Your SEO writing game may be on point. You’re including keywords, inbound and outbound links, optimizing URL’s and headings and adding image alt text.  However, to make a truly valuable piece of content that is not only educational, but interesting and entertaining is the key to keeping your readers coming back for more.  Even if you work in what can be considered a “boring” industry, it doesn’t mean your writing needs to reflect that.  Great writers have the ability to make even the most mundane topics appear interesting.  But you don’t need to be Shakespeare to make your writing stand out.  Here are a few tips to add some sizzle to your company blog.

Know Your Audience

“The better you know your audience, the more effectively you can create appealing content ideas, make formats decisions, handle positioning and placement, and promote the content.” - Forbes

Knowing you audience is important in any aspect of marketing or sales and your company blog is no different.  Understanding psychographics and demographics will go a long way toward helping you craft more targeted content.  This begins with buyer persona development in the initial stages and throughout the implementation of your inbound marketing plan.

Write In The First Person

“Because the audience is given the experience of being “inside” the protagonist’s head, there is a direct link between protagonist and the audience. Emotions don’t become filtered through the distance of a third person narrator, instead the emotions happen in the moment, as the protagonist feels them.” – Ingrid Sundberg

Building a relationship and connection with your readers is the goal of any piece of writing.  Speaking in the first person helps you to directly relate to your audience and causes that all important “feeling” from your articles.  This makes your writing memorable and increases the chance that people will read your piece in its entirety.

Tell A Story

“Storytelling is a strategy that brands utilize in order to help their target audience not only learn about their products and services, but form an emotional connection that will lead them to remain loyal to the company for years to come.” – Business 2 Community

A story makes you, your company and your writing more relatable and memorable.  Storytelling is not a new concept and dates back prior to the written word.  These types of articles drive customer loyalty and provide educational content in an entertaining form.

Be Personable

“Being personable means you are friendly, approachable and agreeable. Someone who is personable is easy to get along with and is not arrogant or easy to offend.” – Rough Draft Solutions

Being personable doesn’t mean sharing your personal life with your audience, it simply means coming across as open minded and approachable.  This can be achieved by writing conversationally, using shorter sentence and simple language.  This will help you to avoid sounding like a know it all and make your audience more likely to engage with your content.

Take Risks

“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” - Jim Rohn

Taking risks is an important part of business in general and a necessary ingredient in creating outstanding content.  While you want to be careful not to offend, you do want to play a bit on the edge of what is acceptable.  This can be done using humor, refuting an established idea or simply writing about something outside of the norm for your industry.

Make Fun Of Yourself

“Poking fun at yourself lets you illustrate an issue without the risk of offending readers, because you’re aiming at yourself.” - CoSchedule

Using humor involves risk.  To mitigate that risk, you can always just make fun of yourself.  This can make you more likeable and add some flair to your writing without upsetting the masses.  Pointing out previous work-related blunders or something in your personal life that relates to your line of business is a sure way to keep your readers entertained.

Newsjacking

“The term newsjacking was popularized in 2011 by marketing expert David Meerman Scott in his book by the same title. It’s a fairly self-explanatory portmanteau of the words “news” and “hijacking”, because the practice essentially sees marketers piggyback breaking news stories in order to obtain otherwise unattainable visibility for their brands.” – Small Business Trends

When using this technique, it is best to avoid sensitive subjects and focus more on humor and entertainment.  Sporting events, inspiring news stories and movie premieres make for great opportunities to piggyback on a trending subject or hashtag.  One of the most famous examples of newsjacking is the post Super Bowl tradition where players from the winning team exclaim “I’m going to Disney World”.  While you may not have the funds to make this happen with celebrities or on national television, the same affect can be achieved by incorporating trending events into social media memes and blog posts.

Your company blog is one of the powerful tools you can use to drive website visitors, establish brand awareness and improve your SEO.  Inbound marketing depends greatly on your ability to create interesting and engaging content.  To learn how you better harness your website and social media pages and email as lead generation tools, click below to schedule your Free Inbound Marketing Assessment.