Trends are important when it comes to writing and maintaining a popular blog. Just as one look will eventually give way to another in the world of fashion, one style will eventually give way to another in the world of blogging. The type of content people seek out now is different from the type of content people sought out two years ago, and the way that blogs are presented has changed considerably in that time, too. If you’re new to the world of blogging, or you’re an experienced blogger who’s noticed that your post engagement isn’t what it used to be, it’s time to freshen up on the latest blogging trends.
There are a few things that a good blogger needs to consider when they’re putting a piece together. We’ll leave the obvious things like spelling and grammar out. It’s 2020. If you can’t be bothered to put your material through a grammar and spellchecking service before publishing it, you shouldn’t consider yourself a blogger. Whether it’s readers, potential employers, or even potential romantic partners, bad spelling puts people off. Don’t do it.
Instead of talking about the basics, let’s hone in on the trends that are defining success or failure for blogs right now. Here we go!
Point One: Be Useful
The primary purpose of any business blog is to generate business. Blogging for business is done to either draw attention to a product, to directly sell that product, or to generate referrals to somewhere else the reader can buy products from. The latter is known as affiliate marketing and is one of the fastest-growing income generation methods in the world of e-commerce.
Before you can get on to trying to direct a reader anywhere or sell to them, though, you need to engage them with something they’re actively interested in. Nobody clicks on a blog purely to be sold to. They engage with material that interests them. The balance of what’s valuable to your company and what’s of interest to the reader should be 50/50. Open with the big picture stuff, and work down to your sales pitch in the latter half of your blog. All great sales techniques work by establishing need first, and this is no different.
Point Two: Be More Direct
While it’s important to make your content interesting and useful to readers, it’s also important to make it relevant to whatever it is you’re trying to sell. There’s no point ‘hiding’ the true purpose of your article behind unrelated text or different topics. If you do that, by the time you get around to talking about what you really want to talk about, it’s going to feel like a sneak attack on the reader.
Whatever your topic is, put it front and center. If you’re trying to sell cars, don’t do it in a blog that isn’t about cars. Look to online slots websites for guidance on this. They’ve become masters of publishing relevant content while tackling broader themes. Because online slots come with so many themes and topics now such as Fluffy slots, it’s not uncommon to see movie or sports-related content on online slots websites, but the games that feature those themes are always central to the topic of the page or blog. It’s all about cohesion.
Point Three: Don’t Write Stubs
One of the bigger trends we’ve noticed in the past two to three years is that blogs are getting longer. In 2016, the length of the average blog post jumped up above one thousand words for the first time. By the end of 2019, it was above 1500 words. People are happy to spend longer reading blogs that they’re interested in, and they might feel short-changed if you give them too little.
This actually works to your advantage. The longer a piece is, the more space you have to incorporate clever use of SEO text and keywords. Don’t force the content into your blogs – Google’s algorithms will spot that straight away – but take advantage of the longer form to hit your keywords a few times and make sure all of your links are in context.
Point Four: Focus On The Fold
We need to explain this term before we explain how to work with it. A fold on a webpage is the same as the fold of a newspaper. You can see all of the information above the fold just by looking at it, but to see what’s below it, you have to choose to unfold a newspaper and find out what else is there. You would only choose to do that if you were already engaged with the material you’ve already seen.
For a website, the ‘fold’ is the bottom of the page – the point at which the user would have to choose to scroll down to read more. It’s vital to your content marketing strategy to keep people reading if you have further links or product information down there. That’s why it’s important to preview a few things before the reader gets to the fold. Tell them what’s coming up later in the blog, and give them a reason to carry on past the fold.
Point Five: Promote, Promote, Promote
Even the best-written, most SEO-optimized blog post isn’t going to become widely-read on its own. It doesn’t matter how many keywords you slip in there, or how attractive the page looks – it still needs promoting if you want people to find it. Fortunately, that promotion doesn’t have to cost money.
People like to say that Twitter isn’t what it used to be when it comes to marketing, but it’s still one of the best free tools available. Configure your blog posts to automatically publish on Twitter – ideally with a high-visibility hashtag already attached to them – and you’ll start building an organic following. If you have email addresses and a mailing list for customers, ensure that everyone gets an email every time you write a new blog. Don’t worry about people unsubscribing because they receive too many emails – those people were never going to buy from you anyway. People who are interested in what you have to offer will come and read your blogs, and if you’ve done a good job with the piece, it might just prompt them to buy.
