But that doesn’t mean that photography businesses get off the hook when it comes to content marketing. 😉
Today, everyone that has a business presence needs to blog.
Blogging is essential in the current digital landscape, and photographers have a unique opportunity to harness the power of blogging for their benefit and online reach will fall behind.
Fortunately, you can take proactive steps to learn how to blog for a photography business successfully and enjoy a more lucrative business, as a result. Here’s how.
How to Blog for a Photography Business: Why Should I Blog?
If you’re thinking, “Come on. I run a photography business! Why does blogging matter to me?” you’re not alone.
Today, lots of companies are confused about how and why blogging has become so critical to a good online presence.
The answer, however, is simple: blogging is the most efficient way to communicate with customers online, right now. What’s more, it’s seriously lucrative. Here are a few quick stats about how blogging impacts your ROI and bottom line, from Impact Branding and Design:
Websites that blog have an average of 434% more indexed pages than websites that don’t blog.
47% of customers view 3-5 pieces of content before ever talking to a salesperson.
Companies that prioritize blogging are 13x as likely as their competitors to enjoy a positive ROI.
Compared to outbound leads, which have a close rate of 1.7%, inbound and blogging-focused leads have a close rate of 14.6%.
Businesses that blog earn 97% more inbound links to their site.
As many as 80% of customers ignore the paid ads at the top of Google’s results (this is a BIG deal for photo businesses!) and only focus on organic results.
Blogs are currently the web’s 5th most trusted source of online information.
We ourselves at Express Writers rely on consistent content creation to generate our inbound leads. (Here’s a case study on that.)
As you can see, effective blogging has a massive impact not only on your company’s visibility on the web but also on the way people perceive your brand.
If you’re bypassing blogging for paid advertising or (worse) no digital strategy at all, you’re missing out!
How to Blog for a Photography Business: An Example of Success
Jasmine Star is a great example of a Google success as a photography blogger.
She writes a lot of posts and even offers tips that appeal to a typical photography buyer, but aren’t necessarily photography related. Her target clientele is marketers and those who need beautiful professional photography, and she blogs in a wide sphere of topics that will get the attention of her target clientele. How to Get Your Social Media Posts Seen By More People is one of her blog topics, for example.
Are you sitting down for this?
Her blog ranks in the top 3-4 organic results of Google for the highly competitive keyword photography blog.
Jasmine’s consistent, awesome blogging has won her a top spot in Google’s organic results. And for a HUGE keyword.
To find out just how huge, I took that keyword to my favorite SEO tool, KWFinder, and found that this keyword brings in 22,200 monthly visitors.
Jasmine’s blog gets an estimated large chunk of that volume.
Keep in mind this is traffic fueled by Jasmine’s blog, fully organic, without a paid advertisement.
She gained this incredible keyword spot solely through her blogging chops!
Take inspiration: your one time investment per blog, as long as it’s quality and matches what your readers would expect to read (and will love and share), can last for years!
5 Reasons Blogging Matters for Photographers, Specifically
There are more reasons than the tremendous value in SEO traffic, although that’s pretty huge alone.
While it’s true that blogging is critical for all brands, everywhere, it has some unique benefits for photographers. Let’s break it down:
1. Blogging Lets You Show Your Customers Who You Are
For people outside the photography business, it might seem like all photographers are the same. Of course, you know this isn’t true! While all photographers take pictures, each has their own individual style, focus, and strengths.
Luckily, blogging helps you showcase these.
By using a blog, you can show your customers what’s important to you and what you value as a professional. This, in turn, helps you connect with the most valuable, relevant clients and build a sense of recognition on the web.
2. Blogging Allows You To Showcase Your Work
Today, it can be tough for working photographers to find a way to display their recent photographs. After all, few photographers have physical galleries, and, even the ones who do don’t get tons of foot traffic to them.
Fortunately, blogging solves this problem by giving you a centralized location to display your newest work and update your customers. This helps you keep your portfolio fresh and ensures that your clients always see your latest and best images.
3. Blogging Boosts Your SEO in a Way Portfolio Sites Never Could
Some photographers address the issue listed in the point above by creating an online portfolio.
And while this is a smart idea, it’s not a super effective approach when it comes to SEO. The reason being that portfolio sites don’t do much in the way of including keywords, offering indexable pages, or providing valuable, customer-focused content.
They just exist.
They seldom get lots of traffic, and they certainly don’t do much to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Blogs, on the other hand, are much more symbiotic – as we saw in Jasmine’s example.
Designed to allow you to communicate directly with customers, blogs make it easy to target relevant keywords, keep your content fresh, and answer the biggest questions your customers have about your services, different photographic methods, and the industry as a whole.
4. Blogging Makes Your Content Shareable
Imagine this: you shoot a wedding or maternity shoot. You post the photos on your blog and share them on social media (with your customers’ permission, of course). The customer sees them, loves them, and shares the link to the blog gallery on their social media pages. Friends and family of that client, many of whom have been looking for reputable photography services, see the link and contact you to shoot their events. That’s the best-case scenario, right? When you run a reputable blog and update it frequently, it’s also a very likely one. Blogging makes your content shareable, which is critical for a salient photo business.
5. Blogging Helps You Establish Your Personal Brand
Differentiating yourself from the competition is essential for photographers, and blogging makes it easy. Everything from the layout to the color scheme of the blog can be customized to suit your brand image, not to mention that you have complete control over the voice you use to interact with customers.
