3 Ways to Improve Your Blogging in New Orleans and Beyond

Blogging and other content marketing efforts are great ways for businesses to share information with customers and even help their websites rank higher on Google. But blogging can be a big investment of your time and effort, so you want to make sure each and every blog post counts. Here are my top three ways to improve your blogging in New Orleans (or anywhere else!) today.

1. Know Your Purpose

Before you begin writing, it’s important to know exactly what you hope to accomplish with your blog post. This gives your writing more direction and purpose, and it allows you to improve your blogging with better planning. Take a look at these common blogging purposes to see which ones fit your needs or if you have a different goal in mind:

• Promote your products or services. Your blog is a great place to promote your products and services in more depth. Just take care to avoid being overly promotional. Your readers don’t want to hear a sales pitch—they want useful information that will help teach them more about a subject, answer their questions, and guide them to the right product or service for their needs.
• Share information about your business. Besides promoting new products and services, there is plenty of other information you may want to share about your business. Tell customers about new store locations or extended hours, new deals and promotions, special events, your company culture, your mission and values, and more, as long as it provides value in one way or another to your readers.
• Become a trusted resource. A thoughtful, informative, and frequently updated blog can bring new recognition to your business. Whether you want to become a thought leader in your field or simply a trusted resource that keeps customers coming back to your website, blogging is an excellent way to share your knowledge, ideas, and expertise.
• Increase search traffic. By writing valuable, search engine optimized content, your website can improve its ranking on Google for relevant search terms and drive more traffic to your website.

2. Make It Easy to Read

With so much content easily accessible on the Internet, users are quick to leave a piece of writing if it isn’t easy to read. This doesn’t mean that you can’t tackle complex ideas and topics—it’s all about making the information as easy to navigate and digest as possible. These are a few of my favorite tips for making your blog posts easier to read:

• Write clear, informative titles. If it’s not clear what your blog post is about or has to offer, then there’s no reason for users to start reading.
• Organize your content into multiple sections with headings. This makes it easier for users to jump around to the sections that matter most to them, and it makes it easier for you to make sure each part of your blog post stays on task and supports a common goal.
• Use bullet points and numbered lists. Again, this makes it easier for readers to quickly scan the information you present in your post. Numbered lists are also a great way to help clarify the order of steps in a process or the relative importance of the information listed.

In addition to the writing itself, you should look for ways to improve the user experience on your blog. This includes everything from using white space effectively to making sure your website loads quickly enough. A user’s first impression of your blog will be its appearance—before they even get to read your words—so set yourself up for success with a positive user experience.

3. Add Other Resources

Most of the time, a single blog post isn’t enough to comprehensively cover every part of a topic. And why should it need to be? Deliver what you promise to readers in your title, meta description, and introduction, but don’t be afraid to point them to other resources for further reading or more information. It’s an excellent way to bring readers to other pages on your website and help them find what they need. Consider adding one or more of the following to your next post to help improve your blogging:

• Internal links: These are links to other pages on your website. If you touch on a topic you’ve covered in more depth in another blog post, link to it for readers who want to know more. You can also link to the page of the product or service you’re discussing, giving readers a way to quickly find and purchase it, or link to your contact page for readers who have more questions.
• External links: These are links to pages on other websites. You can link to any studies or research you reference for those who want to learn more, and you can share other resources your audience may find valuable. Just be careful not to direct users to your competition.
• Visual aids: Photos, graphics, infographics, animations, and videos are all visual elements you can add to a blog post. These can grab users’ attention, break up long passages of text, help convey your ideas, and more.

Contact Online Optimism for More Help with Blogging in New Orleans and Beyond

Online Optimism is a digital marketing agency based in New Orleans with clients all around the country. Our SEO and Content Department can work with your business to write blog posts that fit your voice, share your expertise, and adhere to these blogging best practices and more. We can also produce photography, graphics, infographics, animations, videos, and more for your business. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.