’s important to create scannable content for your company blog.

Making your company’s blog content more scannable isn’t difficult. It doesn’t require a lot of extra work. It’s a simple matter of structure.

Let’s explore what “scannable content” is and you can make your company’s blog posts easier to consume, and more helpful, for your visitors.

What is Scannable Content?

Your readers — in many cases your potential customers — want specific information. And they want it quickly. Scanning a page of blog post should make it easy to find what they’re looking for. That’s what scannable content does.

Scannable content simply means a reader should be able to pick out key points or key sections of your content at a glance. They shouldn’t need to read everything to understand the essence of what your content says.

Now let’s look at what you can do to make your company’s blog content more scannable.

How to Write Scannable Content for Your Blog

Here are five simple things you can do to write more scannable content for your business blog.

1. Write short paragraphs.

Keep paragraphs to no more than a few sentences. And keep most of those sentences short.

Large blocks of text can be difficult to read on a computer screen. They can be even more difficult to read on mobile devices. You don’t want to lose your readers before you get your message across.

2. Use subheadings.

Break your copy or content up using subheadings. These are usually bold and in a larger font size than your body text, using heading tags (such as H2, H3, etc. in a hierarchy).

Subheadings are used to break up your main points or major sections of your blog posts. They should clearly identify your key points or sections of your content. Incorporate important keywords in them not only for SEO purposes, but also to help readers find what they’re seeking.

3. Include lists.

Bulleted and numbered lists are also good ways to highlight important information. Lists can benefit your company blog in several ways.

For example, lists in blog content can:

• make blog content easier to read;
• serve as linkbait and attract more visitors seeking easily-digestible content;
• help you organize your blog content in a more logical way;
• allow readers to quickly find the data or points they’re most interested in.

Lists can be used either as indented content in more of an outline style, or you can include numbered lists in your subheadings. You can see examples of both list styles in this very post.

4. Use images and pull quotes in your content.

The most important aspect of scannable content is breaking your text up visually to help readers navigate your posts. Images are another way you can do this.

That said, including images just to include images can also become a distraction. So avoid filling a post with stock images that don’t help you illustrate a point.

If you have particularly interesting quotes in your content, and you’d like to feature them, pull quotes can also add visual interest. You can do this as text in your content, or you might create sharable images of those quotes.

Just be careful about quoting yourself. It can be tacky and unprofessional. Use pull quotes to highlight stats, quotes from third parties, or at least don’t add your name to self-quotes as if you’re quoting a third party.

5. Take advantage of white space.

The absence of content can be just as impactful as the words on your page. Use white space to help visually break up your blog content and make it more scannable.

This might not be something you have full control over when writing blog content. You might need to have your web designer make adjustments to naturally build white space into your content by default. This might include spacing between paragraphs, spacing between lines, or spacing around subheadings.

This isn’t always the case however.

For example, when adding images, you can control the padding and margins (blank space) around them using inline CSS. Or you might center non-full-width images to leave extra white space around them.

Ultimately, use white space on your blog to avoid making your content appear cluttered.

Don’t worry if all five of these tactics don’t make sense for your content. You don’t need to use them all at once. A good rule of thumb is the longer your content is, the more you want to break it up visually to help visitors find what they need.

If writing web content just isn’t your thing, or you have a large archive of posts that you want to make more scannable, no worries. You can always hire a pro to write your copy and blog posts for you or clean up your old blog content.

This post was originally published on January 27, 2014 and was updated, expanded, and re-published on its currently-listed publication date.

The post How to Write “Scannable” Content for Your Company Blog appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

Writing impacts your business on a daily basis whether you realize it or not. Effective copywriting makes your ads successful. Strong PR writing is what convinces members of the media to pick up your news story from your press release. Your web copy convinces visitors to become customers.

Think about it for a minute. Business writing is involved in many aspects of your business, such as:

• investor reports;
• advertisements;
• sales letters;
• help desk content;
• product descriptions;
• your company blog;
• email communication with customers;
• video scripts;
• internal memos;
• newsletters;
• and so much more.

