Marketing

  • Content Writing

    Anatomy of a Killer Blog Post

    Blogging gives an average person a chance to share a unique part of themselves on the internet. Started in the early 2000s, blogging was somehow an online diary for content writers. Soon, they were gaining audiences and engaging in consumer interactions. Time moved fast, and it is now demanded by many and is used for various purposes.

    With the internet being widely accessible and filled with talented writers, it may be difficult to compete. But it’s not impossible. A simple Google search can give you a lot of tips on how to write the best blog post, which mostly consists of a catchy title, a good headline, and throw in some ‘call-to-action’ for spice. It is about right—simple and manageable. But to have a killer blog post is way easier than these.

    Of all the blog posts on the web, how can you make yours stand out?

    A blog post can be written based on the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of the writer. “Show them your personality,” they say. You can do this—if you’re in 2005. Today, we’re not settling for the bare minimum. This year is dedicated to doing 101% more than the standard. A killer blog post must exceed the bar– if it’s on the ceiling, make yours up into the atmosphere.

    Captivating Title

    Come up with striking words, but easy on the eyes.

    Let’s not pretend that books are not judged by their cover. Recent studies have shown that the average attention span of Millenials is 12 seconds, while Gen Z has 8 seconds. Providing a captivating title for a blog may fit your audience’s attention span while hooking them onto reading the content. Simple but striking words enable your blog to pass off of the rejection phase that may occur in the first impression.

    However, working smart is still better than working hard. The internet, being filled with hundreds of thousands of blogs of all contents, has to filter each of them. Learning and cultivating your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This process will allow your blog to be found easily on search engines, like Google. The whole process involves knowing your audience, taking points of what they search for, and incorporating those words and tags in your blog. If you aim to be on Google’s first page of results, invest in this starting on your title.

    Mind Your Headline

    Contemplate about it, make it as catchy as you can.

    Not everyone will read your content even if you passed the rejection phase. A good headline will give you another chance to hook your readers. And make them feel that they need to consume your content. It is essential to any write-up, in news, emails, articles, etc. Not only it allows your audience to take a peek at your topic, but it will also define part of the success of your blog.

    Introduction

    Give us some context.

    When we tell a story to a friend, nobody jumps into the highlight. A context is demanded to understand the story and be able to deliver the right reaction to its highlight. Similar to blogging, an introduction is a space to provide context to the audience about the topic that you will talk about for the next 700 words. However, it is not necessary to squeeze the entire history of the topic into this space. Provide the readers with the right amount of information for them to comprehend the essence of the blog.

    Use Subheadings

    Blogs should be easy to read. Having chunks of paragraphs alone does not count as ‘easy.’

    For example, you’re writing about the Best Birthday Gifts for Boss Babes and provided a list of possible options. The subheads will allow the readers to pick what charmed them best and be able to read through it without missing similar information (which can be in other paragraphs).

    The subheadings allow you to write different sections on your topic. This will make it easy for you to explain certain individual parts that comprise the content while improving your SEO. Use this as a space to put more triggering words to boost engagement. On the other hand, your audience will be given a chance to easily navigate through your content.

    Content/Body

    Don’t be shy, pour your heart out.

    This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. A chance for you to geek out on that topic you love the most. But be careful of oversharing.

    Similar to a conversation, the content/body of your topic is where the highlights of the story are. The information and supporting details are here. Writing it down will allow you to express more concisely, avoiding the unnecessary parts that may turn away the focus of the topic. Much as we all want to lay down every detail, oversharing may shift the readers’ focus. You don’t want a confused audience. Keep everything on a single track towards one goal.

    Graphics/Images

    It has several advantages: (1) It makes your blog more visually appealing; (2) It breaks up the text; (3) Images with descriptions that are optimized with SEO help boost your blog.

    The overall look and feel of the blog page are important in setting the theme or mood of the content. Supporting images/graphics, on the other hand, supports both the text and look of the blog. It also provides an opportunity to explain your topic further through related images or infographics for easier consumption. 

    Call-to-Action

    Having a CTA is not an option. A blog is written for a purpose, a CTA is a purpose.

    The topic may be interesting. All valid points were presented and written concisely. Luckily, your audience read all of it. What’s after this?

    A call-to-action provides the audience a suggestive solution on what to do with the topic you just introduced. May it be a reflection on a relevant issue or a persuasive statement to try an activity—make it visible in your words. Suggest further action as a result of reading your content.

    Boost Audience Engagement through Share Buttons, Links, and if possible, a Comment Section.

    Your audience engagement game needs to step up. It will not happen alone with making your blog link available on Google. You need to make word-of-mouth happen on the web.

