8 Tips To Write The Perfect Blog
Blogs, or ‘Web Logs’, are online journals that are updated frequently, sometimes even daily. An update, (also called an entry or a post) can be anything from just a few lines to pages and pages of text. The most effective blogs, however, typically contain between 400 & 600 words.
Engaging With Your Customers
Blogs are one of these best ways to engage your client base, advertise offers/opportunities and improve the visibility of your business online (SEO), and they are only going to become more important throughout 2019.
Your blog can be used for anything as well, not just information relating to your own business, but anything which you think your clients and customers would be interested – information that will keep them clicking onto your page.
Follow These Tips
Even the most seemingly random of topics, with the right voice, can be made over to appear interesting and relevant.
Follow these top tips when starting your blog:
- Decide upon and develop a writing style that is appropriate to your business. What would work best for your intended audience? Informal and chatty, or Formal and serious?
- Post regularly, even if they’re not all essays! At the very least once a week.
- Enable your readers to comment on your blog. This level of interaction is vital to the business-client relationship.
- Before you start blogging, spend some time visiting other blogs. You can learn a lot about the do’s and don’ts of blogging by reading others. Your suppliers’, rivals’, clients’ and other successful blogs are all mine of information.
- Make a note of everything you think could be turned into a blog. Keep a list of links to interesting news articles or developments, if an idea pops into your head when you’re not at your desk? Make a note of it on your phone!
- Use links and images. No one wants to look at a page full of dry text; appropriate and entertaining images break up the flow of the blog. They also provide invaluable keyword search opportunities, if properly labelled and tagged. Links in your blog to relevant pages on your site will keep people on your website! Links to other sites, or supporting articles add credence to your blog that is also crucial to your SEO.
- Use tags. Like keywords, tags can be used in blogs to highlight particular text to a search engine – all helping to attract other viewers to your blog and, ultimately, your website.
- Link your blog to all your social media channels. This will let all your followers know when new content has gone up – keeping them in the loop and encouraging them to visit your site.
If you keep all these points in mind, you’ll have no problem producing a relevant, interesting and successful blog.
Further Information
If you’d like to speak to us regarding any of our services, including our online marketing services, please give us a call on 01883 372488 or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.
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Taking a Closer Look at Your Business
Google Street View technology provides the opportunity to give visitors to your Google Maps listing and your website the chance to take a ‘virtual tour’ through your premises before even setting foot anywhere near you.
When searching for businesses, consumers use mapping products 44% of the time.*
On average, 41% of these place searches result in an on-site visit.*
Choosing the right restaurant, bar or hotel can often be tricky, particularly if you haven’t been there before. With the updates to Google Street View, you now have the option to help build a level of trust by letting potential customers experience your location before they arrive.
By offering an experience which is immersive and fresh, a virtual experience can help to play a key role in drawing inspire greater confidence among prospective customer and visitors.
The Importance of Building Trust
Google quotes a survey** on their own website which highlights the positive impact that can be achieved by incorporating more images and offering a more immersive experience on your listing.
The parameters of the study are as follows:
- An online survey was conducted with consumers who had searched online for a restaurant or hotel within the previous 30 days (using any device).
- A total sample of 1201 respondents was collected between July 21st and August 2nd, 2015.
- Different versions of a local business listing (one for a hotel, the other for a restaurant) were created to include basic info, photos and/or a virtual tour (the same media were used to create each version).
- Respondents were asked to view one of the different versions for each business (in a randomised order). Each respondent viewed:
- 1 hotel listing + 1 restaurant listing; and
- 1 listing with a virtual tour + 1 listing without a virtual tour.
Note: Presentation of alternate listings were randomized evenly and consistently throughout the field.
- After viewing each listing, respondents were instructed to rate their interest in booking a reservation.
- Ratings for alternate listings (with a tour versus without) were aggregated to understand the impact of virtual tours on interest in the featured business.
With 44% of consumers using map related products all of the time, this is an area which must be tapped into if you would like to take a step ahead of your competition.
Further Information
If you’d like to speak to us regarding any of our services, including our the creation of 360-degree images for your website and Google Maps listing, please give us a call on 01883 372488 or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.
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**Download overview [pdf]
The Basics of Google My Business
If increasing the visibility of your business in the local area is crucial to ongoing success, creating a Google My Business listing is absolutely essential.
Google My Business (GMB) – is a rarity in today’s world because it is a FREE tool to use. Absolutely perfect for any business owner looking to manage their online profile and showcase their products and services, GMB offers a very effective method of increasing your local exposure.
If you have any questions about the importance of Google Maps listings for small businesses and how they can be used to help you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us on Tel. No. 01883 372488.
Features like ‘Google’s Local Search’ results (highlighted in the screenshot below) have been created to help provide a list of nearby business offering the products/services relating to your search. This in turn helps to highlight further information relating to each specific business in the listing including addresses, business hours, categories, contact details, reviews, images + more.
Once a new listing has been created and verified (a process of confirming that your business details are correct), a Google Maps location will be generated which filters seamlessly into the traditional Google Search results for easy access and increased searchability.
Introducing The Basics of Google My Business
A few tips include:
- Choosing The Correct Categories: Google provides an extensive list of categories from which you can choose. Simply choose the most relevant option from the available choices as your primary category and then choose as many as you can that relate to your products/services.
- Use GMB As A Social Media Channel: You can make your listing more attractive by adding posts, videos, images etc which can be posted through the GMB dashboard. Turning GMB into a Social Media channel, the most recent posts will be added to the bottom of your GMB listing during search results and images may also appear in Google Image search results.
- Encourage As Many Reviews As Possible: It is not possible to overemphasise the importance of reviews. Simply ask your customers to review and rate on your listing. Online reviews play a crucial role in helping to separate competing businesses and the chances are, the more positive reviews on your account, the higher your listing may rank and the greater confidence new customers will have that your services are reputable.
Further Information
If you’d like to speak to us regarding any of our services, including our online marketing services, please give us a call on 01883 372488 or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.