There’s no question about it. Business writing is vital to your company’s success. So today I’d like to share five tips for better business writing, whether you choose to hire a pro or do it yourself.

1.Use templates and style guides.

When it comes to business writing, consistency is important.

Your writing style and formatting shouldn’t change drastically on different pages of your website.

For example, if you tend to publish serious B2B white papers and reports targeting high-level executives, more light-hearted pieces on your company blog might not cut it with that same audience. Consider creating a company style guide your staff and freelance writers can follow.

If you know you’ll create the same types of documents repeatedly — white papers, press releases, newsletters, etc. — consider creating templates to help you keep things consistent from one project to the next.

2. Avoid jargon.

Using industry jargon and buzzwords doesn’t make you look smart. It doesn’t make you look “in the know.”

If anything, jargon can frustrate your readers. Write in a way that your readers will understand and relate to. And don’t try to use fancy terms or complicated language that speak down to them.

3. Proofread thoroughly.

After you’ve written any kind of business document, read it. Then read it again. Then read it aloud. Take some time away from it, come back later, and read it with fresh eyes. Then have someone else read it.

Unless you’re working with a dedicated business writer or proofreader, finding errors falls on you. Errors in your copy can be costly, whether they result in a financial hit because you advertised the wrong price for something or in a hit to your reputation because of sloppy work.

4. Know your audience.

Not everything you write is meant for the same audience. Sometimes your business writing will communicate with customers. At other times it might focus on prospects, colleagues, board members, employees, or members of the community.

Always know who your writing is meant to reach and what they expect from it. Formal language might be fine with members of your board for example. But it might be completely inappropriate for your customers.

5. Focus on them, not you.

It’s not enough to know who your audience is when you jump into a business writing project. You have to remember to keep the focus on them. It’s not about you. It’s about what you can do for them.

For example, take a look at my homepage on this site. You’ll notice I don’t use words like “me” or “I” or “my” often. The bulk of the marketing copy on that page is about them — or in this case you.

Do you have business writing questions that go beyond these tips? Leave a comment below and I might answer it for you in a future blog post. Not sure you want to take on all of your company’s business writing on your own? Contact me with your project details and let’s see how I can help.

The post 5 Tips for Better Business Writing appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links for SEMrush. This means if you purchase one of their packages, I might receive a commission.

Improving your company’s search engine rankings can bring customers directly to your virtual door. But improving your search visibility doesn’t always mean publishing more content. You can also make your old blog content rank higher by improving it.

Let’s look at how you can make old blog content rank higher in Google to bring in more traffic and leads.

5 Steps to Make Old Blog Content Rank Higher in Google

If you want content in your archives to rank higher in Google, here are five steps you can take:

1. Track your existing rankings and traffic numbers.

You can’t make old blog content rank higher if you don’t know where those posts already rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Manually tracking these rankings doesn’t make sense because you don’t have access to all the data you’d need independently.

Instead, you’ll want to use a tool like SEMrush. There you can create target keyword lists to track and see where various pages on your site rank for those keyword phrases over time. You can also track specific competitors if that’s of interest to you.

2. Identify opportunities for better rankings (plus more traffic and conversions).

When you review your keyword rankings, you want to look for the best opportunities where you could see a decent ROI.

For example, you might look for keyword phrases with significant search volumes where your content currently ranks on the second page of results. It’s much easier to make old blog content rank higher in that case than trying to go from page 50+ to the first page.

Another type of opportunity you can look for are cases where you cannibalize your own rankings.

This is when you have multiple pages competing for the same keyword phrase. If you see this happening for important keyword phrases, you might look to merge those old blog posts into a single new one (make sure any old URLs get redirected).

3. Conduct a content audit of your old blog posts.

If your site is having broader issues with low Google rankings, you might need to conduct a more thorough content audit of your blog.

Things you’ll want to look for include:

• very short content that needs to be expanded;
• outdated content that’s no longer relevant;
• old blog posts that are too similar to each other;
• poorly-formatted content (such as from before a design change);
• holes in your content strategy that need to be filled with new material;
• posts lacking onsite optimization.

