You loved our last guest post from Victoria Greene from Victoria Ecommerce, so today I’ve invited her back to The Savvy Solopreneur to tell us about ten easy ways to spruce up your blog posts. You can use these tactics on your new posts, AND go back and add more value and visual appeal to older posts too. There’s quite a lot of information in this one. Short on time? You can Pin it for later.

Disclosure: Links in this post (and anywhere on The Savvy Solopreneur) may be affiliate links. Find out what that means here.

When you’re a solopreneur, it can often feel like you have ten jobs rolled into one: customer service advisor, PR strategist, bookkeeper, marketer… the list never ends!

In addition to that, you also to keep your business fresh and your online presence thriving. This means publishing engaging and valuable content regularly to keep your audience interested.

Most people do this in the form of a blog. It’s a great way to reach out to customers, but most entrepreneurs who start a blog never actually keep up with it. Over the years, their focus gets pulled to other areas of their business, and their blog falls by the wayside.

Maybe that’s you. You want your blog posts to be exciting, innovative, and traffic-generating, and help you scale your business. But how do you spruce up your blog posts if you don’t have much time or budget to spare?

We’ve found ten easy ways to spruce up your blog that will not only get readers flocking to your content, but returning back to your blog — time and time again.

Embed social content

Gone are the days when business owners would just write a short 500 words of text with no interesting or interactive content. Today, with the advent of social media, users not only expect more, but demand more. If you don’t embed other content on your blog, you’re losing out.

Mashable’s recent blog on Facebook Groups embedded a link to a user tweet, which not only adds social value, but also makes the blog look more interesting.

Offer links to products your audience might like

Tim Ferris’s popular blog offers links to affiliate products in his blog. He has a huge readership and because of this, can monetise his blogs and make them more valuable.

By including relevant and valuable links, you’re increasing your reach in terms of SEO, and you’re more likely to get traffic from these valuable backlinks. You’re also benefiting your reader too, because you’re linking to other sites or products that are useful and relevant to them. To find out more about affiliate links and how they work, check out this post by Neil Patel.

Give your blog a design makeover

World of Wanderlust attracts readers because of the stunning blog design and imagery, which offers tantalising travel pictures that are filled with intrigue and curiosity. You can’t help but click to read more!

Her blog is hosted on WordPress, and just shows how a simple blogging platform can be transformed into an website that is viewed by over 6 million monthly visitors.

Your blog posts need to look attractive and eye-catching so that your audience want to read them. They must also match the rest of your site in terms of design and style. Think about things like color themes and fonts, as well as images that work well together.

Whether you’re relatively new to the web design game, or want to refresh an old blog or established website (Exchange is a good place to look for sites if you are an ecommerce hopeful), there are plenty of amazing online tools to help you with aesthetics. Design tools like Canva and PicMonkey are great for making infographics, or editing photos and adding your own branding.

For more advice, you can also check out this great post on how to make your brand new blog look professional.

Include tweetables

Marie Forleo, one of America’s leading female entrepreneurs, offers solopreneurs marketing and content advice on her blog. She knows that many of her audience will want to communicate bitesize tips from her blog, so she has integrated ‘tweetables’ into her content.

By including tweetables, not only does it improve your blog’s look and feel, but will encourage users to share your content, thus extending your reach!

This involves a simple API which can connect your blog to Twitter, so it will automatically mention and tag you when a user shares the tweetable. 

Tell personal stories

Stories are at the heart of any good content. By telling a captivating story, you’ll certainly hook your readers in.

Think of the stories around your business — how you got started, your most memorable customer, how you overcame challenges. Any stories with a human element will connect the audience to you as a solopreneur and further engage them.

For example, Karmel Allison blogged about how she met Obama and fainted!

Break up your blog into parts

To further spruce up your blog and make it exciting for readers is to break it up into more than one part. Get your audience wanting to come back for more!

This BBC blog breaks up a popular topic ‘My Top Ten Films of the Year’ into two parts, encouraging the reader to come back for the next segment.

Include comments and encourage discussion

Without a thriving comments section, your blog can stall.

Including comments not only encourages conversation, it can show other readers that your blog is popular, and you can use the comment function to further share more knowledge or interact with your readers.

Neil Patel, a prolific blogging expert, always responds to every comment on his blog. This not only helps to build a relationship with your customers, but it shows that you are active and engaged in discussions.

Write attention-grabbing, specific titles

When it comes to your blog titles, think niche. Review your current blog titles — are they too generic? Think of two or three alternative titles, and test out changing the title.

In this Huffington Post blog Steve Shaw gives you a direct strategy for improving your SEO traffic. By giving his real, organic search volume increase of a huge 1465%, this makes the blog immediately different, and intriguing.

Give something of value

In your blog post you can embed a lead magnet, which can not only capture email addresses to build your database, but give the audience something of real value.

The Daily Positive uses a ’FREE Download’ banner into their blog post as a value add. It is a great way to turn your blog into a lead-generation tool.

 

Make your blog posts evergreen

‘5 Recipes For Thanksgiving Dinner 2018’ may seem like a winning blog post, but the fact is, you’re limiting your audience and reach with this blog.

By making it not only seasonal but year-specific, your blog content can lose visibility and may run out of steam quickly.

A great way to build your blog is by creating evergreen content — content that will never age. Maybe you have a blog that can be changed to be more evergreen?

This great blog from Greatist would be evergreen:

 

 When it comes to sprucing up your blog posts, a little can get you a long way. 

Focus on these key areas to grow your followers: a slick website design, easy-to-read bitesize content, valuable links, and consistency. Your patience and persistence will pay off in the end when your leads start converting to sales!

Did you find these blog-boosting tips valuable? Let us know in the comments below.

 Victoria Greene is a branding consultant and freelance writer. She loves seeing small businesses grow and succeed, and helping in any way she can. For all the latest on marketing, ecommerce, and design, check out her blog: Victoria Ecommerce.

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Want to learn more about about how to create compelling, sharable content? Check out The Savvy Solopreneur’s Guide to Content Creation. It’s currently available on Amazon for just 99 cents (or the equivalent in your currency).

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