Making your blog more interesting is important but not difficult. Use these tips below to improve your blog’s ability to maintain an audience and keep your blog at the forefront of their lists of reliable resources.

Present captivating topics.

A super easy way to make your blog more interesting is to simply present captivating, timely topics. What are the hot trends of your industry? Blog about them. Do the latest world events apply to your business? Address them in a blog post. What are your customers asking about lately? Give them some answers.

There are certain subject matters that are on the minds of your audience. Blog about them and captivate their attention.

Structure your blog posts.

Don’t just spew out the information you have to provide. Structure it in a way that is easy to consume and understand. Before you start writing, begin with an outline.

When careful thought and planning goes into the presentation of your content, your blog automatically becomes more interesting. Structure is an important element of learning. Don’t neglect it. You’re trying to educate and inform. Structured content is required to accomplish that.

Ensure accuracy and thoroughness.

It is to no one’s benefit if your articles are erroneous. Your readers are relying on you to be a resource of accurate and thorough information. Don’t let them down.

When your audience applies your tips and guidance to their real-life business strategies and encounter success, they will hunger for more of your content. If you want to make your blog more interesting, always be accurate and thorough.

Make it reader friendly.

While you’re providing accurate, thorough, and educational information, you don’t want your readers to suffer fatigue. Make sure your content is reader friendly. Use headers, short paragraphs, bullet points, and images. Your audience will thank you for it.

Showcase the expert.

People love free expert advice. Consider including an image of the author alongside the byline, or make use of an author biography block. Doing so also adds a personal touch to the content.

Optimize the heck out of your blog posts.

While search engine optimization won’t benefit your readers directly, it will benefit potential readers using Google’s search engine to find answers to their queries and solutions to their problems. For each blog post:

• Designate a keyword or key phrase.
• Use that keyword or key phrase in your title, URL, blog post content, and meta description.

Lastly, don’t forget to share and promote your blog posts. Encourage others to share, too, by utilizing social share buttons and plugins. Never underestimate the power of attracting new readers.

The post Make Your Blog More Interesting appeared first on WebDevStudios.

When you’re in charge of the content on your company website, it’s your job to make sure the company, the brand, the executives and leadership, and the team make an indelible impression. This is especially important if you are insourcing content from within your company.

Of course, content managers usually accomplish this through cleaning up typos and correcting grammar. However, there’s more to it than that. If you find yourself managing website content and blog posts written by your coworkers, you’re going to want to keep these editing tips for content managers handy.

Guide the Content

I’m a big fan of providing a structured outline for my teammates. Once we have settled on a topic, and I have settled on the SEO keyword phrase, I type up an outline to guide the content.

By providing an outline, the author now has structure and a path to help them on their blogging journey. It just makes the process easier.

Select an SEO Strategy

Not all of your writers will need an outline or even want one. Everyone has a different writing process, and some people like going into the WordPress editor and just start typing out their thoughts. That’s okay.

However, once you have their draft, decide on your SEO strategy. What is the main topic of their content? Do your research and find the best keyword phrase for optimization. You may have to change their chosen blog post title and rephrase some sentences to accommodate for that.

Of course, making your smart coworker who wrote the blog post sound smart is one of your goals, but let’s face it—so is SEO! Smart people deliver stellar content. Get the most out of it by optimizing for search engine results.

Make It Readable

Now, it’s time to edit. From here on, this set of editing tips for content managers is presented in the order in which I work. You, however, should decide on a method and order that works best for you. These recommendations are essential, for sure, but you should tackle them in whichever order you prefer.

I like to begin with readability. This is when I focus on breaking up paragraphs and adding headers. Yoast SEO is a wonderful WordPress plugin for guiding me, but here are some easy rules:

• Keep sentences under 25 words.
• Paragraphs should be less than 150 words. I aim for no more than four sentences in a paragraph.
• Some paragraphs are better off as bullet points.
• Headers make everything better. Not only will Google reward you for using them, but your readers will find the content easier to scan.