If you manually audit your content, you can use a simple spreadsheet allowing you to note plans for any posts that need changes – updates, expanding the content, merging posts, improving formatting or onsite optimization, or even deleting some content and redirecting the URLs when appropriate.

To simplify this, SEMrush content audits can automate some of this process to help you find problematic posts in your archives.

4. Update, merge, and redirect content where appropriate.

Next, it’s time to take your rankings research and your content audit notes and prioritize the old content you want to rank higher.

For example, if you have a post on the second page of search results for your target keyword, and you know that page needs updates and onsite optimization, that would be a high-priority post to start with.

The easier your intended fixes are, and the easier it would be to get first page rankings for that keyword phrase, the sooner you want to update that older piece of content.

5. Improve your onsite SEO.

It’s also important to review your onsite SEO in general. For example:

• Do all pages have appropriate metadata?
• Does every page and post on your site target specific keyword phrases?
• Does your content and copy address searchers’ intent (give them what they’re looking for)?
• Are you using appropriate structured data to help Google understand your content?
• Have you handled redirects responsibly so you don’t leave visitors with 401 Page Not Found errors?
• Have you submitted a sitemap to Google’s search console?
• Is Google able to index your content?

This is about making sure you don’t have any sitewide issues that could make it more difficult to rank higher in Google. Yet again, this is something a service like SEMrush can help you monitor, along with offering suggestions to improve your onsite SEO.

6. Re-market your updated content.

If you want your old blog posts to rank higher in Google, it’s not enough to update that content or make more on-page optimizations.

You also need to re-market that content. For example:

• Share your older, or refreshed, content with your social media followers.
• Promote your old content to email subscribers.
• Contact people you’ve referenced in your posts and let them know about it.
• Build new links to your older blog posts.

If you want that old blog content to rank higher on Google, you have to go beyond your on-site efforts. You need to let people know about that content. You need people to link to that content. And you want others sharing that content.

By following these five simple steps, you might just find you have a treasure trove of new traffic hidden in your blog archives. Clean that content up, improve it where you can, and spread the word again, and your old content can rank higher in Google’s search results in no time.

Do you need help with your content audit? Do you need someone to assist you with revisions, improvements, and rewrites of your existing blog posts? Get in touch to find out how I can help you improve your company’s Google rankings by building upon what you already have.

The post How to Make Your Old Blog Content Rank Higher in Google appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

Your business blog should be an exception.

Let’s look at why linking to credible sources is vital in your business blogging. Then I’ll give you some tips on how to find more credible sites and resources to link to.

Why Credible Sources Matter in Your Blog Content

You want your company blog to do more than connect with customers.

In most cases, your professional blog should convey your expertise or authority in your industry or specialty. That isn’t the image of authority, but rather showcasing the real thing.

You can’t do that if your blog content cites and links out to questionable sources.

All that does is show readers you don’t know enough about your own industry to know where the most trustworthy data comes from. It reflects poorly on you.

Worse, when your readers don’t know better, they might take your link as a recommendation and come to trust unreliable sources as a direct result of your content.

Don’t make the mistake of contributing to toxic cycles like that. Once people come to realize certain sources you link to aren’t credible, it’s going to reflect negatively on your own reputation.

4 Tips for Finding Credible Sources for Your Blog Posts

Not sure if the sites you link to are credible sources? Here are four tips that can help you make better judgment calls and keep your business blog content as authoritative as possible.

1. Know the difference between popularity and authority.

These are not the same thing. Being a large site does not make something an authoritative site. Being a popular site with thousands of followers or subscribers also has nothing to do with true authority or credibility.

“But if they have a massive reader base that trusts them, they must be credible, right?”

Wrong.

Audience size is irrelevant to authority. It speaks nothing to anyone’s credibility. It’s easy to build popularity. People do it by gaming systems all the time, sometimes ethically and sometimes not – link schemes and other black hat tactics, buying visibility via advertising, and PR or social media stunts just as a start.

