As a company’s virtual showcase, the blog gives Internet users access to articles – also known as “blog posts” – light and inventive papers which cover a wide range of topics about the organisation. In this article, we will review the blog’s advantages as an efficient digital and marketing tool, before sharing a few tips on how to write a quality blog post.
A great space for press officers to use their writing skills for their agency, your blog offers a good opportunity to put your company’s creativity under the spotlights thanks to sharp, well-written blog posts. Despite an ever-changing social networks landscape and the closure of Skyblog in August 2023 in France after 26 years of existence, organisations can still maximize their blog’s benefits and gain visibility on the Internet by optimizing their content for search engines.
Let us first go over the blog’s popularization before delving into the characteristics of a quality blog post.
The blog’s background
Formerly known as “Weblog” (the equivalent of “journal web” in French), the term was first coined in 1997 by the American blogger Jorn Barger, who is best known for being the editor-in-chief of Robot Wisdom, one of the most influential Internet blogs at the time.
Barger’s goal was to highlight the process of “web journalism”, which consisted in collecting relevant information from around the world and use it to write articles which were then published on the Internet. Those articles would then be signed off and sorted in retro-chronological order, sometimes supplemented by hyperlinks, images, sounds, or videos. Every web user on the blog was thus free to express and share their interests, passions, and points of view (while respecting certain legal obligations, notably in France).
A popular free space
The blog was soon to become the most popular means of writing and sharing papers expressing opinions on a wide range of subjects; one could describe it as a sort of interactive diary – some blogs had a comment space and enabled discussion – which quickly became part of the renowned “blogosphere“.
The trend quickly became popular worldwide: by the early 2010s, one million blog posts were being published every day all around the world. In France, it was the Skyblogs introduced by the Skyrock radio website in 2002 that enabled blogging to take off.
4 significant advantages
Who said the blog was only meant for a personal usage?
Organisations quickly viewed the blog as a straightforward means to reach their audience through accessible articles, which were much easier to read than yearly reports or technical bylines.
The blog offers four significant advantages which can help you:
1. Gain visibility
To conduct transactions and interactions with (prospective) clients, an organisation first needs to get known by the public. The blog is an efficient means to gain visibility on the Internet, as publishing industry-related articles regularly on your blog can help you shed light on your expertise as well as your products and services.
Moreover, adopting a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Internet marketing strategy can both help you gain visibility on the Internet and be better known on your preferred market. By improving your contents to rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERP), you will be able to generate quality traffic on your website and attract new clients and prospects!
2. Improve your brand’s image
As stated above, an organisation’s website often displays thorough, technical documents (such as bylines or white papers) to illustrate its expertise. Whether they be substantive articles describing your activities, vibrant interviews, pieces of advice about best practices, or papers shedding light on your values and commitments, blog posts are a great means to highlight your creativity and your employees’ writing skills.
3. Generate leads
While generating traffic on your website and blog is essential, generating quality traffic is crucial. The blog is a useful prospecting tool that enables businesses to turn the visitors into leads. To do so, they need to publish quality articles on a regular basis, which will meet the readers’ expectations, while inviting them to delve deeper. It will also encourage them to click on hyperlinks leading to similar articles already published on the blog, or on call-to-actions allowing them to comment or fill a contact form to reach out to the organisation. Lastly, the content published on the blog must be optimized to contain the actual keywords typed into search engines by Internet users. It will thus help you target the most engaged audience and obtain relevant client contacts.
4. Maintain good relationships with your clients
Having a blog is clearly the best way to maintain good relationships with your existing clients. By regularly publishing new articles (educational papers, introduction of new services and products, events debriefings) on your blog, you can keep your usual readers posted about your day-to-day. Therefore, sharing anecdotes, describing experiences, and highlighting client – or employee – testimonials helps create a bond with your clients and boost their engagement.
Furthermore, each blog post publication is an opportunity to remain active on social media. A web user who has read a relevant, well-written article is more likely to share it on their own social media through posts or hyperlinks. It then allows businesses to increase their visibility on the Internet and potentially gain new share-of-voice.
