3 power tips to craft an outstanding blog

Blogging has become an essential part of PR and marketing pros’ repertoire.

HubSpot reported that 60 percent of marketers consider crafting blog posts their top inbound marketing priority. The focus makes sense, as WordPress reported that more than 409 million people view 23.3 billion pages each month.

Tech.co’s Zac Johnson wrote:

With over a billion active websites on the internet today, and more than 300 million blogs, it’s no wonder why more people are starting personal sites, hobby blogs, and even business and brand blogs to make their own little space on the internet. At the same time, blogging isn’t just about having your own space on the internet, it’s also a serious component of running a successful business or brand.

Google is now ranking websites that have original content or blogs as part of their content creation and marketing strategy more than sites that are simply static. Blogs have also transformed the way social media is used to connect others with individuals, brands, and the latest breaking world news.

HubSpot also revealed that 43 percent of consumers skim blog posts, so crafting offerings that entice people to read and share is crucial to the success of an organization’s blog—and its online presence.

Ready to jump on the blogging bandwagon—or breathe new life into your existing efforts? Consider these three tips:

[RELATED: Attend the Business Writing Summit, and start writing more powerful press releases, blog posts, internal memos and more.]

1. Pick a stellar domain name.

“Next to the name of your business, your domain name is the most important branding tool you have,” says Maris Callahan, director of PR for Donuts. “It's your online 'calling card' and you want it to be meaningful, memorable and creative.”

Hostgator’s Casey Kelly-Barton wrote:

There are so many top-level domain options today that making a decision can be intimidating. Here’s a timesaving solution: Go with .com if you can. Even after all these years, .com is still the market leader and .com still appears to have a trust advantage with internet users.

However, you shouldn’t despair if your coveted name is taken, because you don’t have to use “.com” to stake your claim online. Callahan says names that are meaningful are easier to remember, and that includes the suffix of your website’s address.

“Names that end in .agency, .digital, .marketing, .blog, .media and .news are all great choices for PR and marketing pros,” Callahan says. “Gone are the days when you have to settle for your second, third or even fourth choice. Now, you can pick the name you want to the left of the dot …that best describes who you are and what business you're in.”

Consider future readers when you’re selecting a name, too. You’re going to build your branding efforts upon your domain name, and readers must be able to remember and spell it, Callahan says:

Before you pick a name, think about how it's going to look on marketing materials, including printed and digital, and consider that it will be easy to spell, say and read. …A Chicago marketing agency dropped their .net name in favor of a .agency. Not only is it more descriptive now, but I think it's cleaner looking, too.

There’s another upside to simple and memorable domain names, too.

“[P]ronounceable domains are easier to remember and more likely to be shared,” Barton wrote.

2. Think of your readers when creating content.

Just as you should think of journalists and their readers when you pitch stories, consider your readers when you craft content. Your blog posts should be informative and packed with information that internet users—and potential customers—will find useful.

“Think of five to 10 questions that a prospective client or customer typically asks about your services and products,” says Anh Nguyen, owner of Amplified Marketing and host of #MobileChat. “Write a blog post answering each question or addressing that issue.”

Crafting relevant blog posts is especially important as you look to boost your reach on Google, Facebook and more.

Using a number of keywords and key phrases in outstanding blog posts, along with writing about hot topics, will help increase your blog’s visibility on search engines. On social platforms, more relevant and helpful content can not only net you more shares, but also help you avoid decreased reach.

On Thursday, Facebook announced that it would bury links to low-quality websites in users’ newsfeeds and would refuse to carry ads for them to “stop misinformation” and “reduce the economic incentives of financially motivated spammers.”

In a blog post, the platform wrote:

We have had a policy in place since last year to prevent advertisers with low-quality web page experiences from advertising on our platform. Now, we are increasing enforcement on ads and also taking into account organic posts in News Feed.

With this update, we reviewed hundreds of thousands of web pages linked to from Facebook to identify those that contain little substantive content and have a large number of disruptive, shocking or malicious ads. We then used artificial intelligence to understand whether new web pages shared on Facebook have similar characteristics. So if we determine a post might link to these types of low-quality web pages, it may show up lower in people’s feeds and may not be eligible to be an ad. This way people can see fewer misleading posts and more informative posts.

Focus your marketing message in a call to action, and concentrate on writing a compelling blog post that consumers want to read. Follow these tips to create a more clickable headline.

3 . Use tools to plan for, create, edit and share your posts.

Creating enough content to increase your online traffic and entice readers can be daunting. However, you don’t have to re-invent the wheel to write blog posts that consumers love.

“Use an app like Google Docs Voice-to-Text to just dictate your blog,” says Rachel Moore, owner of Really Social and creator of Business Unusual podcast. “It makes it conversational, takes away the hang up of typing that first word and lets you edit it into the final copy.”

Along with dictation, there are many tools that can help you research, schedule, share and edit your posts.

Google Trends or Buzzsumo can help you find current trends and social media users who are making a splash online, which you can then use as the foundation of your post.

Using a calendar can help you plan for and schedule blog posts to ensure that you’re regularly publishing content that brings readers to your website. FollowMyCal enables you to create public calendars with your blog posts, along with other events, such as trade shows where you’ll be exhibiting or Facebook Live Q&As. You can share individual events on social platforms and via text, and followers can RSVP to get event reminders.

Increase your social media shares by using Buffer, Hootsuite or Sprout Social, which offer features that include blog feed integration, social media scheduling and analytics. Make your blog post more visual by crafting images using Canva or Adobe Spark. Both tools are free and can help you create images to accompany your posts, illustrate a point or make a line of text pop.

Many bloggers swear by Grammarly to ensure that their posts are mistake-free and easy to read, and Grammar Girl offers an app to help make sure your writing is clean and tight.

Stuck for ideas? Use

Lists for Writers or Hubspot’s Blog Post Generator to get your creative juices flowing.

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