Do you want to write your own blog posts? Trust us when we say that that’s an excellent decision. Blog posts are an essential element of marketing your business online, helping grow your audience, extend your reach, build your brand authority and maybe even secure you some top spots on search engine result pages (or SERPs, as we industry folk call them).
We think it’s a pretty brave thing to write blog posts, case studies and other long-form content for your business. Not everyone is a natural writer or has access to insider know-how when it comes to blog writing, and putting your thoughts or insights online for all to see can be scary.
Fortunately, we do have the insider know-how, and we’re not gatekeepers here at Nu Image. As the content exec, I spend most of my days writing blog posts for clients, and I have a few tips I’d like to share to help you on your writing journey.
Writing blog posts comes with a lot of dos and don’ts. In this piece, I’m going to tell you what not to do. If you’d like to know what good bits you should be adding to your written content, make sure to read the companion piece to this post, A Guide To Blog Writing – What You Should Do. These two posts are like yin and yang; they work better as a pair. Once you’ve read them both, you’ll have all the tools you need to get started.
Speaking of getting started, let’s get stuck in.
What not to do when writing a blog post
In our ‘do’ post, we talked about blog posts like a cake and discussed the ingredients that make it tasty. In this one, we’ll tell you what not to add to your mixing bowl. Think sawdust, toothpaste and extra hot chilli peppers. Yuck.
Don’t skip the grammar check
There is no limit to the power of good grammar. These language rules are what differentiate between a beautifully written piece of text and complete gibberish. The last thing you want is your audience struggling to make a single lick of sense of your writing, so ensure your post has the proper grammar.
Punctuation is essential and the most useful tool in the grammar kit. Full stops, commas and apostrophes are your best friends when it comes to writing properly. If you struggle with when to use punctuation, that’s okay. There are lots of free tools out there, such as Grammarly, that will gently prod you when it’s time to add punctuation, so have a look around for one that works for you.
While search engines like Google don’t directly penalise bad grammar, bots do look for high-quality content that they think readers will enjoy. Bad grammar means poor quality which Google will recognise as a lack of quality. So, don’t upset the bots with shoddy grammar and miss out on good SERP ranking spots.
Don’t confuse readers with your tone
It would be pretty weird if one day your mate spoke to you casually then the next was nothing but formal. Well, the same applies to your blog posts. Pick a voice for your brand and stick with it. Bouncing from tone to tone is not only somewhat strange to read, but it doesn’t paint your business as very cohesive.
Your brand should have a tone of voice for a list of reasons, the top one being authenticity. When you ‘talk’ to customers, you want to have consistency in how you communicate, as it helps garner trust and familiarity. It plays a crucial role in building engagement and establishing a meaningful connection with your audience, which in time with help to foster brand recognition and loyalty.
Think of your favourite famous brand and you’ll notice that in everything they do, they have a specific way of speaking. A clear and current example of this is Surreal Cereal. Their wild and loose tone has become very distinctive across social media platforms.
If you keep that same tone throughout your posts and beyond, you’ll strengthen your brand and create a personality that won’t easily be forgotten. We’ve written a guide to tone of voice, so have a read to learn more.
Don’t cut it short
300 words does not a blog post make. A post requires a decent word count for several reasons, chief among them being that search engine bots need enough information to learn what they’re analysing. If your post lacks length, it may also lack substance, and those poor bots won’t understand what they’re reading. This would likely reduce the chance of your post appearing high on the SERPs because Google and other search engines won’t view it as informative or high-quality enough to be helpful to the searcher.
When writing your blog posts, give yourself room to get into it. If this post you’re reading right now was only 300 words long, I’d barely be able to cover the essentials, let alone provide detail. You are an expert in your industry and blog posts are a chance to make that known. Give yourself the space to get into detail and provide your readers with the information they were looking for when they landed on your post.
Believe that what you have to say is worth it, and give your knowledge and expertise the respect it deserves by writing between 700 and 1,500 words per post.
Don’t be inconsistent
How many of you have picked up a hobby, gotten obsessed with it, and then given up after a couple of months? It happens to the best of us, but don’t let it happen with your blog posts. Posting once in a blue moon is not going to help you in the long run. Consistency is key.
Google flipping loves fresh content. If you post regularly, it gives the bots a reason to return to your website and crawl it again. It also proves that your business is active. Combine that with the relevance and quality of your posts and search engines will view you as a hotspot for information. In tandem, you’ll strengthen your off-site SEO by building upon your domain authority (a digital score that predicts how well you might rank in SERPs) in your industry niche, helping you get seen by more of the right people.
Our advice is to create a schedule. Decide on the number of hours you’d like to dedicate to creating content each month or quarter and work out how you’ll spread that out and how many posts you can produce. Stick to this plan and, (so long as you ensure your content is relevant, a good length, and grammatically strong) search engines will notice you.
Let’s summarise
For the skim readers, here’s what you should not add to your blog posts to avoid spoiling your chances of blog success and missing out on audience growth, top SERP rankings, and happy readers.
- Don’t skip the grammar check – search engines like high-quality content and bad grammar will bring the quality down.
- Don’t confuse readers with your tone – stick to your brand’s tone of voice and don’t deviate, or you could cause a disconnect, lose trust and readers won’t recognise it’s you
- Don’t cut it short – search engines need enough content to understand your post. Ensure it’s long enough for the bots to analyse and rank, and to get your knowledge across to readers.
- Don’t be inconsistent – consistency is key! Create a regular posting schedule to show search engines like Google that you’re active, and they’ll repay you with authority.
How do you write a good blog post?
We’re going to gather all of our points from this post and our ‘do’ post for the ultimate 8 point list:
- Pay attention to your grammar
- Stick to your tone of voice
- Ensure a healthy word count
- Be consistent and post regularly
- Pick topics relevant to your niche
- Be strategic with your keywords
- Include internal links
- Utilise your headings
Want someone else to take care of writing, optimising and managing your blog? You can hand that over to us while you focus on other important stuff. That’s why we’re here – to team up with you and help grow your business. Let us write your blog posts, using our content marketing know-how to create great content that works for you, your customers and your brand.
Fancy chatting? Call us on 01603 859007 and let’s talk about your content. If you’d rather, you can use our online chat feature to speak to a real person here in the studio who will help you further.
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