When business bloggers come to me for advice on how to make their blog more valuable, there are 4 tips I seem to give more than any others. Here they are, for those of you who want their blog to deliver better results. I hope you find them useful.
Get readable
No matter how valuable your content is, it will fail to achieve anything like it’s full potential, if it’s too hard for people to read. The 2 most common readability issues I see, are font size and column width.
Many sites use very small font sizes, which are just too small to be easily read. This is a fast way to lose readers, needlessly. There’s nothing to gain from using tiny fonts, which are almost impossible to read on anything smaller than a 22 inch monitor. The reason every popular website uses a readable font size, is they know the importance of having the main content comfortable to read on smaller screens.
For reference, this blog uses a Georgia font, with a size of 17px. When I use Arial as my font, I use a size of 15px.
Similarly, studies have shown that people find it a lot easier to read narrower columns of content, than wide columns. Many popular child themes fail to take this into account, which is why there are so many W–I–D–E column layouts out there.
In my own testing, I discovered that once I go beyond 95 characters across (including spaces) in a blog post, fewer people read through the whole page. Many people say you should stick below 75 characters, but using a large clear font, as I do, you should be perfectly fine up to around the 95 character mark.
If your current child theme doesn’t make it easy for you to reduce the content column width, either learn how to code it, pay someone to code it or use the theme I use here, which gives you 100% control over fonts and columns with the click of a mouse. It’s called Headway and that is NOT an affiliate link – It’s just an amazing piece of software that gives you the control you need, over your blog.
Have a call to action at the bottom of your content
If someone has just read all the way down to the bottom of a page or post, it’s because they were interested in the content. It engaged them. It earned their attention and their time. You now have an interested person, whose eyes are right at the bottom of your post.
THAT is the point where you should ask them to take action!
I use that approach here and it works extremely well, generating leads and inquiries all day, every day. Just remember to keep the call to action short and link directly to the conversion page. This may be a page that sells your products or services. It could be a newsletter sign-up page or maybe a link to subscribe to your blog via RSS. You decide what you want your readers to do, then put that call to action right where interested eyes will see it.
Don’t write anything just to publish something
This one goes against the traditional idea that you MUST publish something every day, even on days where you have nothing worth sharing. Despite what many people think, I don’t publish posts here every day. I usually publish 4 or 5 times a week on this blog, only very occasionally 7 times a week.
I use no blogging schedule other than this: If I have something useful to share here, I publish it. Useful is the key word.
I do recommend you publish at least once a week on a business blog(twice is better), if you want your blog to remain on your reader’s radar. However, there are no prizes for publishing anything, just so you can publish something. If you have something useful to say, share it. If you can’t find anything useful to say at least once a week, spend more time listening to the needs and opportunities of your marketplace and write about that. Keep informed of the latest news and trends affecting your marketplace, and write about that.
NOTE: This article has some great tips on how to write useful content.
Make your work easy to share
The content on Jim’s Marketing Blog is easy for people to share. There is a small Twitter and Google+ button at the top and bottom of each post. These are easily the most powerful drivers of share traffic here, so they get prominence. At the bottom of each post, I use sharethis, which gives easy access to over 30 different sharing platforms and allows you to make your preferred ones more prominent.
I have tested a ‘floating share button’, which attaches itself to the side of the screen and follows the page, so your share icons are always in the reader’s view. This was very effective, for those who could see it. The challenge was that many people told me that they couldn’t see it. It wasn’t visible on many tablet devices or any phone I tested it on. It was also invisible on some smaller resolution netbooks. There may be a way around this visibility issue, which you might like to share with a comment.
If you do use this type of sharing system on your site, I suggest also adding a traditional sharethis or addthis set of icons to the foot of your posts, though this can look a little like overkill.
What would you add to this list?
I’d love to know what mistakes or niggles you see on blogs, which make you less likely to read the blog or return. Please share your thoughts.
Jim Connolly can help you grow your business and achieve the breakthrough marketing results your hard work deserves. To find out more, simply click here!
Definitely, great blog content doesn’t have legs. Making the content on your blog easily shareable is extremely important. Most importantly, when SEO and social media are getting intrinsically intertwined, you can never ignore the ‘shareability’ factor.
Thanks for pointing out mistakes that are quite common with most of the bloggers.
You make a good point about the proximity of SEO and share traffic today.
It’s a bigger and bigger deal, Obaidul.