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see clients make. They avoid linking to smaller, less popular, but more credible sites (think a university researcher’s blog talking about results of her research). Then they instead link to some popular blogger talking about that research instead. The first is the more credible, authoritative source.

2. Separate SEO efforts from source citations.

A big influence I’ve seen on this popularity focus is search engine optimization (SEO).

Clients will focus on linking out to large, popular websites rather than the more credible sources behind the information they cite because they see it as good for SEO.

It’s partly about linking to sources ranking higher than your own (which ultimately lends them more undeserved “authority” than you anyway). And it’s partly an ego-bait tactic: linking to popular bloggers in the hopes they’ll notice you and link back to your site.

SEO is important, but it should never come before serving your readers the best, most credible content you can. You risk further boosting people who put their own popularity before building true authority, and that risks hurting your readers in the long run.

3. Seek out primary sources of information.

I touched on this earlier, but always try to prioritize primary sources for your citations. This is when you’d cite the researcher sharing their results, not the popular blogger posting their data.

Why does this matter?

When you cite and link to secondary sources, you’re rarely just getting the data (and sometimes the original source isn’t even cited there). You’re also often getting a third party’s interpretation of that data.

If your company’s blog post is commenting on someone else’s interpretation intentionally, then linking there makes sense. But if you’re trying to share data you found via a secondary source, you can end up sharing poor interpretations that don’t actually reflect what was found.

You essentially spread misinformation or disinformation.

There are no positives in doing that. You put your company’s, and your own, reputation at risk.

Instead, if you find interesting statistics on another site or publication, find the primary source if possible. Review what the data really says. Then make your own educated interpretations and share your authoritative insight on your company blog.

4. Identify source biases.

When deciding what sources to link to from your company blog, also identify and consider source biases.

In something like political reporting, these biases can be obvious or well-documented. But your company blog probably isn’t covering much of that nature. Biases can also be business-oriented, and more subtle.

An Example of Business Bias

In an example I documented on my freelance writing blog, a popular website in the blogging and social media niches published statistics that became widely shared among other bloggers, big and small.

The problem? The interpretation of that data was inherently biased on pretty much every website I saw citing it. The company I initially found this data through made a claim about something as simple as blog post length and its impact on social media shares.

And that interpretation was woefully inadequate. For instance, while the underlying intent was to show that longer blog posts saw more social media shares, it didn’t account for something as basic as shares-per-word (in other words, maximizing your ROI).

In this case, what the data really said was a 3000-word blog post would actually earn around 30-35% fewer shares than if a blogger published three 1000-word posts instead. Huge difference when planning your content strategy and schedule.

Now why would this popular company publish these stats with that misleading claim? It wasn’t necessarily malicious. But it was heavily biased toward its own business interests.

In the case of the blogger sharing the data, it was reasonably sensational. And sensationalized claims tend to get shared. It was simple, not-quite-honest linkbait.

What about the company whose chart was being passed around? Their business model is about helping people research content popularity and social media sharing for the sake of their own content strategy. By telling bloggers they needed to do something more substantive, you drive interest in these kinds of market research services.

Bias Isn’t Always Bad, But You Should be Aware of It

Again, it’s not about data being malicious or intentionally harmful. It’s about lazy bloggers not having a grasp of the underlying biases, so they amplify bad data or misleading interpretations of it.

You can avoid being a part of this cycle, and find more credible sources to reference, by seeking out these biases up front.

When it comes to links you add to your business blog, ask if each is the most authoritative source. If it’s not a primary source, what added value does the source bring, or what about their coverage will directly impact your own content? What biases might have influenced this source? And what was your own initial reason for choosing them?

Ultimately every link on your blog should be vetted.

Not sure about your blog’s recent outgoing links? Do you want to clean up old posts, or update them, with more credible sources? Would your company blog benefit from custom style guidelines including citation rules for your bloggers to follow?

Contact me any time and let’s talk about how I can help you create a more authoritative company blog by editing old content with more credible sources or help you plan to do better with future posts.