Writing a quality blog post: the 4 key steps
A blog needs to contain relevant and catchy articles to capture the readers’ interest. So, what is the best way to write such articles and enjoy the aforementioned advantages?
Although writing a blog post may seem less tedious than writing a byline, you must take many things into account before taking the plunge, whether you intend to discuss a complex topic, work on a recent interview’s draft or write about recurring (or non-recurring) events in your industry – such as the “back-to-school” season, “Black Friday” or Christmas products campaigns.
To truly capture your reader’s attention, you must follow a few essential steps that will help you share quality and easy-to-read content that will further increase your visibility on the Internet.
To guide you in the best possible way, OneChocolate has identified 4 key steps you need to follow:
1. Choosing the right topic
Selecting a subject is the first step. Whether a prominent topic, the combination of an interview and an industry-related theme, or a lighter paper, you must know your topic and determine if you have collected enough information to write a coherent, comprehensive article. You can do so by conducting deep research, drawing on recent, reliable sources (especially if you plan to write on a hot topic), and interrogating experts to obtain the most accurate answers.
Moreover, writing on a topic can also lead to writing future other articles. Rather than creating a long and possibly confusing paper, defining a clear framework beforehand or dividing it by selecting data that could be used later – thus offering you a list of themes ready-to-use is the perfect way to optimize your research and writing time!
2. Finding a relevant angle
Now you know what your blog post will be about. But did you choose an angle? Here, it becomes a bit more complex: to capture your readership’s attention and avoid writing the same thing as other specialists, you need to stimulate their interest by presenting a brand-new point of view. To do so, do not hesitate to read former articles to avoid paraphrasing – not to mention it could even help you to find your own best angle!
Moreover, defining the type of readership you want to reach can help you to find the right tone and determine your goal – as well as your angle. Whether you intend to give a piece of advice, convey information, present a specific aspect of your business, or shed light on a client’s activities, you need to ask yourself if you are on the right track.
3. Working on you blog post’s readability
May the writing begin! Aside from a short and catchy title and a standfirst that sums up the blog post in a few sentences, it is important to keep the latter focused by offering a well-organised article – especially if it is a long one! Although having a quality content is essential, the writing style and structure are crucial. As most articles of all types can be read online, clear content that underlines the right data (whether percentages, products names, or key dates) is vital to capture your audience’s attention.
Nowadays, a pleasant article can be easily written by following a few key steps, such as structuring your article using titles and subtitles, skipping a line between each paragraph, integrating quality images and/or visual supports (GIF, meme, video extract) to illustrate the ideas enunciated, or using bold font and italics to help the readers spot important data (and prevent them from getting lost in case of unexpected – yet common – scrolling on their phone or tablet). Plus, to enhance your writing skills – or your colleagues’ –, adding hyperlinks leading to in-house articles can be a real advantage to generate traffic on both your blog and your website.
4. What about SEO?
Nowadays, ‘‘web content’’ and ‘‘search engine optimization” (SEO) go hand in hand. It allows companies to rank higher on the different search engine page results – notably Google, the most used search engine in France and around the world – to improve their visibility and reputation, widen their audience, and attract more potential clients. They thus need to elaborate a relevant keyword strategy according to the keywords typed into search engines. Unfortunately, this crucial step has become more and more technical. That is why it is important to rely on skilled SEO experts to support you in your projects – feel free to contact us 😉.
To conclude
At the end of the day, writing a blog post is not a walk in the park! To avoid any type of excessive filling, paraphrasing or clickbaiting, you must follow many key steps to shed new light on the subject, show intellectual honesty towards your readership and meet the web users’ expectations in offering them a coherent, easy-to-read, quality content that incites them to share it on their social media.
To sum up: a quality blog post (meaning a well-written and well-referenced blog post) can help you to gain the visibility you need while allowing your employees to shine through creative articles for everyone to read.
Mylène Colombero