    Providing a visible share button on your blog allows your readers to recommend it to others. This will already widen your audience reach. Having to receive a message—say, your blog— from a friend, appears that it is important or it is somehow related to the both of you. This will be an advantage for your blog to appear more interesting.

    When writing a topic, there may be supporting details that may lead to another discussion that makes use of links. This can be used in two ways: (1) a link to your previous blogs. Relating your blog to this new topic may seem to be a part of a promotion—it is, also—but it will enhance the audience engagement of your brand. (2) Links can also be external links relating to shreds of evidence, studies, or statistics to support your details for a better understanding of the topic.

    To create a space for your avid readers/consumers, have an active comment section. This will allow you to have their point of view firsthand. The consistent interaction with your audience will establish trust and engagement to your topic and soon, your brand. In no time, you will be able to know their cup of tea and discover ways to please them better.

    In Conclusion

    The blogging standard today is far from what we knew it was two decades ago. With the increasing number of skilled writers, system changes on the web, and various blogging styles that appeal to the current audience—starting on your own may not be advisable.

    We can’t let you take your first steps on blogging empty-handed. We have created the only, fool-proof guide you will ever need. Use it to your advantage.

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  • Branding, Social Media

    Practical Branding Tips for Instagram

    Branding makes your business stand out. From your logo, theme, and the entirety of your brand’s appeal– branding allows you to be distinguished among your competitors. 

    According to Instagram, as of early 2021, there are already more than 200 million business accounts on the platform. It ranges from the biggest corporations to thriving small businesses. With this huge number, the competition is already tough. But knowing how to make smart moves will give your brand the edge.

    Instagram branding is both challenging and fun for most businesses. While it allows you to channel your personality and creativity, it requires strategic planning. Curating your IG profile and bio are essential steps for great branding. But here’s how you can do better.

    Set Your Goals Straight

    Before starting anything else, you should clearly define your goals. It can save you time and effort on planning, but it also utilizes your resources. 

    Your IG branding goals should align with your business’s current status– may it be directed towards brand awareness, scaling, or customer acquisition. You can use these goals to plan your next steps in curating your account. 

    For this process, you can follow the SMART goal setting. It guides your objective to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Using this can give you a clearer view of your vision and a realistic action plan for your brand.

    Craft the Perfect Bio 

    The first few steps are about your brand’s basic information in setting up your account. Your name, display photo, and a 150-character bio should be utilized well. 

    Your name and profile photo are the most recognized parts of your account. And you want your followers to remember it well. Use the right profile picture– a unique representation of your brand. When it comes to IG handles (usernames), it should most likely be the same as your company’s name or a shortened version of it. This allows your audience to identify you even outside social media.

    Under your displayed full name is the IG bio. With a 150-character limit, you can put as much information about your brand as possible. You can include your brand description, services, and links to your website. Make sure to write a copy that perfectly describes your brand and is engaging enough to attract prospects. Also, take advantage of that free space and use it to display your seasonal offers or featured products.

    Develop a Theme and Stick with It

    IG is a visual platform, and you should use it to your advantage. This can be your creative space to showcase your brand’s personality and aesthetic. It includes a similar look and feels in terms of content, a consistent tone in captions, and the overall look of your IG feed. 

    First, your content may vary according to your offers and branding goals. Creating your strategy will help in a more consistent posting. You can create a content calendar, use tools to schedule posts, and even repurpose content from your website.

    IG captions help provide context to your posts. It can also include questions, polls, and other engaging content. Make sure to set a tone that matches your brand’s personality. Your captions can be informative, creative, or interesting– or maybe all of it simultaneously.

    Next is visual appeal—the theme, colors, and even letter fonts matter. Be consistent with the ‘feels’ you’re trying to show your audience. Stick with a pleasing color palette that matches your brand. 

    Lastly, take advantage of the Instagram feed. The grid format gives you a chance to create specific patterns, mix and match colors, or section them according to the year’s season. The possibilities are endless. You can also draw inspiration from other brands that you follow. But keep in mind to stick to your branding guide.

    Utilize IG’s Features and Tools

    Instagram has many built-in features that you shouldn’t sleep on. Aside from the built-in editing tools to improve your photos and videos, other features can enhance brand visibility when used well. 

    You can create a branded hashtag specific to your account to have your own space. Using this on your posts can improve brand recall. Encouraging your followers to use it can help you track your engagement and enhance your visibility. Along with this, you can also use popular hashtags to appear to a broader audience. 

    Instagram live is another feature that you can use to increase engagement among your followers. It encourages first-hand interaction with your brand, which can help with building a better connection. You can also use this to show the company’s behind-the-scenes happenings or teasers for your future offers. It allows your audience to know you and your brand better.