The post How to Identify Credible Sources for Your Blog Content appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

When it comes to seeking visibility or exposure for your brand, you have plenty of options to choose from—traditional media, social networks, blogs, and more. One of the best paths is something called “owned media.”

Let’s explore the concept of owned media, what sets it apart from key alternatives, and why it’s worth investing time (and money) into building it into your content strategy.

What is “Owned Media?”

When we talk about “owned media,” what we mean is any media you have full control over. In other words, you:

• secure your own hosting for the content;
• have full, or nearly full control over what content is published (even hosting companies will have limitations);
• control the design and branding.

Some examples your company might use include:

• your company blog;
• an email newsletter;
• self-hosted videos or podcasts;
• print publications your business releases.

The most basic element here is control. You quite literally own the content and the media (like your website).

Owned Media vs Rented Media vs Earned Media vs Paid Media

To better understand owned media, it can help to compare it to other options like rented media, earned media, and paid media. What are each of these?

What is Rented Media?

Rented media is sometimes confused for owned media. A great example of rented media would be your company’s social media accounts.

You might feel like you have a sense of ownership over those accounts, but ultimately the control belongs to the social network. You almost always grant them a license to your content that can be shared and re-published without your explicit consent on a case-by-case basis.

More important though, your presence on rented media outlets relies on their own existence and policies. If policies change, your content might suddenly be removed, and you might not have backups to republish that material elsewhere.

Similarly, I’ve seen more than a few social networks disappear over my years specializing in social media and online PR. When networks shut down, I’ve watched people lose years’ worth of content they published.

If you don’t control when a form of media shuts down, it’s not owned.

What is Earned Media?

Earned media is the crown jewel in PR. This is when you obtain media placements because others feel you’re worth talking about.

Press releases, for example, are a tool used to secure earned media.

With press releases, you’re announcing to journalists, bloggers, and others that you have something interesting to share. You have news their readers, viewers, listeners, or followers will want to know about.

If your news is legitimately of interest, and you’re a trustworthy source, you might secure media coverage as a result of your news release. That’s an example of earned media.

What is Paid Media?

Paid media is exactly what it sounds like – coverage or exposure you pay for.

Traditional advertising to get your company mentioned in a relevant publication, website, or broadcast would be a prime example.

Paid media would also encompass things like sponsored content in online media and product placements in videos.

5 Benefits of Owned Media vs Other Options

A solid promotional strategy should incorporate some mix of these media types. But the benefits of owned media mean you should never neglect it.

Here are five key benefits:

1. Owned media gives you full control over brand integration.

Essentially, you make the rules. You decide what content to create. You control the design or presentation. And you control branding elements (for example, no social network branding on your content).

2. Owned media offers greater control over your content’s reach and conversions.

When you own your media, you have more direct influence over who you’re able to reach (such as building your own lists). You also have more control over conversions, being able to test various messages and designs without the limitations third-party platforms impose.

3. With owned media, your content isn’t at the mercy of third-party whims.

On that note of third-party platforms, with owned media you never have to worry that years’ worth of content will vanish just because a social network or other outlet closes its doors. Your content, as long as you back it up regularly, can be transported whenever and wherever you want to move it.

4. Owned media can be cost-effective.

While not all alternatives are costly, owned media is often a cost-effective communications and promotional tool. That doesn’t mean it’s free. You’ll still pay for hosting, email marketing services, and possibly freelance help or staff to create your content. But compared to expensive ad buys, it can be a bargain.

5. Owned Media isn’t open to chance.

You decide what to publish or produce, and when. That gives you much more control than earned media where even significant stories can take a back seat on a busy news day.

Owned media doesn’t need to be the extent of your content strategy. But it makes for a strong foundation you can build upon.

Do you need help coming up with a content strategy or creating content for any of your media channels? Get in touch and let’s talk about how I can help.

The post Your Brand & The Benefits of Owned Media appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

When you think about your business brand, chances are your blog isn’t one of the first things to come to mind. But your company’s blog can be an integral part of your branding, if you know how.

Let’s look at how you can use your blog to support, or help build, a stronger brand for your business.