How to Blog for a Photography Business: 10 Actionable Tips for Your Photography Blog
If you’re reading this, you’re likely considering blogging for your photography business for the first time. While it can seem intimidating to start your first business blog, it’s not nearly as difficult as it might seem. Just follow these guidelines.
1. Understand Your “Why”
The key to a successful blog is having a reason for doing it. While it’s true that blogging is an essential part of running a modern photography business, it’s also not enough to just have a blog you update only occasionally.
Instead, you need to make a conscious decision about why you’re operating your blog and what you hope to achieve. For example, is your blog going to act as a strategy for recognition, helping your customers recognize your work and your brand where it appears?
Or is your blog a movable portfolio that you’ll update regularly? If you’re like most photographers, the answer will be several things at once.
No matter why you’re operating your blog, though, you need to understand the motivation behind it and what you’re hoping to gain from the blog. This will help direct everything else.
Of course not! For one, not all these people are interested in hiring you, and even the fraction of them who need a photographer won’t hire you for various reasons, ranging from geographical issues to a different preferred style.
One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make in their photography blogs is trying to talk to everyone. In addition to being impossible, it’s tiring to be everything to everyone.
As such, you’ve got to pinpoint your audience.
Who are the model customers who hire you? And how can you speak to them more effectively?
Answering these questions by constructing a target persona is an essential method for starting your blog off strong and stable.
The best photography blogs out there succeed because they’re relevant. For example, a great wedding photographer might blog about how many hours of wedding coverage customers should consider purchasing (most people assume they need less than they do, and a relevant blog about how long everything takes would be helpful).
Photographers that specialize in alternative processes might talk about why cyanotypes are so unique, or how large format cameras play into modern-day photography. Photographers who specialize in newborn and maternity portraits might offer helpful tips for getting your baby to pose on picture day or how to help other siblings join the photos in a constructive and equal way.
The more relevant you can be with your blog post topics, the better. In addition to helping your customers connect with your content, it will also make them want to come back for more.
4. Make Converting Simple
When you start blogging as a new photographer, you want to make it as easy as possible for your blog to draw new customers. Initially, this means making it simple for your customers to convert. For best results, ensure that the blog posts you write have all the information your customers need to feel comfortable and trusting in your brand.
This goes for your website, as well, which should feature everything from your location and contact information to your pricing and testimonials. You’ll also want to find creative ways to incorporate calls-to-action (such as “book your session now” or “Get a quote”) throughout your page. The easier your blog makes it for readers to convert, the better off you’ll be.
5. Be Consistent in Your Blogging
You know what’s worse than no blog at all? A stagnant blog that never gets updated. Not only does this show customers that you don’t care about your content, but it also sends the message that you’re not very good at following through. Instead of falling victim to this dreaded fate, ensure that once you start a blog, you can update it regularly.
While the frequency will depend on you and your goals, it’s wise to update your blog at least once a week, if not more often. Once you’ve found a blogging schedule that works for you, stick with it. This is the only way to earn readers and grow your audience, after all.
6. Integrate With Social
If you’re not integrating your blog with your social media accounts, you’re missing out on a large piece of the puzzle. Today, blogs and social media go together like peanut butter and jelly. Without one, the other can’t reach its full potential.
Every time you write a new blog, share it on your social profiles, as well. Most blogging platforms, like WordPress, for example, offer built-in functionalities that make it easy to share the blog post automatically. As you gain likes and shares on your social profile, you’ll also gain readers on your blog.
7. Save Your Best For The Blog
Thanks to the immediacy of blogs, people often assume they’re a place for half-baked thoughts and hastily rattled off ideas. Not so. In fact, your blog should be the home of your best and brightest content.
With this in mind, ensure that everything you publish on your blog has been vetted thoroughly by your quality-control methods. You want to proofread everything adequately, showcase only your best photos and ensure that the formatting of the blog is perfect before you fire it off.
Don’t ever write and publish anything in one day, if you can avoid it. Instead, start drafts and then hone them until they’re perfect. While it’s true that this takes more time, it’s also true that it will deliver better results in the end. When it comes to blogging for your photography business, it’s always quality over quantity.
8. Keep It Professional
Photography is a very personal profession, and that’s bound to come out on your blog. For best results, though, you want to keep it personal but still professional.
This means always getting permission from your clients to share their photos, using discretion when sharing intimate or private photos, and being careful to protect the identities of the people you mention. Over-sharing isn’t cute in any aspect of business, especially photography. When in doubt, don’t share it.
9. Learn Some SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a critical part of blogging, and learning the fundamentals of it can take your blog from good to great. Ideally, you’ll want to learn how to include target keywords, how to format headlines, meta descriptions and titles, and body content, and how to optimize the images in your post so Google can discover them.
While these sound like complicated steps, they’re not!
Here are a few tips to follow:
Keep Your Paragraphs Short
Paragraphs should be between 2-4 sentences.
Include Keywords Naturally
If you’re targeting “portrait photographer in Boston,” you’ll want to include it in your headline, a sub header or two, and throughout your body copy a few times. Don’t overstuff your content with it, though, or you’ll come off as spammy and cheap.