    Schedule and Publish Quality Content

    Publishing content regularly increases your brand visibility. Part of IG’s algorithm is increasing your visibility on the accounts that regularly interact with you and those that post consistently. But posting alone will not work. As a brand, you should provide value to your audience.

    There’s no fail in giving valuable content to your audience. It makes your brand a reliable source of information in your chosen field/industry. Having this kind of credibility encourages your followers to trust your brand. To consistently appear in their feed, you have to post regularly or, if possible, within a schedule. 

    It will help if you plan and schedule your content. Social media is not the only thing you will do. And even if you hired a social media manager, scheduling gives you more leverage in the coming days. It can also save you energy in curating your content, as you can do it ahead of time. You can do more important things while ensuring you can still provide quality content.

    Leverage trends and be social

    Social media users are always driven by following trends. It’s a way of staying in touch with the digital world and keeping users updated with profound changes. 

    Use this opportunity to stay in touch with your audience and see what they like. Keeping your brand updated to the latest trends shows that you care about what they are into at the moment. Participate in challenges, use relevant templates, and you can eventually create your own.

    Final Words

    Starting as a social site, Instagram grew and developed the potential for business platforms. It allows businesses and customers an improved interactive experience. Creating a cohesive Instagram presence shouldn’t be as hard. It is a strategic process that can be fun, too! Choosing realistic and practical steps in branding can help you turn your vision into reality in no time. Start channeling your creativity and watch your brand shine.

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  • Marketing, SEO

    A Beginner’s Guide to SEO

    Have you ever wondered how many blog posts are published every day for SEO purposes?

    In WordPress alone, there are millions of articles posted a day, which means a couple of blog posts go out every second, with the many users WordPress has. And that’s only for WordPress. If we include other platforms, there will be way more than that.

    So, why is blogging utilized by businesses for their websites or online platforms? It’s
    because ranking on the front page of Google search is one of the deciding
    factors for business success.

    Showing up on the front page of the search engine proves that your website or page is getting more traffic than the rest of your competitors in your niche.

    This marketing technique is what we call Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

    What is SEO?

    By definition, SEO stands for search engine optimization, which we can put as the art of ranking high in a particular search engine through organic traffic.

    It is the process of optimizing your online content, such as the design and writing, so
    that Google and other search engines will show your content at the top result of searches of a specific keyword.

    To explain it further, there are three elements to it: first is your content, second is
    the search engine, and third will be the searcher.

    Let’s say you have an article about Scandinavian home décor, and you want the search engine to show it at the top result to people who would search for the phrase ‘Scandinavian décor’. Manipulating the SEO is the magic that will make your content move to the top of Google’s front page. So you should consider using keywords that are possible search terms by someone who might be interested in your content.

    Sounds easy, right? But that’s not all that there is.

    SEO Strategies

    For some, SEO sounds like something you can do in a blink of an eye – because it’s known as the magic that ranks pages high on Google search. But it is way more than that.

    It’s a long-term commitment to work on your platform’s SEO game before you can rank
    high on search engines.

    There are two ways you can work on SEO, one is a white hat or SEO for the long haul,
    while the other one is black hat or something like a get-rich-quick scheme.

    Getting traffic may not be that easy without the help of SEO, but it’s possible with Black Hat techniques.

    Black Hat Techniques

    With this type of SEO, content marketers only focus on optimizing content for the sake of
    ranking in search engines, not considering the target audience at all. In other
    words, we break the rules to rank high in search engines to get fast cash.

    However, this approach is frowned upon as it often results in spammy pages that can be
    banned fast. Or worse, it can lead to a punishment that takes away the chance
    to scale your online platform.

    Some of the ways content marketers use to dodge rules through Black Hat SEO are stated
    below:

    • Redirecting the user to another site
    • Including Duplicate Content
    • Inserting Invisible Content
    • Linking to Sites with Non-Relevant Content
    • Stuff Content with Keywords

    White Hat Techniques

    If you want to start with a clean slate and you don’t mind dedicating some time to build a
    sustainable online business, then White Hat SEO is for you. Doing this requires
    content marketers to focus on what their target audience really needs.

    Google has its own algorithm and using white hat techniques is playing by the rules of
    the search engine. Here are some of the ways you can produce the best possible
    content for SEO:

    • Create Relevant Content
    • Include Relevant Links and References
    • Label Images Properly
    • Write Complete Sentences with Good Grammar and Spelling
    • Write Unique and Relevant Page Titles

    Finally…

    This is what makes digital marketing, SEO to be exact, so fun and interesting. It’s a
    competition. And it’s a matter of which technique you use to rank high on Google’s front page.