This is a very good list.
I would add the problem with child themes, where people now use the exact theme as their favorite blogger and this use HIS branding on their own site.
If you have to use a child theme, for goodness sake change it a little. It’s impossible to get noticed when your site looks identical to thousands of others.
You make a very good point, Margo.
It’s hard to stand out or be taken seriously, if you are using an exact copy of a child theme used on thousands of other sites.
A little customisation can make a big difference.
Great info as usual Jim. I did not realize about the column width. It also cannot be stressed enough about font size. No good if you can’t read the tiny print!
Hi Lisa. The column width really makes a big difference, which is why so many single column blogs are very hard to read.
Tiny fonts on over wide columns is the worst.
I’m with Margo – I hate sites using child themes with no customization.
Seeing a lot of chrisbrogan.com clone child themes and it’s embarrasing. Business owners literally using the exact same everything as Brogan and failing to have any brand or originality.
Hi Gareth. As you may or may not know, Chris is my favourite writer and I like the theme he has on his blog.
I have seen a couple of exact clones, as you call them. These were from very small businesses and maybe, their readership may not be aware of Chris’ work?
That said, an exact copy of a widely used child theme can make the site look great, but identical to thousands of other sites. It’s hard enough to stand out as it is.
A little custom code can make a big difference.
Just as it’s beneficial to make large blocks of text easier to read by narrowing the column width and upping the font, you should also break up it with images and headers and lists.
Good formatting eases reader immersion. You want your readers to immerse themselves in the knowledge within your content, not be challenged by its presentation.
Great points there, Kevin. Thanks for sharing.
I would also add that I find it VERY difficult to read a blog which has light text on a dark background.
Particularly if the font is also small!
Hi Tessa. Yes, that’s horrible to look at. It used to be really popular too, though thankfully, I don’t see it much these days.
Great points, pun not intended, on font sizes. This is why my blog has utilized a 16-point Corbel font for the past two years or so. It’s frustrating when I visit blogs or other websites and manually increase the screen zoom so I can read it without squinting or getting closer to the screen.
You’ve always had very clear typography, Ari.
Your point about having to zoom in to read content is a good one. I bet the people with those sites have no idea, how many readers they lose or how unreadable their typography is.
Thanks for the comment.
Thanks. I’ve heard similar about the floating vertical share buttons as I have on my site now. But it was a while ago, so only brought it back last week.
Hi Ari. I tested them here for 2 weeks and found around 5% increase in shares as opposed to ‘regular’ buttons.
The challenge is that many devices simply can’t see them, so those people have a lot of work to do, to share the content. As a result, many people who regulary share my work via the iPad, iPhone, android or netbooks stopped sharing.
The quality of those shares was high, so what I gained with a 5% increase in people who shared, I lost (and then some) because many regulars were unable to see any share options.
Let me know how you get on, sir.
You could compromise as I do — by implementing both a floating bar and static buttons. I’m using buttons for only Twitter, Facebook, and Google+; and the floater has those and more.
Hi Ari. Absolutely. That’s how I recommend doing it, in the post.
He shoots he scores…Another great guide for blogs. Most of what I would add to that list takes place once he hit publish and that is sharing it in social media. Thanks again Jim on a nice article!
You’re welcome, Mike.
I’d say it is better to write one high quality posts a week than 3 to 4 low quality ones just for the sake of having something to publish. Additionally, because people are so used to skim reading online nowadays, I try to break up my content into easy to digest small paragraphs so the reader doesn’t feel too overwhelmed and bounce.
Yep, quality wins every time, Matthew. Thanks for the suggestions.
Great value you have. Thank you for the valuable insights.
I’m missing the call to action in my blog. Thank you for the reminder. I’m going to add it into my post.
You have an errant apostrophe in: ‘it will fail to achieve anything like it’s full potential’.
OK Martin – Avoid these 5 common blogging errors
Many thanks for pointing that out.
Shorter sentences are always better. If you can drop unnecessary words (I’m looking at you ‘that’), do so. Make every word count.
Write out a looooong version of your idea, then start whittling it down to use as few words as possible to express the same idea.
Break up your post with an image. Put a call to action below the image (use red text). Make your image a call to action (add text and hyperlink).
Use an inline text box to highlight something–breaks up monotony, and grabs readers attention.
Place links to other articles you’ve written in your post. If they’ve got nowhere else to go, say hello to high bounce rates.