3 Ways Your Blog is an Extension of Your Brand

Here are three ways your business blog can become an extension of your brand.

1. Your Blog as a Customer Service Tool

This won’t apply to every business blog, but if you routinely address customer service issues and customer questions, your blog can become an extension of those efforts.

For example, if you sell products and you’re about to release an updated version of a product, you can use your blog for more than promoting sales.

In that case, you might introduce customers to key changes ahead of time to minimize questions or complaints later when they’re presented with something unfamiliar.

You can also use your business blog for more proactive customer outreach.

For example, if you see the same question coming in repeatedly, write a well-optimized post (perhaps with a video where appropriate) so customers find the answers they need when they search Google before ever reaching out to you directly.

2. Your Blog as a Continuation of Your Brand’s Voice

All business blogs should incorporate your broader brand “voice,” regardless of who creates your blog content. Consistency is important in branding, and that includes all content you produce.

For instance, if your brand is known for its light-hearted, family-friendly tone, you don’t want edgier blog content filled with expletives.

This goes beyond tone though. Your brand voice also includes what you talk about.

Let’s say you use your company social media accounts to advocate for specific causes that impact your customers or community (being eco-conscious for example).

You might then use your company blog to share your efforts in greater depth, like sharing photos from an event you participated in or fundraising totals for a campaign you ran.

3. Your Blog as a Reflection of Your Authority

If authority is vital in your niche or industry (healthcare for example), then that authority also needs to be a key element of your branding. And your professional or company blog can help convey that authority.

This is what’s often called “thought leadership” publication, long important in PR efforts despite the more recent label.

Thought leadership publication isn’t about building an image of expertise (how many marketers encourage people to use it even without legitimate authority). When done right, thought leadership publication is about showcasing the expertise you’ve already built.

There are several ways you can use your business blog to emphasize the authority of your brand. For example, you might:

• conduct original research and publish the results;
• offer expert insight into industry issues, news, or legislation;
• publish case studies relevant to your industry or customers;
• use your blog to highlight expertise of staff, not just yourself;
• post instructional or informational content you’re in a unique position to provide.

Think about the ways your experience, or your company’s experience in your industry, set you apart from most in your niche. Then tie that expertise or authority to your brand itself via your blog. The value of becoming a recognized leader can be just as important as short-term promotion and sales.

Your brand is about more than a name or image. It’s about the reputation behind those things. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to expand or improve that reputation using your business blog. Blogs can be an often-overlooked element, or booster, of your brand.

Do you need help coming up with a content strategy for your business blog? Get in touch and find out how I can help you incorporate your blog into your broader branding or even ghostwrite your company’s blog posts (in your brand’s voice, of course).

The post How Your Blog is an Extension of Your Brand appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

When it comes to business blogs, consistency across your content is important. But what happens if more than one person manages your blog content, and the style and quality aren’t always the same? That’s where a blog style guide can come in handy.

Let’s take a look at what a style guide is, what it should include, and when it might make sense to create a style guide for your company’s blog.

What is a Blog Style Guide?

A blog style guide is a collection of rules that help you maintain consistency in your blog content.

For example, it might include guidelines on how to use sub-headings, your ideal maximum paragraph length, blog post length rules for that site, or what constitutes a credible source when you link to other sites.

A blog style guide might also tell you how long pull quotes should be, how many images you should add to your content, or how many internal links each post should have.

This can also include brand style guidelines such as how to format the company’s name in posts or what colors and fonts you can use if you create custom blog post graphics.

You could choose to follow more standardized guidelines, like AP style which is commonly used in news writing and PR writing. But it’s your blog, so you can choose to set any style guidelines you want.

What Should a Blog’s Style Guide Include?

Having your own simplified style guide can be a good idea for blogs featuring multiple authors.

This maintains consistency while still allowing for creativity and flexibility among your contributors. It also means your bloggers won’t have to learn a comprehensive and rigid style just to write for you if that’s not necessary for some reason (such as running a journalistic or academic blog).