Optimize Images With Alt Text
When you plug an image into a blog, it’s important to use alt text to help search engines “Read it.” Right now, Google can’t interpret images without alt text, so this is a critical SEO component of ranking well. Here’s an example of what good alt text looks like, from Yoast.
Write like you speak. While you always want to be professional in your blogs, it’s also essential to be natural. The more natural you can be in your writing, the more attractive and approachable you’ll be to readers.
10. Keep your topics fresh
It’s easy to get stale as you blog for your photography business. Fortunately, you can keep your topics fresh by writing about things like your recent work, adventures you or your clients have taken, your personal experiences, and general photography tips, tricks, and questions.
Be sure to keep an ear to your readers to ensure you’re writing about topics they find interesting, and covering the areas they want to read about. For example, topics like “10 Tips to Prepare for Your Engagement Shoot” or “What’s the Right Age for Newborn Pictures?” are both great topics.
Your topics should be narrow enough to match your niche. For example, if you’re a portrait photographer, you might not want to write about which lenses to use for landscape photography.
The more you can narrow your topics and your niche, the more successful your blog will be.
How to Blog for a Photography Business, Made Simple
While blogging for your photography business may seem like a new idea, it’s one of the smartest ways to make your company stand out from the crowd.
Learning how to blog for a photography business is crucial. In addition to labeling you as an authority, boosting your SEO, and making it easier for would-be customers to find you, blogging also helps you hone your skills and expand your offering to clients.
This, in turn, can boost your entire business and help you grow your bottom line in a big way.
For more information about blogging for your photography business, or to find a team of writers who can help you create content you’re proud of, contact Express Writers today! We have photography writers ready to create your blogs, and blogging packages that are completely hands-off.
According to Time, that’s how long the average human’s attention span is these days.
For content marketers, that means grabbing someone’s attention is a lot of work and you have less time than ever to do it. This requires more than a little bit of strategic thinking.
How do you claim your readers’ attention? Is it even possible?
The truth is, you still have the chance to do it, but that chance is slimmer than ever.
It all comes down to your introduction and the first few sentences.
But no pressure! 😉
To help you craft that picture-perfect intro, here’s everything you need to know about crafting killer blog intros in the modern world.
Why Are Your Blog Intros So Important?
In a world of rapidly shrinking attention spans, the intro serves a critical purpose: it hooks the reader like bait hooks a hungry fish.
Today, people are accustomed to making split-second decisions about people, places, topics, and yes, online content. They swipe right or left, so to speak, without giving much thought to anything beyond how the thing in question makes them feel at first glance.
This can easily be bad news for your online content because it means that anything that doesn’t jump off the page as interesting, exciting, funny, or relevant is liable to get slashed. What’s more, your intros are some of the most high-visibility pieces of your content.
While most people will at least glance at your intro, not everyone will take the time to read your entire body copy, which means that the intro is the perfect and one of the few places to grab those readers you so desperately want.
Finally, the intro sets the tone for the rest of your content. If it’s boring, everything else is likely to follow suit. If it’s exciting and compelling, you can bet the rest of the content will be, too.
By using your intro to show your readers you understand them and want to provide material they love, you can boost their confidence in you while also branding yourself as an engaging and worthwhile writer. Even a strong headline isn’t enough to do this. Many a blog had a strong headline and a weak intro and lost readers as a result.
The Death of the Weak Word
Writing a compelling lede is a lot like writing an impactful haiku or a great tweet: it takes technique.
One of the most essential techniques you can learn to overhaul your introduction is how to kill weak words.
While this seems simple, it’s the foundation of great opening paragraphs.
Think about it: if your intros are filled with weak, flabby words, they won’t be impactful, and if they’re not impactful, your readers won’t stick around.
For your introductions to succeed, weak words need to be chopped out and replaced with more exciting and emotive alternatives.
Thanks in large part to the dismal nature of the human attention span and the fact that introductions can’t, by nature, ramble on forever, there isn’t a lot of room to include bulky, pointless, or weak words. This means that killing them is essential.
At the end of the day, learning how to trim the fat in your writing, and especially in your introduction, is the only way to create strong content that reflects well on your brand.
Include weak words, and you’ll sink, cut them, and you’ll float to the top of your readers’ minds.
Example of a Strong Vs. Weak Blog Intro
Let’s put a strong blog intro vs. weak side by side to truly impact you on why studying how to write a great blog intro is so very crucial.
Can you spot which one is “strong” as you review these two blog intros, pulled from the web?
First example:
Second example:
The first was from GoDotMedia, the second from SmartBlogger.com.
Can you see at a glance which one you personally like better?
It probably took you less than 8 seconds to make that decision. At a glance, there is one that sticks out far more powerfully.
Let’s explore how you can write powerful intros for your blogs, all the time, without fail. Ready?
How to Write Killer Blog Intros 101: 10 Fundamental Tips for Greatness
Writing great blog intros is a little bit like becoming a weightlifter – you have to work up to it and learn the right steps along the way. Here are ten foolproof tricks to get you there.
1. Embrace The Process Of Self-Editing
Quick: what’s your favorite novel? Okay, now how many drafts of that book do you think its author penned? When it comes to great writing, self-editing is essential.
Even the best writer needs to go back through his or her writing, again and again, to ensure it shines, and anyone who doesn’t embrace this process is likely to fall short.
Hemingway is famous for having said “I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times…the first draft of anything is s&*t.”
