Friday 8 July 2016

Points to remember while writing a sales oriented blog

Blogs have become a paramount tool for promotion of products and services these days. Companies are utilizing this amazing platform to encourage more and more visitors to their websites, where they are actually ready with appealing contents to guide them with a bulk of information and lot more. For example, An eCommerce website trying to sell an LED Television publishes a blog about, How LED TVs are saving a huge amount of electricity. In it’s blog it may present some information about the televisions on their eCommerce site which do not consume much electricity. In this way, they can promote their products in a much agreeable manner by encouraging readers to at least have a look at them on the website.

I have used the above example to emphasize the fact that, sales oriented blogs are not just about views, is but a set of information which ultimately links a customer with someone who is selling something. Informative contents accompanied by some suggestions make blogs these days. Blogs are playing the role of a magnet which attracts the traffic of seekers to a particular website. Blogging gives better search engine optimization opportunities, increased traffic, and more inbound links to our websites.

Here, I have tried to put forward some vital considerations one should make while writing a sales oriented blog.  

1. Identify the target audience

In order to accomplish an effective blog/ content it is very imperative that you know your audience properly. Writing without a motive doesn't bring out an effective content, and motive comes out when you are aware of the people for whom you are writing. Knowing your audience helps you to decide the type and level of details you should provide in a blog post.

For example, you don't have to fill your content with technical vocabularies when you are writing for some general audience who don't understand technical terms well. We try to put forward simple words and sentence structures which can be easily understood by a techie or non-techie.  

2. Identify the key issues of the target audience

When you know your audience, your next job is to identify the critical issues faced by your target audience. The issues faced by an audience varies from place to place, time to time, and audience to audience. A proper blog is one which identifies the issue and provide some solution for it.

Identification of issues faced by your target audience help you to plan your contents in right way so that it provides an appropriate solution where you can also mention the products or services that you can provide to sort the issue. In this way you ensure the path for conversion optimization for various products on your site.

For example, a company selling laptops will try to discover the issues faced by a customer in deciding which laptop should he should buy. Here, in this case, we try to find out the needs of the customers seeking new laptops. We discover the needs and plan a content which would solve the issue by suggesting them laptops according to their need. Please note that the needs of customers could be different from person to person. Say a person might want a laptop for his professional usage while other person might want the same for his personal use.  

3. Build your competitive advantage by proving your point

When we include our business in the solutions that we provide in a blog, we should make sure that we build a trust among the readers by providing a complete detail of the product which could also be followed by enlisting the benefits of the product for the user. This detailed information we provide to the readers helps in building a trust in the customer regarding the quality of the product or service we can provide to them.

Considering the same example of the laptop, I have mentioned in the former point, we can provide readers with a detailed information about the features and specifications of the laptop. We can add positive reviews and appreciation our product has got from general and certified users. In this way, we can present our business in the blogs as such it develops a trust factor in the readers.

4. Present your blog as an interaction rather than a one-sided lecture of suggestions

Present your ideas as if, you are talking to the reader, and your approach should be more and more interactive yet informative. When you know your audience and discover their issues, you come up with proper suggestions which fits their need. This imparts a sense personal touch in the readers.

For example, if you identify the key issues of a new laptop seeker and present the suggestions specific to this group of readers in their understandable language, then this content will have a much positive impact rather than a dry product specification full of technical words which cannot be even understood by a general audience. Let consider a situation when a reader from non- technical background wants us to suggest a laptop which needs lesser charging time. We cannot say him that you should choose this laptop because it comes with a10.000Ah lithium ion battery . Its better if we say like “ this particular laptop comes with a 12 cell lithium ion battery with 10,000 Ah power which makes it store more power than other laptops, that’s why the battery of this laptop lasts longer”.  

5. Use of decent multimedia contents

Use of decent multimedia contents | Knowband
Blog accompanied by a video post proves to be more effective.

Try to provide appropriate images or videos where ever necessary. It will increase the interactivity of the post and build confidence in readers. Images and videos make the posts interesting and also clears a significant proportion of doubts instantly. Here is an example of a blog post accompanied by an amazing video. The post explains how a post accompanied by a video can have impact on your audience. The point is, text alone is not sufficient for an impactful conveyance of a message. You need to make it more infographic to serve its purpose properly and also impress the Google panda algorithm which emphasizes on the quality of contents rather than keywords for ranking the sites.

6. Allow discussions on your posts

You should allow the readers to discuss your contents by using comments and replies. You can utilize this feature to gain support for your post from readers. Also, we should remember that replying to comments and queries made by reader make them more and more interested, and also encourage them to follow your future posts. So, always reply to the questions raised by the readers. A more discussed post gains more popularity among the readers resulting in increased curiosity and engagement of the readers to the post. This automatically helps in the SMO of your content over the internet which is cheaper than the paid services of Pay Per Clicks.

7. Keep the positive reviewers and potential customers in the limelight

A blog can be utilized to identify the potential customers by analyzing various comments and reviews it gets from the readers. Identify the positive reviewers and, encourage them for discussions by replying them with their queries. This encourages other readers to take part in the positive discussion. We can identify the positive reviewers and reach them with our products and offers. These positive reviewers have much chances of getting converted into buyer. In this way, a blog can also act as an effective tool for lead generation and search engine optimization.  

8. Use memorable and precise headings

Use memorable and precise headings | Knowband
A catchy Headline can grab the attention of several interested readers.

You must always find the right words to define your purpose of writing. Use accurate and self-explanatory headlines. Try to bind your whole idea of writing in a catchy yet accurate heading.

Here is an example of a blog with a very catchy headline which is explaining the ways to sell those products which don’t sell easily. I think, this headline catches the attention of several sellers who are facing problems similar to the headline of this post.

9. Care about grammar and punctuation

A blog is a reflection of what your company does; there isn't any hard and fast rule for writing blogs but caring about correct grammar and proper use of punctuation could bring out an effective blog content for your business and prevent any misconception as explained in this Example.

A wrong placement of comma(,) can change the meaning of the whole sentence

Version one: Stop, don’t go. - meaning: saying to stay. 

Version two: Stop don’t, go. - meaning: saying to leave.

We saw how a comma could result in two exactly opposite statements. Thusly, it's vital that we take special care of punctuation while writing anything.

Blogs are the supplement tool for guiding our customers toward our website, provided that we care about some very basic approaches in writing and perform a proper utilization of keywords and other aspects of search engine optimization. I hope, the implementation of the strategies as mentioned above would bring out desired results for all those who are seeking a solution for writing an effective blog for the SEO of their sites without violating the terms and conditions of latest algorithms like Google penguin and hummingbird update.

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