10 ways to improve your blog (tips for manufacturers)
5 SECOND SUMMARY
- Research what your audience wants to know and write content that solves their problems and adds value.
- Don’t overstretch yourself and create unnecessary work: start small and follow a schedule you can stick to consistently.
- Don’t worry too much about SEO: search engines are so advanced that they know when you’re trying to game the system. Just write for your audience instead.
- Don’t ‘post and pray’ – after you’ve posted an article, promote it repeatedly through other channels.
An industrial blog is a great way to build a brand reputation and gather new leads. However, setting up a blog is only the first step: you’ll need to continue creating the content your audience wants to really make it a success.
Here are ten tried-and-true methods to improve your industrial blog content for your business.
1. Understand your audience
An audience persona is a description of your target audience. For industrial businesses, your primary audience might be design engineers, procurement managers or maintenance, repairs and operations (MRO) managers.
These buyers are often looking for one thing: efficient, cost-effective solutions from reliable manufacturers. Work on creating valuable blog content to make their purchase decisions easier.
2. Develop a content schedule that you can stick to
Hubspot research suggests that businesses publish 3 to 4 blogs per week to boost organic traffic and 1-2 blog posts per week to raise brand awareness. This is a ridiculously high target to meet for most SMEs – even with a team of marketers on your side, it can be a challenge to publish this volume of content.
Rather than trying to stick to something that is unachievable in the long run, figure out which content schedule works for you. Maybe one or two blog posts per month are best for your business and the resources you have available. Whatever you choose, use a calendar to plan your content marketing strategy and stick to it.
3. Polish your blog structure
The three key elements in every successful blog post are visuals, word count, and a strong call-to-action (CTA).
- Use more than one visual per blog post to break up the text. These include proprietary or royalty-free photos, infographics, tables and videos. (You’ll note that I don’t do this much: this is a resources issue for me. I’m sticking to an achievable schedule of posting but simply don’t have the resources to create lots of videos right now. And that’s ok, because done is better than perfect! In the future, I can revisit my old posts, update the copy and add better visuals.)
- 300 words is generally the minimum acceptable length for a blog post, but longer posts are generally better for your lead generation as they allow you to get right into the detail of what your audience is there to learn. On the flip side, there’s no need to pad your content out unnecessarily. If it’s less than 300 words, don’t worry.
- A CTA or call to action is a prompt for your audience. What do you want your audience to do after reading your content? Add CTAs to lead your audience to your contact page or promotional material.
4. Choose the right titles and subheadings
Your title incorporates your main keywords and captures your reader’s attention. It also guides search engines to match the right content to search terms.
Subheadings also help to create a skimmable content structure for people that don’t have time to read your full article word for word. Include your keywords in your titles naturally: nothing makes reading more awkward than a forced headline with keywords shoe-horned into it.
5. Use high-quality links
Links add credible statistics, bring in related content, and lead your readers to other pages of your site. Use internal links for your existing content, such as previous blog posts, whitepapers, landing pages, or any relevant marketing material that your readers may appreciate.
External links should lead to high-quality websites, but make sure to set them to open in a new window or tab. This helps your reader read through related content but maintain focus on your page.
6. Always include metadata
Simply put, metadata is behind-the-scenes information about your content. Blog metadata describes your content body, images, and URLs. For example, a meta description summarises your blog post in 150 characters or less.
Customise your blog links, too: instead of auto-generated URLs, include keywords into your links. The same goes for visuals: alt text replaces your visuals if they fail to load on your reader’s screen and optimise your content for screen-reading tools.
7. Understand SEO basics
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is what drives your blog content, but it is often technical, and the rules keep changing. For your industrial blog, keep these SEO basics in mind to improve your industrial blog:
- Do your keyword research to understand what your target audience is searching for
- Use links and metadata to help search engines to find your content
- Avoid duplicated content. Plan out your content ideas to create original, shareable blog posts
- Use Google Analytics to check your blog’s performance. This tool gives you insights into your traffic sources, engagement rates, bounce rates, and lots of other crucial metrics that guide your content development
8. Write for humans, not for search engines
I say this all the time: your priority is always your readers themselves, not page rankings.
Write content that solves your audience’s problems, answers their questions, and adds value to their browsing experience.
SEO comes second to this since it’s a tool for making your content discoverable. You may have all the right keywords and word counts and everything ‘technically’ nailed down for SEO, but if your article is boring as bat shit your readers are not going to care.
9. Use a checklist for every blog post
Before you publish your entry, confirm that:
- You meet the right word count
- There are no spelling or grammatical errors
- Your blog post includes visuals
- All your links actually work
- Your blog post has the proper structure, including subheadings and lists
- There is a clear call to action
10. Promote your content
You’ve published a blog post – now what?
Know where your audience gets their information from and promote your content there. Share your blog posts via email, on every social platform, and relevant industrial websites and forums.
Some options include pay-per-click ads, newsletters, and press releases to maximise your content visibility, along with sharing your content on your social profiles.
Conclusion
You don’t have to be an SEO expert to write a great article.
These ten tips give you a solid foundation to improve your industrial blog.
At the end of the day, understand your business goals, make a blogging schedule, be consistent, and share your industrial blog as far and wide as possible.
And here’s our call to action… if you need a hand creating high quality, consistent content for your industrial, manufacturing or construction business, we can help.
Get in touch to see how we can work together to grow your business.
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