What Should A Blog Post Do For Your Site?

When it comes to publishing content regularly on a blog, we all know that it is an important thing to be consistent and to keep putting out fresh content to a schedule. However, what can sometimes fall by the wayside when a business tries to keep to their content schedule is the value of that new content. In the rush to keep on publishing new pieces of content, we can sometimes lose sight of what each blog post is supposed to do, both for the business posting it and for the people who end up seeing it. Here we look at the fundamentals of what a blog post is supposed to achieve. If you struggle to create regular content that does all of this, or you don't know where to begin with your content strategy, then it can be a good idea to talk to a professional agency like this Minneapolis content marketing company.

Useful, Entertaining, or Better Yet, Both

A blog post has to give some value to a reader or they will leave your site thinking that it wasn't relevant or helpful to them, and with a bad impression of your brand. In order for a reader to enjoy some content, it either has to be informative, answering a question they have, interesting, perhaps by giving new insight on a topic, or entertaining - perhaps making them laugh or telling them some trivia they didn't know before. If your post can be more than one of these things, all the better. But, if your content is very basic or padded out with a lot of fluff, then it won't meet these goals.

Be aware of your audience, too - sometimes what is interesting or entertaining for one audience may be of no value for others. Consider, for instance, internal company news - some people interested in your business may be interested in seeing photos from the office summer BBQ or hearing about how Amanda from finance ran 10k for charity, but others may not, so you have to know whether your business is of interest to the type of people who want to feel like they know your brand as people or those who just want you to give them information about your area of business.

SEO

Your blog posts serve two audiences - real people and search engines. You want real people to enjoy or find value in your content, and you want search engines to be able to accurately tell what your content is about and show it to people searching for similar stuff. Using keywords in your content is an essential part of your strategy, but you do need to make sure they are included in a way that won't disrupt the reading experience.

Shareability and Engagement

The third thing your blog posts should do is encourage users to interact with them (for example, by commenting) or share them with people. Maybe not every post can spark a debate or be worthy of being shared to everyone the reader knows, but you do want to have some posts on your blog that do this. It widens your potential audience, and also encouraged people to remember and think about your site if the posts also have comment threads for them to check back on and read.

These are the most important things a blog post should be able to achieve for your website.