Blogging is a very relevant and valuable marketing tool when it comes to relaying important detailed information about your business. In this day and age, a lot of savvy businesses will have a blog linked to their website. This allows them to have an arena to provide greater detail about their products/services or their uses, which would likely be too overwhelming to include directly next to products or services on their website. It can also add character to your brand image, by adding a human element or face to your brand and, if used well and effectively, can be an excellent tool in further enticing audiences.

To get the best out of your blog, we recommend abiding by these handy tips:

1. Title and Headline: Make this catchy and interesting so that it captures the audience's attention. But most importantly make it “relevant” to your content. If you’re going to spend the next blog talking about “cheese”, it’s best to have some reference to it in the title so it’s not in (blue) vain.
   
   
2. Introduction: Your introduction is very important and if it isn’t interesting and informative, you’re unlikely to get readers to go any further. Make sure you outline what your blog is about, albeit briefly, and aim to entice further reading from your audience.
   
   
3. Content: Make sure you keep your content relevant, clear, informative and don’t waffle on. I like to follow, what I call, the three KNOWs. KNOW your business (i.e. know what you're talking about), KNOW your brand (know how you want to be seen) and KNOW your audience (know who you are talking to).
   
   
4. Links: If you refer to previous blogs, have helpful videos or further information they can look at, link away. This is a great way of fleshing out your blog further and it keeps your audience clicking and interested.
   
   
5. Images: Spend some time getting your imagery perfect. A picture tells a thousand words, so apply your three KNOWs here and make sure images used are relevant and enticing enough to get your audience to click and keep them interested once they do.
   
   
6. Finishing: There are several ways to end your blog. Consider closing with a question to encourage audience participation (if you have a comments section) or with a link or details on where the audience can obtain further information and/or access the product/services.
   
   
7. Publishing: Make sure you’re publishing at the right time for your audience. A bit of research will be effective to ensuring you’re doing it at the right time for the most clicks. For a lot of businesses it will be at the close of business (5pm) as it will appear on people’s social media feeds just as they are finishing work today.

• EXPERT TIP: Always, always give it a proof read or two before publishing!
  
  

I hope these tips have been useful and happy blogging!

Johanna
Chief Storyteller