If you do decide to create your own blog style guide, what should it include? Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Guidelines on the overall tone you want the blog to adhere to
• Specific language you want to avoid (swearing, accusatory language without evidence, sensational claims, etc.)
• Content length guidelines (a range often works best)
• Formatting requirements (minimum number–and depth–of sub-headings, how lists should be handled, etc.)
• Image guidelines (image size, file size, orientation, alt text requirements, etc.)
• Citation guidelines (what is, and isn’t considered a trustworthy source to be cited on your blog)
• Link guidelines (such as no self-promotional links, internal link requirements, etc.)

You can make your blog style guide as simple or as detailed as you want. Just understand that the more rules you have, more difficult it can be to police, especially if you don’t have a dedicated blog editor.

When to Implement a Style Guide for Your Blog

How do you know if you even need a style guide for your blog?

If you’re the sole blogger and editor, a style guideline might be a solution in search of a problem. But here are some situations were developing a new blog style guide can make sense:

• You find your own personal style fluctuates, and you want simple reminders to improve consistency.
• You brought on a team of writers for your blog, and you want to ensure a more cohesive style to your content.
• Your blog is going to start accepting posts from guest authors, and you need clear rules those submissions should follow.
• You’ve recently updated your blog or company branding (or are about to), and you need your blog posts to abide by new formatting guidelines tying into those changes.

A blog style guide might not always be necessary. But embracing some level of guidelines early on can help you build a more recognizable blogging brand with readers. And, bonus, if you bring on new contributors down the road, you’ll already have a clear style in play to help them better blend in with your company’s voice and mission.

Not sure where to start in putting together your own blog style guide? Get in touch today to find out how I can help you create a style guide that suits your business.

The post Do You Need a Blog Style Guide? appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

Writing better blog content doesn’t have to be difficult. Your existing style might just need a few tweaks to take it to the next level.

Here are three easy things you can do to write better blog posts, starting today:

1. Know Your Audience

The most important thing you can do if you want to improve your blog post quality is to understand the readers your content is written for.

After all, your business blog isn’t about you. It’s about your readers.

Think about who those readers are. Are they existing customers? Are you writing for potential clients? Or are you perhaps writing for other professionals in your industry?

When you know your audience, you’ll be able to determine their goals. You’ll have a better idea of the questions they want answered. You’ll know what challenges they face.

As a result, you’ll be in a better position to provide useful blog content that meets your readers’ needs.

2. Make Your Blog Posts Easy to Read

Most readers don’t visit blogs to read 10,000-word screeds.

Readers want an answer to a question. They want a solution to a problem. They want tips, tutorials, or advice from blog authors they trust. And readers have come to expect that content to be “scannable,” even (no, especially) when that content is long-form.

Scannable blog content is simply content people can scan easily will the eye to find what they’re looking for. You can do the following to make your posts more scannable:

• Use (mostly) short paragraphs.
• Add numbered and bulleted lists.
• Break up sections using headings and subheadings.
• Use images, videos, pull-quotes or other visual elements to break up text.
• Embrace white space.

Your goal is to avoid long blocks of rambling text. Not every reader wants to read your entire post. Make it easy for them to find the information they need.

3. Write Better Blog Posts by Being Yourself

Writing better blog content isn’t just about what you write or how you structure it. It’s also about standing out among the competition.

Avoid bland, dry content that any old Joe could have written. Inject your personality into your writing. Let readers get to know you. Your blog isn’t just about publishing information. It’s a tool for relationship-building.

Here are some ways you can put your personality into your posts to write even better blog content for your business:

• Share first-person insights and experiences.
• Add humor to your writing, where appropriate.
• Maintain a consistent personal style in your content.
• Write as if you’re talking to your readers (using first and/or second person point-of-view).
• If you have a personal story or anecdote that illustrates your point, share it.

Putting a bit of yourself into your blog posts doesn’t have to mean over-sharing or posting things that make you uncomfortable. It’s about giving your blog posts a bit of your unique voice, and helping readers get to know you so they come to trust you.