With this in mind, don’t expect the first version of your introduction to also be the last version of your headline. To succeed in this business, you must master the process of self-editing, especially when it comes to your most critical piece of content – the first few paragraphs.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice
Great introductions are formulaic, which is both good and bad news. It’s good because formulas are, by definition, things that can be memorized and learned. It’s bad because it means you’ll have to put in the work required to master it.
Luckily, practicing your introduction writing skills and learning which tricks help churn out the best ones is something everyone can master.
3. Minimize Modifiers
Modifiers:
“really,” “very,” and “literally” are “fluff”
These are words that don’t belong in your introductions, or anywhere in your content!
The more you can cut these out, the more impactful your headlines will be.
Instead of using these low-impact filler words, use a replacement verb that’s more powerful and compelling than the one that came before it.
They also evaluate length, impact, and wordiness to help you craft your best headlines yet. Once you’ve nailed a great headline, you can use that momentum to carry you through a stellar opening paragraph, as well.
5. Conduct Multiple Rounds Of Edits
If you’re only editing your intro once, or not editing it at all, you’re falling into dangerous territory. For your intro to be impactful and compelling, you need to put in the elbow grease required to make it shine.
This means at least two rounds of edits, separated by at least six hours. Don’t ever publish a blog without this. The two rounds might seem overkill, but they serve an important purpose.
The second round of edits allows you to see things you missed the first time, and identify different areas for improvement in your intros.
See how the first sentences live on their own line?
That’s a great tactic because it’s visually impactful and simple enough to root its way into the reader’s brain.
Continue this all the way down to your first headline, where it makes sense to.
The shorter your first (and first few after that) sentence is, the punchier it will be, and the more likely your readers are to remember it.
7. Get Weird
Okay, you don’t have to be weird for the sake of being weird, but if you can say something unusual (while still being relevant and professional), do it!
Take a tip from Kafka’s Metamorphosis, here, which is widely considered to have one of the best opening lines of all time,
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
This opening line has been studied in colleges down around the world, and the words that compile this one sentence are tremendously powerful. What’s more, variations abound, because the book wasn’t even originally in English – it’s been loved across multiple countries. (Guardian)
Who, pray tell, is going to stop reading after that?
The more unique you can be in your opening lines, the better chance you have of hooking your reader and keeping them interested.
8. Don’t Repeat Yourself
At this point in your content, you’re still so close to the title that one of the worst things you can do is repeat it.
For example, if your title is “10 Ways to Make Money and Be Successful,” your opening line should not be “Everyone wants to make money and be successful.”
Not only is this repetitive, but it’s also insulting to the reader’s intelligence. According to HubSpot, it’s much wiser to assume the reader has already read the title, and move on with a statement that reinforces or adds to it.
9. Write In The Second Person
Second person is the most personal type of voice to use in your online blog writing.
To grab your reader right off the bat, and show them that you understand what it’s like to be in their shoes, use the word “you” as you write.
This will showcase to your readers not only that you’re creating content with them in mind, but also that you care about them and have developed the content to be useful and relevant to them. When it comes to intros, that’s an attractive place to start from.
10. Follow A Structure
I mentioned earlier that great intros are formulaic, and they are.
As a general rule, you should dedicate two sentences to the topic of the article (“This article is about X”), two sentences to why it matters (“This affects you because Y”) and at least one sentence addressing a pain point, outcome, or lesson the content will cover.
While there’s some flexibility in how you structure these components, being sure to include them is essential for great intros.
BONUS: 4 Industry Secrets to Create Stellar Intros
Curious how you, too, can create great intros?
Here are four secrets used by the pros.
1. Talk Directly To Your Reader
I know, I know. You’ve heard this before.
But I’m proposing something different. I’m not proposing you just write to one person; I’m proposing you talk to your reader as if he or she was a real person standing directly in front of you.
This adds a whole new level of engagement to your piece and makes it much more impactful and exciting. Talk to your reader like a friend and show them, in your intro, how much you care about helping them find the answers they need.
2. Play On Emotion
To make your introductions more compelling, use them as a place to play on your readers’ emotions. Strong descriptors are an excellent way to do this, as are intros that show that you understand the reader’s experience. Here’s an example:
“We’ve all been there. You sit down at your computer to start a new day of work, but your screen stays black. You start to panic. What’s going to happen to your documents? While computer issues like this are frightening, they’re so common, and they’re more troubling now that we rely on our devices for everything from work to socialization.”
This paragraph elicits emotion from the reader, and will likely encourage them to keep reading, as a result.
3. Break It Up
The best intros don’t confront readers with a huge block of text. Instead, they use short, 2-4 sentence paragraphs to keep the reader engaged and pull them through the content.
This intro uses short, sweet sentences to make the text seem more accessible and inviting to the reader.
4. Spend At Least As Much Time, If Not More, Editing The Intro As You Did The Whole Piece
The more efficiently you can edit your intro, the better. Spend a significant chunk of time going back through it to make it shine. Many professionals recommend that you give your intro at least three rounds of editing, since it’s such a critical piece of your content.
As you go back through it, look for weak words and phrases and anything that is fluffy, not emotive, or not as powerful as it should be. If you’re not sure, read it out loud and look for places where you stumble or hesitate, which probably need work. Bonus points for passing it along for a friend or family member to read, as well.