Honor the Accuracy of the Information

If you want to earn the audience’s trust, you had better make sure the content you’re feeding them is accurate. For me, this can be difficult when so much of our content is developer-focused or code-specific. That’s why part of our blogging process is peer review.

When the content is technical, my teammates have a peer review the article before delivering it to me. This means we did all we can to consider the reader by providing accurate content.

However, I still double-check brand names and easy-to-research data. For example, JavaScript should always be written in camel case, and not like this: Javascript. Additionally, if a writer makes a statement like, “WordPress is used for 43% of websites,” just do your research to confirm that’s true. (It is!)

Respect the Writer’s Voice

This is a tough one and purely dependent on the voice, tone, policies, and company culture of your workplace. Here at our web design and development agency, WebDevStudios believes in supporting the individuality of our diverse team of technologists. I honor that by respecting the writer’s voice when I’m editing.

Now, that doesn’t mean anything goes. I have been known to remove cuss words and emojis. I mean, we need to be professional around here. When it comes to the voice and personality of the writer, however, I maintain that within the content they deliver.

Clean It Up

Can you believe I leave the cleaning up process until the end? Some editors tackle it first. I leave it for last. That’s just what works for me.

Eliminate typos, correct grammar and punctuation, and rewrite sentences for clarity. This step is a huge part of making smart people sound smart.

Add Images and Alt Text

Some authors add images and alt text themselves. Some add images but not alt text. Most add none of that.

I’m flexible, and I communicate that to all my teammates who blog. I don’t mind adding images and alt text myself. I’m just grateful anytime anyone blogs.

Encourage and Support the Author

If you’re insourcing content like we do at WebDevStudios, then you know it’s a big deal when someone delivers engaging and educational content. My teammates are normally spending their days strategizing, managing, and building client projects. So, when I get a blog post from one of them, I make a big deal about it.

I normally announce their blog post in our general channel on Slack, and I reward them with a taco. And, because we promote and share our content on social media after publication, I always credit them with a shoutout. I want them to feel appreciated, valued, and encouraged to return to blogging next time they have an opportunity.

The post Editing Tips for Content Managers appeared first on WebDevStudios.

In its infancy in 2017, Gutenberg was not what it is today. There were a lot of hiccups in the early days. These included new blocks that were created every time you went to edit a sentence, wonky image constraints, and other challenges.

That developer I mentioned earlier said to me, “We need to know if we have to eat our dog food.” My response was, “Start buying stock in Alpo.”

I think, like a lot of people, that early clunky start left a really bad taste in my mouth. Being a content creator, I was reluctant to give the Block Editor another go. Fortunately, though, I did.

2019: A Vastly Better Block Editor

Flash forward to 2019. I had begun working at a WordPress agency where any new site they built utilized the Block Editor.

Among my responsibilities was managing client content. So I was using the Block Editor all day, every day. I LOVED IT!  In just two years, the Block Editor had made incredible strides.

10 Favorite Blocks and Features

Without question, I can create and manipulate content more quickly in the Block Editor than I can in Classic Editor, or in any page builder. I soon became a fan of any number of features and blocks that made my content life a breeze. Today, I am routinely disappointed if I have to create content in the Classic Editor because it slows me down. I am a Block Editor advocate all the way.

1: Text Associated with Images

Alternative text ( Alt text) is the text that is added to images to make their context understandable to those using screen readers, or for those with slower internet where photos don’t readily load. With Classic Editor, you had to put in alt text in the media galley.

While you can still do that, in the Block Editor, you have an additional advantage. You can change the alt text on the page or post where you are creating content.

There is no need to return to the media gallery. The bonus here is that the alt text can vary from page-to-page, if the context for the images is different based upon the page content.

The same is true for captions text, the text that appears under images (also videos). You can now add that in right under the image/video itself in the Block Editor rather than having to return to the media gallery. Just like the alt text, the captions can vary every time the item is used.

2: Useful Tools

There are a variety of helpful items that you can use to check your work that many users don’t know about. If you click the ‘i’ (information) button on your top toolbar, you get a helpful list of items that are immediately relevant to SEO including word count, header hierarchy (you get a warning if you are out of sequence), as well as an overall outline of your content.

