[VIDEO] HOW DO YOU CREATE A SUCCESSFUL BLOG?

Now that you know how a blog can help your Inbound Marketing, how do you create a successful blog that gets you the results you want? Let's look at some strategies and best practices for publishing blogs.

The first thing is to choose a topic and a title. First of all, write educational content. Remember the people who were searching for information on the internet?

Well, then. To attract them to your blog, you need to answer the questions and try to solve the problems they're looking for answers and solutions to. Put yourself in your buyers' shoes: What are your Buyer Personas looking for?

Next, make sure you write about the industry, not about yourself. Remember, you're trying to attract strangers to your blog who have never heard of your company, so they won't find you through search engines if you only talk about yourself on your blog.

Then, create a list of specific topics you can write about on your blog. Ask your sales and marketing teams:

• What are the most frequently asked questions?
• What help do your buyers need?
• What would you like people to know about your industry?
• What are industry bloggers, social media, and even your competitors talking about?

When you're choosing the topic, do keyword research. Keywords are the words and phrases people use in search engines. These are the topics people are trying to get more information about. So:

• Which keywords do your buyer personas use?
• Which ones are related to your industry?

Write about those topics so people find you and you start moving up in search results.

Next, choose one topic to focus on in each post. Don't try to solve every problem at once. This way, each post will be clearer for your readers and for search engines.

This will also ensure that your post receives more qualified traffic, because you'll know that the people who land on it are looking for information on that specific topic.

Finally, and this will help you build a long-term blogging strategy, make a list of topics that lead to a specific conversion.

For example, if you have an eBook you want to promote, consider creating a list of blog topics related to the content of that eBook. That way, if someone finds your post and considers it relevant, they'll be more likely to want to click that call to action to get your offer.

Think of your offer as the heart and your posts as the arteries. Your posts keep a relevant flow of prospects connecting to your offer.

Now let's talk about how to choose a title. Think about how you read information on the internet. You probably scan the content first to see if it catches your interest before actually reading it. The title is one of the first things you see. Start by coming up with a catchy title for your post. A catchy title is something that "works" when you start writing your post.

This is where you start narrowing the scope of your topic and focusing on a single angle. A topic like "choosing paint colors" could generate several different posts. A catchy title, like "The Best Colors to Paint Your Kitchen," is specific to a single post.

Then include a long-tail keyword in the title. A long-tail keyword is a specific phrase people are searching for. It should be based on the topic you've chosen for that post.

If you're writing a post about how to produce an internet radio show, your long-tail keyword would be "produce internet radio show." Make sure your keyword is what your post is all about.

Also, make the post's value clear in the title. It should tell readers and search engines what your post is about. Set the right expectations:

• What will the reader get from this post?
• What information does it cover?
• What format will the post have?

In the example we see in the video, the post title clearly says you'll be reading about 4 key strategies to attract more customers to your business. You know exactly what you'll get from this post. You also know how valuable it is to you and how much information it contains.

Finally, shorten the title. This is vital for search engine optimization, because Google shows only the first 50-60 characters of a title in search results.

Don't let your title get cut off. A truncated title can seriously affect your click-through rate on the search results page. In this example, the original Spanish title "9 habilidades necesarias de un profesional de las relaciones públicas" (9 Essential Skills of a Public Relations Professional) has more than 65 characters.

Calculate the number of characters by typing the title into a word processor or using an online character-counting tool. As you can see, the title is a bit long, and the results page will cut off the last word.

OK, it's quiz time! Let's put our knowledge to the test. Which of these titles follows best practices? Choose from:

A: The Key to a Good Meeting.

B: How to Have a Good Meeting Where People Don't Fall Asleep and Pay Attention?

C: Leadership Skills for Meetings.

D: How to End Boring Meetings.

Ready? Let's go.

It's not C, because it doesn't tell you what the value of the post is. What format does it have? What skills will you learn? What kind of meeting is it?

It's not A, because the keyword isn't long-tail or specific enough. What kind of meeting are we talking about? A one-on-one meeting or a team meeting? What does "good" mean?

It could be B or D, but… It's not B, because even though it's much more specific, it's too long.

The correct answer is D, because the title contains the long-tail keyword "end boring meetings," it's short, it sets a clear value, and it stands out! If you're looking for a way to liven up your meetings, wouldn't you want to read a post like this?

But that's not all... We still need to optimize the post's format so people and search engines can read and understand it easily.

That's why I invite you not to miss the next video, where we'll keep looking at how you can create a successful blog post. Subscribe to our blog and YouTube channel and follow us on social media!