In Defense of a Great Blog Intro
A blog without a shockingly good introduction is just a sad shell of a thing.
By taking the time to create an introduction that will knock your readers’ socks off, you can improve your content, boost your engagement rates, and earn yourself more readers, both now and in the future.
If little boys are made of snakes, and snails, and puppy dog tails, and little girls are sugar and spice, and everything nice, what is the perfect blog post made of?
Luckily, it’s a selection of ingredients you probably already have in your content “pantry.”
While throwing together the perfect blog post can feel intimidating, it’s as simple as memorizing a straightforward ingredient list, assembling it all with love, and giving it the time, space, and attention it needs to develop into something extraordinary…
Like a pastry chef creating a beautiful cake. Don’t forget to share if you enjoyed our infographic! Full transcript below.
Feel free to share this infographic, credit to Express Writers: www.expresswriters.com/recipe-for-a-perfect-blog-post-infographic
What Goes Into the Perfect Blog Post?
Before you start assembling the perfect blog post, be sure you have the following ingredients on hand:
1 stellar title
5-10 sentences of compelling introduction
1 heaping spoonful creativity
Several outstanding and informative subheaders
2 cups succinct body copy
Four handfuls research
Six parts formatting
1 part conclusion
A sprinkling of enthusiasm
Love (for garnish)
Once you’ve gathered all your ingredients, follow these steps:
Assemble the Title
The title sets the stage for the rest of the blog post, so it’s important to get it right. If you don’t spend enough time on it, or if you throw it together hastily, the whole post will fall when you pull it out of the oven. With this in mind, be sure to mix the right amount of information, intrigue, and length into the title. Remember titles with numbers taste better to readers, so you may consider sprinkling some in. For best results, be sure to keep your title under 160 characters, so it doesn’t get cut off.
Lay Out Your Introduction
Next comes the introduction. Since the intro supports the title, you’ll need it to be nice and firm. Take your time laying it out and be sure to keep it short, sweet, and to-the-point. Don’t stretch it too thin. Otherwise, it won’t be able to support your nice, hefty title. You should also be careful not to make it too dense since this will drive your readers away.
Once your introduction is the right consistency, let it rise for 4-6 hours before revisiting it again.
Structure Your Subheaders
Your subheaders are the pieces of your perfect blog post that help guide readers through, so you’ll want to ensure they’re well-spaced and informative. For best results, add a subheader every 300-350 words, so your content doesn’t get too dense. Be sure to use numbers throughout, and keep your subheaders impactful and informative, for best taste.
Mix Together Body Copy
For your body copy, you’ll need to assemble your creativity, research, and formatting in a large bowl and stir until well combined. If necessary, add more research to reach the right consistency. Citations are critical to great blog posts, so be liberal with yours. Be sure that the content on your site is fresh and high-quality since this will improve the taste of the entire blog post.
Once you’ve secured your citations, turn your attention to the formatting. Half of the fun of creating a perfect blog post is making it look beautiful. With this in mind, use bolded subheaders, H1, H2, and H3 tags, bulleted and numbered lists, and plenty of images. The images are extra important since they make your blog post unique and unforgettable. Be sure to sprinkle them in to taste.
Arrange Your Conclusion
Your conclusion is the last part of your blog post, so you’ll want to pay particular attention to this. As you write your conclusion, be sure it sums up the main points of your blog post and gives your reader a tasty little morsel with which to end the post.
Just like you did with your introduction and body copy, keep it short, succinct, and to-the-point. Any “fluff” should be cut out so as to preserve the taste and you should always use the most high-quality writing possible.
Keep in mind that conclusions read better if they’re allowed to rest before publication, so you’d be smart to let yours sit for 4-6 hours before finishing.
Finish the Post
Once your post has cooled for 4-6 hours, run back through it one more time. Cut out any fluff that has risen to the top, tighten up language, remove unnecessary words, and re-shape the post into a narrative arc the reader would want to interact with.
Edit 2-3 times before publication and consider asking someone else to read the post as well, for posterity’s sake. Once the post is finished, sprinkle it with your enthusiasm and love, for garnish, and publish across your blog channel and favorite social media platforms.
Serve hot with a side of engagement and responsiveness to everyone who reaches out about the post.
The Perfect Blog Post Made Simple
Congratulations! You’ve just assembled your perfect blog post! That wasn’t as hard as you thought, was it? Keep in mind that blog posts are very flexible, so you can repeat this recipe, trying out various lengths, topics, methods, and writing styles.
To keep your posts high-quality, be sure never to rush the recipe, and always allow time for them to rise and cool before you publish them.
Also, don’t forget to decorate liberally with the love and enthusiasm, as this is what sets one blog post apart from another and puts the final beautiful touches on your blog “cake.”
When you launch a new website, investing in the right content is critical.
In addition to “beautifying” your site with great copy that supports your company’s goals and talks to your audience, good content helps you gain online exposure in the SERP results, rankings, leads, traffic – and boosts your chances of converting new clients.
But which types of content should you invest in, if you’re just starting out?
It can be tough, with questions like do I start a blog, do I create 11 or 50 pages of web copy, launch social media content (and if so, how?), just to name a few. We’re here to help with a guide on ten critical content types for every new site. Keep reading!
Content By The Numbers: 5 Reasons to Invest in Content
First, let’s explore why you should be considering a long-term investment in content marketing if you’re just launching a site.