If you want even more information, you can click the breadcrumb trail that is immediately next to the information button. It displays all the blocks that you are using.

Do you have several complex and nested blocks? The breadcrumb trail can help you navigate to the exact block you want, so you can be sure that you’ll be updating the correct item.

3: Posts Block

This is probably one of my all-time favorite blocks. I am able to display posts on a specific page, in a list or grid format, and decide which posts to display by taxonomy.

I can also offset the posts I’m displaying to skip some recent content. Impressively, there are options about where and how to display featured images.

Additionally, there are a number of third-party blocks like Stackable and Ultimate Addons Blocks that provide even more features such as attractive background designs and advanced sorting options.

4: Reusable Block

Don’t you just hate it when you have boilerplate info in a variety of places on your website for legal or other reasons, the boilerplate changes, and you have to go update it in all the places?

Inevitably, you miss one, resulting in an angry customer who references the former rather than the current policy. Another use case is a CTA that you offer frequently and you don’t want to re-write it every time. Well, fear no more! The reusable block is here to save you.

As the name implies, you can either group together a series of blocks of varying types, or just one block, and you can save it to your block library as a reusable stock item.

If you update text, links, images, or anything in these blocks, the update will appear site wide wherever these blocks have been incorporated. There are also options to break the block for a one-off change if a particular instance is an exception and not a rule.

5: Spacer Block

Did you ever want just a few more pixels to space out your content? Maybe a video was too close to a list or button, and you just wanted a better visual buffer.

Lots of folks used to just hit return several times and hope for the best. If you didn’t know CSS, you didn’t have a lot of options to make things work.

With the Block Editor spacer, you have more options right under your fingertips. The spacer block acts like a window shade. You can buy yourself as much or as little additional space as you need by pulling the spacer up and down.

6: Media and Text Block

Sometimes a beautiful layout is hard. You really want your media and associated text to join together seamlessly across all device types. The media and text block allows you to place an image or video side-by-side with text without awkwardly chopped sentences.

The other feature, that makes this even easier, is that you can create your text ahead of time in Google Docs or Word and copy and paste this material into the site. All formatting, including headers, bullet points, and inline lines, will be maintained in any type of text block.

Previously, this was not best practice and could create a variety of display issues. Now, it’s a great time saver.

7: Image Block

If you’re writing an article, you’re going to need at least one image in your content. Arguably, more than that to illustrate and maintain reader interest.

Previously, if you wanted to resize an image in WordPress, it was very easy to distort it by stretching the sides. You also couldn’t easily, outside of a custom post type, put a clipping mask on a photo to bevel the edges, crop it to a circle, change it from color to grayscale, etc.

The current image block gives you tons of design options right on the page you are working on, and it’s near impossible to distort the inherent proportions in your images.

8: File Block

Lot of folks need PDFs on their website to provide to users information, whether it’s to document bylaws, provide a user’s manual, or just to distribute print at home flyers.

Before, you had a couple of steps to get your files to display well with some back and forth in the media gallery and content area. With the file block you have several new options right at your fingertips.

You can upload a file right from the content area, choose to display the file inline, and have control over the size.

Alternatively, you can have the item as an inline link, where a viewer can see the item in a new screen, along with an additional option to quickly download the item.

9: Column Block

There are no easy ways to make a column in Classic Editor without additional plugins. With the Block Editor, you have several handy options with the column block.

You can make evenly spaced columns with multiple rows in under a minute. On the other hand, you can create columns with different proportions such as a 60/40 split. In either case, you can add any type of block to a column: headings, images, text, etc.

10: Media Embed Blocks

It seems like every week a new option is added here. There is a block for many of the video and audio streaming services that are commonly used every day.

YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, and Soundcloud are just a few of the media embed blocks that are available. All the user has to do is enter the URL of the item they want to embed, and the block does the rest.

If you haven’t given the Block Editor a try recently, or if you’ve never given it a try, I highly recommend trying it again and seeing all it has to offer. When you’re searching for a website agency to design and develop a dependable platform that includes the Block Editor, plus, shows you and your content team how to use it, contact WebDevStudios.

