When done correctly, blogs are a great form of evergreen content that can be used in a number of different ways. From bringing organic traffic to your site, to helping you perfect your brand voice, and even raising SEO.
To achieve all this, however, you need to have consistent and quality blog content. Here are 6 easy ways for financial firms to create regular, engaging blog content.
1 – Focus on the Headline
Headlines make or break the success of a blog. It doesn’t matter how great the content of your blog is, if people aren’t drawn to read it in the first place. Try to create attention-grabbing headlines that will capture the imagination of your target audience. Just make sure that your content delivers on any promises your headlines might make.
2 – Grab Attention from the Start
After your headline, your opening paragraph is the next most important aspect when it comes to grabbing the attention of your reader. One of the best ways to instantly relate to your audience is to ask a question, or discuss a pain point that your audience will be looking to solve. Again, just be sure that the rest of your blog delivers on your opening paragraph.
3 – Break it Up
The vast majority of your readers will skim read your blog first, and then decide if they should go back and read through the whole piece. If your blog is one massive wall of text, people will be immediately turned off. Take the time to break your blogs up with subheadings, bullet points lists and images.
4 – Give Real Life Examples
Your audience will always be more interested in real-life examples rather than hypothetical examples. This is especially true if you’re using your blog content to promote a new service or specific expertise. Real-life examples will make what you’re selling seem more valuable to the reader.
5 – Tell a Story
Storytelling doesn’t mean you start with ‘once upon a time’, but it does mean you should be structuring your blogs around a beginning, middle and an end. Your reader will find a simple structure easy to follow, which means they are more likely to read to the end. Plus, if you wrap up your blog clearly the value you have provided will be more obvious to your audience.
6 – Consider Breaking Blogs into a Series
If you’re running a long term blog, and/or have a large amount of high-value content to cover, you might want to consider breaking your blogs into a series. Not only does this give you an easy way to break your content up, but it’s also an effective system to keep your audience engaged for weeks at a time.