1. More Than 200 Million People Are Currently Using Ad Blockers.
While this might not seem like it matters much for your site, it means that great content is one of the only ways to access the inboxes and computers of the customers you want to reach.
2. Content Helps To Produce Brand Recall.
In 2015, IBM did a Digital Experience Survey that proved that 56% of content marketers believed that personalized content helped promote a higher engagement rate with customers. The easier your brand is for customers to remember, the easier it will be for you to drive engagement through content.
3. People Spend An Average Of 37 Seconds On Content.
If you want people to spend more time on your website, one of the best ways to do it is to invest in content that makes them feel something. According to Content Marketing Institute, high-quality, relevant content encourages readers to stay on your website longer.
4. Content Marketing Is 62% Less Expensive Than Outbound.
Although many people assume that content is expensive, it’s quite a bit cheaper than traditional advertising and outbound methods. What’s more, it’s also three times as effective.
5. Content Drives Higher Conversion Rates.
When people adopt content for their marketing strategies, they enjoy conversion rates roughly six times as high as those of their competitors.
With these numbers in mind, it’s clear that not only can you not afford to invest in content for your website, but that deciding which content works best with your brand is crucial to overhauling your online marketing strategy.
10 Content Types Every Website Needs
If you’re building a new site, don’t launch it without first ensuring that you have each of these ten types of content:
1. Web Pages
What would a website be without web pages? While many of today’s websites are long-page, one-page sites, it’s still crucial you have some pages for your site. For most companies, an “About Us,” “Contact,” and “Services” page will do, although you may choose to add or subtract pages as you see fit.
Remember that the length of your web pages is an important consideration.
Too long and you risk losing your reader’s attention, especially if you don’t format your pages correctly. Too short, and you risk not providing enough information or detail to be helpful for your readers.
As a general rule, web pages should have at least 300 words of copy on them. While this will be too short to cover most topics, it’s a good benchmark to keep in mind as you start creating the web pages for your new site.
2. Ongoing Blogging
Listen carefully: you need a blog.
Without a blog, your website will not only not perform as well as you’d like it to, but you’ll miss a valuable opportunity to provide your readers with relevance – one of the most coveted and important factors in online marketing.
Although many companies underestimate the importance of a blog, Impact Branding And Design reports that:
Websites with blogs tend to have 434% more indexed pages than their competitors.
What’s more, 47% of customers interact with 3 – 5 pieces of content before they ever talk to a sales rep.
Businesses that publish over 16 blogs/month (4+/weekly) get 3.5x MORE traffic than businesses that publish 0-4 posts.
Wow!
3.5x more traffic than your competitors, just from consistent, volume blogging.
So why are you not already?
Having a library of quality, relevant content can make all the difference between converting a customer and losing them to the sea of other companies vying for their attention. If that weren’t enough to change your mind, B2B marketers that blog regularly earn an average of 67% more leads than marketers who don’t.
Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to integrate a blog with your website. Today, content platforms like WordPress offer built-in blog functionalities that are easy to manage and use, even for beginners. To manage your blog effectively, use its scheduling feature to post consistently and give your readers something to look forward to regularly.
One of our favorite content services is ongoing, consistent blogging maintenance. We write, schedule, create imagery, and publish in our blogging packages.
3. Meta Content
Meta content is an often-overlooked form of online content.
While it doesn’t get as much attention as sexier forms of content like blogs or social media, it serves a crucial role in the online world.
When you Google something, meta content is the snippet of material that appears on the search engine results page or SERPs. Here’s what it looks like:
Meta content works to give you an idea of what information an article contains, and helps you understand what you will learn from a given piece of content.
As such, it’s crucial to get it right. If you don’t know how to write meta content on your own, it’s smart to hire someone who does. When done correctly, meta content will boost your SEO and help improve your click-through rate, both of which can have dramatic and long-lasting impact on the salience on your website
4. Product Descriptions
If you have an e-commerce site where you sell things online, great product descriptions are critical.
Think about it: if a person can’t pick up and touch your product, a product description is the only thing to help them understand the item’s specifications and its value.
To help your product descriptions perform as well as possible, keep them succinct, exciting, detailed, and tailored to your target audience. And to help them rank, use key terms in your product descriptions that are SEO worthy.
Check out this amazing product description from Dollar Shave Club:
When it comes to the “contact us” page, lots of marketers get stuck. Although virtually everybody knows to include a contact form or your contact information here, it can be tough to figure out if you need to add any content, and if so, what type.
Contact pages are no different than any other page on your website, though, and they deserve content crafted with love.
With this in mind, consider hiring a writer to help you craft great “contact us” copy. Think of this page as the ultimate call to action: the more compelling your contact us page is, the more likely people will be to reach out.
6. “About Us” Content
One of the most clicked pages of any website is the “about us” page.
When people navigate to your site, they’re naturally curious about who your brand is, and what you do, and they head to your “about us” page to find out.
It’s essential to make this section of your site as informative and authentic as possible. Stop for just a minute, though; you don’t want to make this sound like every other “about us” page out there. While website content serves the purpose of giving your site some structure, it also helps you brand your company.
As such, it’s important to find ways to imbue your personality into this key page, and ensure that you speak to your reader (and potential client) about your priorities, goals, and objectives as a company. This is a great spot to include some information about your founders, partners, staff, and how you got started as a company.