The post 10 Reasons Content Creators Love the Block Editor appeared first on WebDevStudios.

While we cherish all of our blog content, some pieces stand apart from the others, receiving the most web traffic and visits. So, we set out to discover of all the articles we published in 2021, which were the most popular blog posts. Here are the top five.

How to Use Dynamic Imports in Next.js

Content about Next.js proves to be very rewarding at WebDevStudios (WDS). We can’t get enough of it.

It was during some late-night performance testing when former WDS Frontend Engineer, Mike England, faced a challenge that inspired research. Once he found the solution to his problem, which was Dynamic Imports, Mike felt motivated to share it with the world.

In his blog post, Mike shares the basics of Dynamic Imports, how to set it up in Next.js, and advice on when to use it.

Read “How to Use Dynamic Imports in Next.js.”

Quick Tip: Sharing Data in Next.js with React Context

See? We told you Next.js content is a hot item on our website. That’s why this next article is among our most popular blog posts of 2021.

Lead Engineer, Darren Cooney, wrote this Next.js article, which is presented as a quick tip. However, don’t let that term fool you. The information in it is substantial.

Darren goes over the implementation of Next.js with React Context and breaks the setup down into three tasks. He walks you through each task and even addresses a scenario when React Context isn’t the right choice.

Read “Quick Tip: Sharing Data in Next.js with React Context.”

Using Next.js, WebDevStudios Built a 1,000 Page Headless WordPress Website

Not only is this piece of content one of our most popular blog posts of 2021, it also gets a lot of traction on Twitter. Although the headline might seem like clickbait, the story is true.

WebDevStudios really did build a 1,000 page Headless WordPress website. Director of Engineering, Greg Rickaby, relays the tale.

Greg begins by giving some background on our focus and experience before talking about the arrival of a client who required a Headless WordPress website.

He then dissects the project, mentioning both challenges and successes. Building a Headless WordPress website is a feat. Greg does a great job of covering the measures and steps our team took to bring this project to fruition.

Read “Using Next.js, WebDevStudios Built a 1,000 Page Headless WordPress Website.”

WordPress FSE and Block-Based Themes

Obviously, our virtual hallways are buzzing with chatter about Headless WordPress and Next.js, but it didn’t take long for full-site editing (FSE) to become as interesting a topic.

The technology sure caught the attention of Frontend Engineer, Alfredo Navas, who first began his journey by using his Five for the Future time to study it. Then, as any responsible member of the WordPress community would do, he shared what he learned in a blog post.

In his article, Alfredo doesn’t just write about FSE, he takes the reader through a step-by-step tutorial on creating a block-based theme.

Read “WordPress FSE and Block-Based Themes.”

Headless WordPress and Headless CMS

It was this time last year that the chatter around Headless WordPress really amped up. WebDevStudios didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon. We wanted to lead the conversation. That’s when Greg stepped up to the plate to write a high-level overview that explains what Headless WordPress and Headless CMS are and why any company may want to use them.

While the technology is certainly cutting-edge and fancy, Greg wants to ensure that key decision makers are not simply being seduced by a hot trend. He does a great job at presenting a clear rundown of Headless WordPress designed to help CEOs, CMOs, executives, and marketing directors decide whether or not going headless is the right decision for them.

Read “Headless WordPress and Headless CMS.”

The post 5 Most Popular Blog Posts in 2021 appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Why manage users and multiple authors in WordPress?

From media companies to big CPG brands, many of our clients have an entire department of content creators. This content can include regular page content, specific landing pages, blog posts, press releases, and more.

Often, our clients’ teams will already have a editorial workflow that looks something like this:

• Draft
• Review
• Revise and edit
• Review
• Approve
• Publish

Normally, each task is completed by a different person. Therefore, each task requires a different level of access to the platform.

This type of editorial workflow keeps users from accidentally publishing unfinished content. Proper management of users and multiple authors in WordPress helps to maintain an easily sustainable editorial workflow.

Imagine you are a reporter for one of the largest news networks on the planet. You accidentally publish a story before editing and approval. What kind of impact would that have? You can see why it’s beneficial to keep certain users from accessing editorial functions for the good of the company and the process.