These tips are far from the only ways you can learn to write better blog posts. But they’re a start, and they’ll help you improve both your strategy and your style.

If you still struggle to write effective blog posts, consider hiring me as a freelance blogger to ghostwrite your company’s content. I can even coach you on how to write better blog content yourself if you prefer. Get in touch to find out how I can help in your unique situation.

The post Write Better Blog Posts: 3 Tips You Can Use Today appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

As some examples, here are five types of blog content you can use again and again when you need business blog post ideas:

1. Tutorials / How-To Posts

How-to posts can be a good fit for any blog. That could mean posting tutorials about how to use your company’s product. Or, if you’re in the niche blogging game, the “how-to” door is wide open to write about anything your readers might want to learn.

You can never publish too many tutorials. Readers love them. But how do you know what tutorials your readers want?

A tool I love is Answer the Public. Visit the site. Enter your niche, industry, or general topic your blog covers. Then check out all the questions that pop up.

Let’s look at an example. One topic I talk about on this blog is, well, blogging. So I entered “blogging” on the site. Here’s what I got:

You’ll find a variety of blogging-related questions there. But you can go beyond the “how” section when looking for tutorial post ideas.

For example, you could take the question “Which blogging platform is best?” and turn that into a how-to post like “How to choose the best blogging platform for your business.”

You can do two free searches per day on that site, and you can turn those questions into multiple blog post ideas.

2. FAQs / Answer Reader Questions

If you want a constant flow of blog post ideas, keep an eye on your inbox.

Reader questions are another great type of blog content. And if one customer or reader has a question, chances are others have the same question, but they haven’t reached out to ask. So use them in your content strategy.

You can space these out. If several customers send in questions in a single day, you can answer them privately and still add the ideas to your blog post list to be published later.

Take this a step further if you’d like: encourage readers and customers to submit questions like I do on my “free writing advice” page on my site for beginner freelance writers.

You can do this by adding a contact form for reader questions in your blog’s sidebar, or simply inviting readers to submit questions by linking them to your contact page at the end of other posts.

3. Industry Insights / Expert Commentary

Offering expert insight into, or expert commentary about, industry issues are other repeatable types of blog content.

Think about common industry concerns, especially ones where there might be some controversy. Then share your take in a professional way on your company’s blog.

You can also set up news alerts tied your expertise, and offer timely commentary when you see fit.

For example, if you’re an attorney, you might monitor court rulings related to noteworthy cases in your specialty area, and explain the rulings in plain English to potential clients on your firm’s blog.

As another example, let’s say you run a landscaping company. You might monitor news tied to the region you serve – weather incidents, infestations, or plant diseases making the rounds that could impact your customers, and offer expert tips on dealing with those issues.

4. List Posts

List posts, or “listicles,” are another popular type of blog content. They never seem to go out of style. Why not add some to your editorial calendar?

For instance, let’s say you’re a medical professional. You might do a list post on the top ten books patients can read about your specialty. Or you might regularly post lists of the top research findings in your area, so patients and colleagues can stay up-to-date.

You could even do a regular series of “round-up” style lists where you share others’ blog content each week.

Just remember, lists posts that rely heavily on external links might need to be updated occasionally, and you’ll want to regularly scan those posts for broken links.

5. Tips / Mistakes

Instead of only posting tips in list collections, why not dedicate an entire post to each of your favorite tips for your customers or other readers?

You could even spin these off your list posts, going into more depth or turning those initial tips into tutorial posts of their own.

A related option is to focus on mistakes. If you make a mistake, don’t be afraid to admit it. Those stories can make for great teaching opportunities. Or you could write a series of posts related to common mistakes your customers make with your product, or common mistakes in your industry, or simply common misconceptions about what you do.

All these types of blog content can be used repeatedly to give you months’ worth of blog posts to keep readers interested and keep customers coming back.

Are you still struggling to come up with a blog content strategy, business blog post ideas, or your company’s editorial calendar? Contact me today to see how I can help.

The post 5 Types of Blog Content Your Business Can Use Again & Again appeared first on Pro Business Writer.