It’s pretty rare to see a person’s profile nowadays without the tag of “blogger” following their name, and having a blog on any company website is highly encouraged. The word “blogging” is about as popular a buzzword as “conversion.” The two words are like third cousins who met at a family reunion one year and realized that they actually do have more in common than just hating family reunions (are those really a thing?). Your blog can convert readers to customers or clients, and your existing clients and customers can also benefit from reading your blog.

Blogs are like putty, an amorphous blob that you have to form into something tangible and relevant to your audience. Blogging should be a big part of your inbound marketing strategy, a topic we’ve outlined and implement on the daily. Depending on your business, you should tailor your blog content to what’s relevant to your business model. For example, if you’re a construction company and you happen to have a blog, maybe make some blog posts about building home things or constructing dowels? That last part might not be relevant or exist because my only expertise in that area is 8th-grade shop class, but you get our drift. Using this as a jumping off point, you still need to keep in mind some other ways to keep your blog relevant and searchable.

If you don’t put any effort or time into your blogging strategy, it runs the risk of becoming irrelevant or lost in the mix. If you don’t want your blog to go the way of Lindsay Lohan and suddenly move to Dubai and inherit a very misplaced semi-British accent, then you should follow our tips.

1. Know your topic

This seems pretty easy, but you’d be surprised how many blog posts are written where the author is clearly just pulling information out of their proverbial you-know-what’s and has not done any real research on it. You’d also be surprised to learn that even this inaccurate information will get retweeted and reposted as a viable source of information. However, there are companies out there that are the thought leaders on certain topics (such as Hubspot for marketing and Social Media Examiner for…do we have to say?), and they gain a lot of traction for their unique and astute posts that go in-depth on certain topics.

2. Long-form posts perform better

You know the whole “no one wants to read a long blog post” thing? Well, prepare to be shocked. Are you ready? According to HubSpot, posts within the 1750-2000 word range get significantly more reshares than say a post with 250-500 words. Some of these long-form posts are called “evergreen” content, meaning it will stand the test of time because it’s always of interest to readers and seem as a fount of knowledge on (insert industry here). For example, our post about informational interviews would be considered evergreen content because there’s always someone out there looking for a job, especially information on how to get their foot in the door any way they can without submitting their resume and cover letter through an automated machine. While there could be tweaks to this information over the years, it’s still fundamental information. Putting out information like this in a longer format helps you stand out from the crowd, where many businesses are churning out those short blog posts that oversaturate the blogosphere. This is an area we definitely will be delving into soon, and you should too, if you haven’t already.

3. Are your SEO practices up to snuff?

We’ve written about SEO strategies and how to incorporate them into your overall marketing strategy. Have you been reading about them? Do you know what SEO stands for? Wait, do we? Yes. Yes, we do. And we also know that it’s very important to get your SEO strategy on point, aka incorporating searchable words into your posts that your audience would use in their searches on Google or whatever other search engines are still out there (are there any others?). If you’re a social media marketing agency trying to gain clients or simply just readers, it would benefit you to write a blog post about your predictions for the top social media trends of 2018, or even an interview with a client of how you boosted their engagement and their overall experience working with you. These ideas can boost your search rates and get people to start looking at your blog and trusting you as a source because they should contain keywords your future customers are looking for. As SEO is constantly in an ebb and flow of what works and what doesn’t, you have to be on top of your game with this one. Also, make sure it sounds as natural as possible–you don’t want to be an SEO robot (or maybe you do? You do you).

5. Be consistent

These are merely some curated suggestions to get the gears running in your blog brain, and hopefully, you’re using some of these ideas already. Our sister company Mule Media can help you with your content strategy. (EDITORS NOTE: This blog was originally posted by a former Yelling Mule employee)