    However, SEO is also unpredictable as search engine rules and algorithms change all the
    time. That’s why there are other techniques that resurface aside from Black Hat and White Hat, including guest posting. But ultimately, what matters is that marketing tactics must be scalable to generate ROI for your business 

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  • Branding, Marketing

    Find Your Ultimate Brand Voice

    Having a brand voice that is consistent and strong is a surefire way to stand out from competitors and be on top of the mind of consumers. After all, your brand voice is what drives all the content you deliver, from marketing to sales and customer service.

    With the advent of the digital age, lots of brands have flocked the Internet that consumers are bombarded with a cacophony of product information. Not to mention being exposed to various slogan shouts from traditional media like TV, print, and radio. That is why it has become more difficult for brands to have a distinct voice and be heard.

    Simply put, a brand copy is one of the factors that hooks consumers to your products, but the brand voice is the driving force that keeps it all forward and put together.

    When you learn how to marry brand voice with your copy, you’ve got nothing to worry about, because then your copy will work for you.

    But first, research what your potential clients would say and use the language that would pretty much get them the first time they hear about your brand.

    First, what is the voice?

    In copywriting, the voice is the sense, character, or idea the readers get when they read your content whether it’s on social media, website, blogs, etc.

    When you’re able to distinguish between the differences of your friends’ or family members’ personalities because of their own quirks, that’s their voice you recognize. Or when you find a note on the fridge and remember that messy handwriting is from a specific loved one, you know immediately who left that message—because the trust you have for them makes it easier to recognize who it was.

    As a business owner, it’s important to identify a distinct brand voice that would set off your marketing efforts. This will help your potential clients trust your brand and build authenticity for your products and services in the long run.

    To achieve that, your brand voice must have the three main ingredients: tone, rhythm, and vocabulary. Without these, you won’t be able to identify a brand voice that sticks.

    Tone is the character of the voice, it’s the color, it’s the feel of your voice.

    Rhythm is the pattern of the voice. Is it witty or serious? Does your brand prefer long sentences or short ones? It’s the musical quality of your voice.

    While Vocabulary is the words the brand use. It should be based on the tone and rhythm of the voice.

    In order to succeed in branding, the first step is to humanize your brand with a cohesive brand voice. There’s no better way to develop your brand’s voice than these writing drills you can do through the worksheet I came up with.

    By using your imagination and getting help from your team, I’m sure you’ll hit the right note in no time.

    Steps to Identifying Your Brand Voice

    1. Pinpoint your brand’s quirks – personifying your brand is the easiest way to get your buyer personas hooked. This is the main reason why there are brands you’ve completely fallen in love with and maybe, hated—because of the character they portray. Think of it the way authors develop their characters in storytelling, there are archetypes, personal wounds, motivations, and so on. These are the things that fuel your brand to achieve a distinct voice.

      Just like humans, a brand must have a personality that must be compelling enough to evoke an emotional response from consumers. This way, your brand can speak directly to leads, like an actual person.
    2. List down adjectives – This one comes as part of pinpointing your brand’s quirks, but I have to lay it out here to remind you. Talk to as many members of your company as possible to brainstorm ideas. Think of adjectives that describe your company’s purpose, or your company culture.

      To make it easier, describe the kind of character you’re building as you point out its quirks. Once the same ideas have been repeated within your team, then you must listen to that, and use those adjectives to jumpstart your brand voice.
    3. Name your ideal spokesperson. Even if you’re not planning to get one, think of a celebrity or a famous person you want to represent your brand. This is one of the easiest ways to give your brand identity.

      Once you have selected someone, briefly explain your reasons. Maybe you’ve chosen a comedian like Ellen DeGeneres for an endorser, then your brand voice must be funny. Or the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, then you may desire a sound that’s motivational and affectionate. Take your pick!
    4. Narrow down your ideas through a brand chart – Once you have identified your brand’s quirks, ideal spokesperson, and the adjectives that describe them, illustrate their relations in a chart.

      Later on, you will realize how it could be an essential tool that will serve as a reference for the copywriter and your marketing team. This is so everyone in your team can consistently use the same voice while promoting your products and services.

    Final Advice

    That’s it! I’ve created a worksheet and shared it with you all for FREE because I want you to nail down your brand’s voice, so I hope it helps. This is important because it will eventually become a guide to write powerful copy that sells. And once you sign up for one of my web copywriting services, we can dig deeper into this.

    Treat this worksheet like a piece of interview questionnaire wherein you’re trying to get to know someone’s personality through this guide. And that, my friend, is how you will develop your brand voice.

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