Take a look at how we do this on our “Who Are We?” page at Express Writers:
We recently did a case study on how much our site conversions improved after we changed our site copy around and included a Values page! Check it out here.
7. Social Media Profiles
Think social media profiles don’t have anything to do with your website? Think again.
When people come to your site, they want to find other ways to interact with you. One of the best ways to learn more about your company is through your social media profiles. This means that when you launch a website, you should have clickable links to your various social profiles in a place where would-be customers can see them.
Before you launch your website, take the time to set up at least a Facebook and Instagram page. Most marketers use more than two social platforms, but the ones you choose to pursue will depend on your brand and personal goals. Keep in mind that you don’t want to over-commit to social media, so you should only establish the profiles that you can maintain. A stagnant profile is much more damaging than a non-existent profile. Once you’ve created your profiles, link them to your blog, so that your followers can get instant updates about all your new posts.
We’ve had new clients find us from our Twitter feed, @ExpWriters, which is managed by a dedicated social media manager. Because of the high quality that she dedicates to writing and sharing content there, the referring traffic have included high-level inbound leads that went straight to purchasing after talking to one of our team members.
Here’s a look at our Twitter feed. You can see that we even join in quite a few Twitter chats, besides maintaining our own:
8. Service Descriptions
No matter what you do, you want to include some information about the services your company offers on your website. Make sure each service description is comprehensive and detailed. Bonus points if you can provide an example of services you’ve provided or jobs you’ve completed in the past.
Although there is some debate about whether you should publish your prices, many experts advocate doing so. This is because publishing your prices makes it easier for customers to get all the information they need the first time they visit your site, which helps make your site more valuable to them.
Besides being upfront with pricing on everything in the Content Shop, we have an overview pricing page. In an industry where very few competitors are transparent, we get consistently good feedback from new leads that can find our rates in a few minutes after landing on our site for the first time.
9. Home Page Content
If you’ve ever sold a house, you know that one of the first things every realtor will advise you to do is improve your home’s curb appeal. The curb appeal is the way that the house looks from the curb, and it’s one of the most important things in the world of real estate.
Think about the homepage copy of your website like the curb appeal of your house: it’s the first thing people see when they pull up. As such, optimizing your home page content is essential. This isn’t a place to skimp.
For an example of excellent homepage content, check out KISSmetrics:
This copy is informative, attractive, easy to read quickly, and it features social proof.
When you write your home page content, strive to strike a balance between being approachable and professional. The text should give readers an immediate idea of who you and your company are, and what they can expect from the rest of your online material.
10. Good Data
One of the most powerful things you can use to convince people about something is data. With this in mind, you might consider including some data about why your service or product is valuable on your website.
For example, if you sell a back brace that helps people heal from back injuries, you might include some statistics about how common back pain is and how support is effective at treating it. These data points should feature prominently on the home page of your site, where they’ll be most visible to your customers
Your New Site Doesn’t Work Without Exceptional Content
Your focus shouldn’t be unequally divided on development. Don’t be that business owner that drops all focus on their copy because “we didn’t think it was necessary.” You can lose every quality lead that’s on your site, due to poor copy.
Think of launching a website is 50% tech (development), and 50% content.
It’s easy for new website owners to get so wrapped up in launching their site that they get sloppy with their copy, but this is a death sentence.
The more professional and cleaned up your site looks when it launches, the easier it will be to get off to the races with your new business or website.
While these forms of content will help make your site feel complete and unique, you’re not done here. Be sure you have an editor and a writer involved, so you’re not missing any critical typos that will make your brand look bad.
Is it time to invest in content for your new website? We’d love to help. Talk to us today!
If you run an e-commerce site where you sell things online, you know just how important your product description copywriting is.
Unfortunately, many marketers miss the bar when it comes to crafting product descriptions that actually sell and return on their copy investment.
If you think about a product description objectively, it’s clear that they’re the first experience customers have with your product or service.
While it’s one thing if a customer can pick up your product and feel it in person, selling takes on an entirely new flavor if that physical contact is impossible.
When the magic of incredibly good product description copy happens, that’s like the Holy Grail of online content – a visitor reads and buys, over and over. Your investment comes back 100x.
If you’re interested in learning how to overhaul your product descriptions and boost both their SEO and customer appeal, read on!
5 Typical Product Description Copywriting Mistakes You Should Never Make
While product descriptions may seem simple, they’re some of the most common things that marketers mess up.
With that in mind, here are the five most common mistakes new and experienced marketers alike tend to make with product descriptions:
1. Falling Victim to Bland Copy
If you think about it, product descriptions are meant to get people excited about your products.
Copy that doesn’t excite won’t inspire conversions. Being too dull or boring will sink your ship quickly. The best product descriptions include some degree of enthusiasm and urgency that makes people want to buy your products right now.
While this is not to say that you should be overly salesy, it is to say that getting excited about your product and letting that show through your descriptions is an excellent idea.
Check out how Dollar Shave Club brings the fun into their descriptions, with phrases like “butter up” to describe applying their shaving cream:
2. Not Providing Enough Information
If a customer can’t pick up your product, try it on, and feel it for themselves, it is essential to give them as much information as possible to ensure that they have what they need to make their purchasing decision.
