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Get a Quote Today!How to Identify Your Blogging Approach
The days of blogging just because you want Google to see that you’re putting fresh and original content onto your website are long gone. The days of blogging because you have something of value to say and believe it has the potential to cut through the noise of in excess of two million published blogs and countless other piece of content that appear online every day are here.
You have many tools at your disposal that can help your blog content stand out ahead of the rest.
However, one of the biggest ways you can make a difference is by identifying your blogging approach, tone, or style.
Why This Matters
Read any guide to blogging and you’ll usually find the same sort of pointers. “Be 100% original and unique,” “Say things in your own words,” and “Talk about things no-one else is.”
While this is great advice, what many don’t recognise or appreciate is that achieving even one of those three points can be highly difficult.
It is easy to say that you should provide thought leadership and put your own slant on things, but if you don’t have an established audience it can be difficult to do this effectively. Even if what you are saying is correct and authoritative, in the early days of establishing your blog it is natural that you may lack the gravitas and credibility that only comes with being a presence in an industry for many months and years.
Your biggest opportunity to stand out and gain this gravitas and credibility comes in your approach to blogging.
Know What Works for You
Before you decide to take a particular approach, you need to know what works for you.
Does writing your blogs – or having someone write them for you – in a punky, almost rebellious style fit with what you’re trying to achieve. It can certainly make you stand out, but does it stand well alongside your ‘real life’ personality.
Don’t write something on your blog, or use a particular style or tone, if you wouldn’t feel comfortable adopting that style if you were asked to speak at an industry event, for example.
If a boring and cumbersome writing style works for you, it is probably better if you look to outsource this. Boring and cumbersome doesn’t cut through the noise in a way that rebellion does.
Know what works for you, but more importantly, know what is going to get you attention, without putting yourself in a position where you’re being controversial for the sake of it.
It’s Great to be Different
We can’t tell you what you need to do to be different, as ultimately it will depend on your industry sector and what your competitors or the leading blogs in your sector are doing. However, the simple approach is to look at what is happening, and then take it up a level.
Improving on text-only blogs is easy; just add pictures. If a blog is very image heavy, could there be more text to complement the images and inform the reader rather than leaving things open to assumption? Would videos be a better addition?
In terms of the style of written content, think about the different ways you have to present things.
If you want to get a reputation for being succinct and to the point, you could use five or six bullet points to put your point across. You have the option of using that as your blog post or adding something longer below, in a similar style to an online newspaper. If you’re brave enough to publish nothing but bullet points as a blog, you’re sure to get attention!
You might decide to present your blog as a conversation between two or three people, or keep it almost exclusively to images.
Identifying Your Blogging Approach
There is no right or wrong way to blog, so long as you’re adding value for your website users and readers and not just blogging for the sake of it. However, to cut through the noise it is worth adapting an approach that makes you stand out.
Consider the best way for you to do this in the context of your industry, and turn your blogging approach into a powerful tool that makes your blog more engaging, drives traffic to your site, and ultimately proves its worth when it comes to the bottom line.
To learn more about how you can adapt your blogging approach to get a competitive edge in your industry, contact Bough Digital to arrange a competitive content analysis across your industry and for a content audit for your own website.