How does WordPress handle this?

WordPress, at its core, is designed to democratize publishing. The idea is to make publishing content accessible to everyone everywhere.

Because WordPress is a content management system, it comes with some basic functionality for managing said content. For example, out of the box, you can have multiple users. Each user can be assigned a separate role that only allows them to do certain things.

Here are the default user roles:

• Administrator – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site
• Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts, including the posts of other users
• Author – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them
• Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their profile

As you can see, you’re already set up for success. If you need to break out access for different users, everyone gets their own secure login. Additionally, everyone is limited to designated access to specific functions that you assign.

This gives you flexibility to allow your team to focus on their part of the content process as needed. What’s more, if you need flexibility or control over your user roles or editorial workflow, there are plugin solutions for that.

What tools are available to help manage users and multiple authors in WordPress?

PublishPress

Let’s take a look at two different types of plugins. First, there’s PublishPress.

For teams that need to manage multiple user accounts, different types of authors and editors, and an authentic editorial workflow, PublishPress is the perfect WordPress plugin solution. Here are some of its features:

• Editorial Calendar: Calendar view for planning and scheduling content
• Content Notifications: Triggered by many different activities to keep your team alerted
• Content Overview: A more thorough look at the existing planned content from the calendar
• Custom Statuses for Posts: Status labels include pitch, assigned, in progress, or create your own
• Editorial Comments: A super powerful option for internal comments on each post
• Editorial Meta Data: Use meta labels like First Draft Date, Assignment, Needs Photo, Word Count, or create your own
• User Roles: An easy way to allow individual users access to multiple user roles (not to be confused with User Role Editor, that we’ll discuss later)

Using PublishPress can seriously increase communication and productivity from your team. For teams that relied on email, Google Documents, Slack, phone calls, and in-person notes, we found that implementing this type of workflow improved efficiency.

User Role Editor

User Role Editor is one of the more powerful plugins for managing users and multiple authors in WordPress. It is especially useful for a team that needs to specify capabilities.

WordPress allows users access to specific functionality from WordPress core, plugins, and themes through capabilities. When you need to limit those capabilities, User Role Editor helps. Having the power to allow users specific access (or no access) keeps your team focused and the wrong people out of places they shouldn’t access.

The best part about the User Role Editor plugin is the power it gives you to build a custom user role. While this is certainly possible by manually writing some code, having a GUI interface inside your WordPress dashboard makes this a simple step that most users can manage.

In other words, you don’t have to bother your developer every time you need to create or update a user role for your organization.

Actual Tips

Now that you have seen what opportunities are available for managing users and multiple authors, how should you get started? Here are a few simple tips to get you going.

Write out your ideal workflow.

Consider this workflow outlined on WordPress.com as a starting point. It’s very generic and covers most bases.

• Pick a topic.
• Create a content brief.
• Assign a writer.
• Write the first draft.
• Edit, refine, and review the draft.
• Schedule, publish, and share the content.

Assign specific users to the steps.

Using the steps above, assign specific people and their user accounts to those steps.

Next, outline what types of functionality requirements (i.e., drafting, editing and commenting, scheduling and publishing) that user needs. Then, assign that user account a role that includes those.

Most of the time, the default user roles will be enough. If not, you can always create your own.

Outline a content schedule.

Maintaining a content schedule not only keeps your team organized, but you can also assign authors and editors to the specific content pieces at the same time. Visibility of the content schedule will help keep everyone focused on their parts and not overwhelmed thinking about everything at once.

Conclusion

When it comes to managing users and multiple authors, WordPress takes the cake. Furthermore, it’s extremely flexible with the default user roles and the ability to create your own from scratch. You can customize as much as needed.

Clearly outline your desired workflow upfront. By doing so, you save a ton of time in the long term.

The more people required for managing content, the more efficient you’ll need to be. Let the tools work for you so that you and your team can focus on what’s important—the content!

Contact WebDevStudios and allow our team to set you up with a platform that makes it easy to manage users and multiple authors in WordPress.

