1. What’s Your Passion?
What compels you, motivates you, or gets you fired up? For us, we’re all revved up about blogs and the ways they can help promote, position, and build knowledge bases for businesses and organizations. Determine your own passion and then write about it. The more passionate you are about your topic, the more it shows in your writing.

2. What’s In It For The Reader?
Readers don’t care about old news or second hand knowledge. They want a compelling reason to read your post; they want to know what’s in it for them, so give them what they want. How can you help readers gain new information, avoid the same mistakes you’ve made, or try a new approach to save time, money, headaches, or all of the above.

3. Keywords Are KEY
Figure out the words people use to search for the topics you’re writing about. Then use those keywords throughout your blog in the body text and the headlines. This will help search engines find your blog. Remember not to use too much jargon or too many technical terms in your blog posts. Readers typically prefer posts written in common language.

4. Get To The Point
If possible, write concise posts. Most readers often prefer posts that are easily read in a few minutes. Stay on topic, quickly convey your message, and then leave the reader to think.

5. Create Your Own Style (and stick with it)
Readers like to know what to expect, so you should be consistent with your writing style. Make sure your blog is easy on the reader’s eye. Decide on colors, font style & size, and format, and then stick with it for every entry. This helps your blog to look more professional.

6. Scan-able Posts
The easier it is for the reader to scan your post, the more likely your post will be read. Don’t smush 49 sentences into one long column; it will overwhelm the reader. Make sure to leave lots of white space. Use paragraphs, bullet points, headlines and subheads (see below).

7. Snazzy Headlines & Clear Subheads
To draw the reader in right from the start, begin with a catchy headline. Snazzy titles (with lots of search engine-friendly keywords) grab your reader’s attention, and give your blog a better chance of being read. Clear and crisp subheads make the post easier to read, while offering the reader a quick overview of what’s inside the post.

8. Create Lists
Bullet points and numbered lists help make the post easier to read. They tell readers what’s important and provide quick summaries of your key points.

9. Edit Your Post
Before you hit the “publish” button, read your post, and edit it for maximum readability. Check for grammar and syntax errors. Sometimes it helps to read your post aloud and edit as you go.

10. Links Are Our Friends
Support your blog post by linking to other relevant sites. For example, if you mention a great new product on the market, then you should link to that product right in that sentence. Or if perhaps, you think this post you’re reading on “How To Write In Your Blog” is the most brilliant thing you’ve read in weeks, you could link to it in your own blog. It’s a good idea to invite other sites to link to your blog. This improves your blog’s ranking and popularity.

In this Google-centric world, people are obsessed with their ranking, their traffic, or, at a more basic level, just want more site visitors. We advise people to watch their site stats monthly, even weekly, to tie into their marketing campaigns, press releases, etc., but for some clients, that’s too time consuming or confusing. (Current clients: want to learn more about your stats? Email me!)

There are several techniques you can employ at no or low cost to get more people to come to your site:

>Write a blog. A blog, you say? Like this very one I am reading, you ask? Why yes, find a topic you are passionate about, or that your company specializes in, a service that you can provide for clients and customers, and write about it. To read some basics on blogging, read Alaine’s entry from Feb. 13. Write about how national news ties into something your company is doing. Write about your favorite services locally. Brag about your kids, business awards, or post photos of your cute dog. Get some fresh content up there so returning customers, or potential clients, see who you are, what you do, and how you do it better. Wouldn’t you rather work with a company with some personality and expertise than a faceless generic company?

>Optimize your site. That’s just a fancy way of saying, make sure your keywords, metatags and site are set up to make the most of those creepy crawly web spiders that the search engines biggies use. Do you know the keywords that people would use to search for you? Do you have compelling title tags on each of your pages? We can help make sense of the SEO gobbleygook, just ask!

>Send out an email newsletter/update to current and prospective clients.
Many local companies and organizations do this very well. Menlo, the Ann Arbor Area Chamber, and Brogan Partners are just a few of the many I receive, and I am almost always clicking on a tidbit or story to read more, which leads me right to the business’ or organizations’ website. Give readers an incentive to read more, register for an event, purchase something, or just contact you with simple links and lots of entry spots in the enewsletter.

>Never leave your office without business cards. Maybe I’m just nosy, but every new business card I acquire, through a networking event at the IT Zone or the Chamber, or a friend-of-a-friend, I immediately go back to my office and look at their web site (assuming they put the URL on their business card, of course.) Now I know that’s what we do here at ICM, but I want to see what their company is all about and you’d be surprised at what I find and the many, many websites in need of an overhaul. But that’s a topic for another day…

>Wait, I don’t even have a website—do I need one? That’s where we come in. Call us, let’s grab some coffee, and talk about if we can work together.