Unfortunately, one of the most common mistakes marketers make is to offer the bare minimum of information in their descriptions.
If you look at clothing websites like Backcountry, you’ll see examples of detailed, in-depth product descriptions that leave nothing to the imagination.
Backcountry incorporates lengthy user reviews on the page along with their very detailed product description, answering every question you could probably have on the subject, for example with this Patagonia men’s sweater jacket:
Instead of providing a skeletal, textual product description, these companies offer images, videos, and real-life measurements of their models so people can get an idea of how to size the clothing they’re purchasing. Follow this model to make your product descriptions as valuable as possible.
3. Sloppy Writing
One of the deadly sins of online writing, product descriptions included, is to be sloppy with your grammar or facts in your language.
Because product descriptions aren’t quite as glamorous as other forms of content, like blogs or social media, they often get overlooked. That’s a dangerous mistake since product descriptions are some of the most critical forms of content on your website. Plus, the facts within the descriptions can make or break the sale.
Overlook them, and you risk creating sloppy material that alienates customers and may even cost you some sales.
Treat your product descriptions as a high priority form of content. Draft them, and then go back to re-write and edit them. The more attention you pay to your product descriptions, the better they’ll turn out in the end.
4. Not Including All the Critical Details
As a general rule, a product description is not the place to assume that your customers know anything about your product.
Instead, it is a place to give them all the information they need to be educated about your products, goods, or service.
Provide as much information as you have about the product, including background information. For example, if you are a company that sells baby carriers, you might provide information about the baby carrier, and how different women in different cultures wear them.
From there, you can transition to talking about the fabric of your baby carrier, its various carrying options, and how much weight it can safely carry. While most marketers assume this kind of information is overkill, it’s critical to help inform your customers at every turn.
Look how Tula does this with their baby carriers. They even bold the phrases that most parents will probably look for when selecting the best baby carrier to purchase, like positioning, baby weight limits, and key ergonomic and comfort phrases:
How To Write A Product Description That Sells: 6 Actionable Tips
Whether you’re a new e-commerce company just getting started, or you’re looking to improve your existing product descriptions, these guidelines will help.
1. Know Your Audience
The first and most critical step in any good writing is to know who you’re talking to. You have to understand the audience for each product description before you write them.
Who is going to be buying this product? Is it a mom with a toddler? Is it a person looking for inexpensive cleaning solutions? Is it a teenager?
Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to target your product descriptions accordingly, and ensure that each one you write speaks directly to the customers who will be interested in the product.
2. Get Comprehensive
As we discussed above, the more complete your product descriptions are, the better. Keep in mind, though, that there is a right way and a wrong way to be comprehensive. Consider one of the critical lessons of selling anything: don’t talk about the features, talk about the benefits. This applies to your product descriptions just like it would any other form of online content. Instead of telling your clients what your product does, tell them how it will help them.
How will it make their lives better? Which problems would it solve for them? An excellent way to ensure that you offer a comprehensive list of benefits is to start by writing down all of the things that make your product unique before you write your product description. This will help you hit all the nails on the head and be as compelling as possible for your readers.
3. Write Like You Speak
Lots of brands have the wrong idea about product descriptions. While it’s true that they should be professional and informative, they should also offer an inside glimpse of your brand.
For an excellent example of a company that does this well, let’s go back to Dollar Shave Club:
Although their product descriptions are informative, they’re all so funny, which is arguably a large part of the reason the company has exploded in value over the five years since its Inception.
Their internet-famous “Our Blades are F***ing Great” video racked up 4.75 million views in just three months after it went out, netting 12,000 subscription signups in just 48 hours. (Entrepreneur)
Take inspiration and infuse your voice into all the product descriptions you write. This will help keep them approachable and relatable and will prevent your audience from becoming bored stiff.
4. Make Them Scannable
These days, people don’t read many things from start to finish. This goes for product descriptions just like it does blog posts and other forms of content.
With this in mind, it’s smart to make your product description skimmable.
This involves using a bulleted format to showcase critical details of your product, using bolded headers and sub-headers, and dividing the product description into sections like “features” and “compatible with.”
5. Optimize Your Text For Persuasiveness
The most compelling text focuses more on the customer than it does on the product. To bring this into your product descriptions, use the word you more often (third person).
This shows that you value and understand your customers.
It’s also smart to keep the wording of your product descriptions simple, avoid jargon, remove generic phrases as much as possible, and replace weak words with more specific ones. Once you’ve done all of this, read your copy from the point of view of a customer. Does the product description make you want to buy? If not, what can you do to make it more compelling?
6. Optimize All Your Copy For SEO
Last but not least, you want to optimize your content for SEO. One of the best ways to do this is to use your keyword phrases in the headline, sub headers, and body copy of your contents. Just like you would with any other type of text, be sure to keep your keyword inclusion natural rather than stuffing it as full as a Thanksgiving turkey.
Make Magic Happen With Thorough, Fun, Branded Product Descriptions
Creating irresistible product description copy can sometimes feel like working a miracle.
Take inspiration from our tips, and know that in essence, product descriptions are a formulaic type of content everyone can learn.
Most of the mistakes made with product descriptions are simple ones: dry language, a lack of detail, a focus on the company rather than the consumer, etc. – all of which can be fixed with some attention and time.
The more you understand what makes a great product description, the easier it will be to ensure yours live up to the bar every time.