The post Managing Users and Multiple Authors in WordPress appeared first on WebDevStudios.

What is the goal of your About page?

When it come to content, it’s best to identify the goal of it before you even begin. Content goals normally fall in one of these categories:

• Inform
• Attract
• Persuade

What is your goal? Do you want to merely state the facts, captivate a new audience, or persuade the reader to do something? Know your goal and use it to influence your angle. Now, let’s think about your audience.

Who is the reader looking at your About page?

Don’t be quick to think the audience viewing this page is your customer. Think about this: if I am at your website to buy some cute shoes you’re selling, I couldn’t care less about your About page. I’m there to shop!

However, if I’m a reporter from a fashion media outlet, and I’m looking to interview a leading footwear expert, before I reach out to you, I’m going to thoroughly read your About page to ensure you’re a viable source for my article.

Define your audience and create an About page that caters to their needs.

Decide on your keyword or keyword phrase.

This is super important. Do not skip this step. No matter your goal (inform, attract, or persuade), proper SEO must a part of your strategy. You want this page to be indexed by search engines and come up in search results when internet users are conducting searches related to your industry. Before you start typing the text of your About page, know in advance what your keyword or keyword phrase is.

Pick a person.

Will you write your About page in first person or third? There’s no real right or wrong answer for this. The answer really depends on your goal and audience. If you think the person reading your About page is the type of person who wants to be spoken to directly in a personal manner, then opt for first person.

Personally, I have always followed this rule-of-thumb:

• If the About page is for a company or organization and/or the founder or top executive of a company or organization, the About page should be written in third person.
• If the About page is for a single person, such as a blogger or freelancer, then the About page should be written in first person.

Again, there’s no real right or wrong answer. Go with what works for you and your brand. Just be sure to consider your audience. Now, let’s write your story.

The 5 Ws and 1 H

This is the basic stuff you learned in school regarding how to gather and present information. By sticking to this structure—who, what, when, where, why, and how—writing about yourself becomes less laborious.

Who

State who you are. Include your name, title, and photograph. Yes, you’re going to have to include a photo of yourself. Sorry. I know people hate that, too, but it’s just best practice to place a photo of yourself or a group photo of you and your team on your About page.

Pro tip: your About page is the perfect spot to showcase a splashy video that provides an overview of who you and your company are, or you could link to a recent podcast interview where you shared your background story. It’s something to consider, if you have this additional content readily available.

What

Tell the world what you do or what your company does. Word it in such a way that it’s accurate but also sounds impressive. You might want to pull out the thesaurus for this one. However, don’t get too flowery with your language. Consider your audience.

Use language that makes you stand out but that is also easy for your audience and search engines to understand. Your “what” is a good opportunity to use your chosen keyword or keyword phrase.

When

You can state the year your company was founded or the amount years you have been doing what you do.

Where

People like knowing where you’re located. Tell them.

Why

I love to fill out the why in an About page. On your About page, this is your chance to express your passion. Consumers and journalists love to learn why a person is doing what they do. Share your story. People want to know it.

How

How do you and your company solve the problems that your clients have? Do you do it quickly or is it customized? Do you have help, or are you a one-person show?

Use your About page to convey how you do what you do and how they can benefit when you do what you do for them.

Don’t forget your call to action.

Even if you’ve decided that the goal of your About page is to inform or attract and not persuade, you would be remiss to not include a call to action of some kind. It doesn’t have to be a “Buy Now” button. Our own call to action on the WebDevStudios About page is simply, “See Our Team.”

Update and Reuse

Once you finally have your About page all set up and published, remember to keep it updated. Over time, it’s natural for things like locations, services, and range of products to change. Always make sure the information you’re delivering on your About page is accurate.

Also, don’t hesitate to reuse the content from your About page to formulate a brief bio that you use consistently for the press and speaking engagements. In fact, it could also be what you use for your social media profiles, too.

Additionally, think about using the story from your About page to create a quick 30-second elevator speech for those informal, spontaneous introductions that provide potential for a new business relationship. Your About page is your brand messaging. Take it with you wherever you go.

The post Writing Your About Page appeared first on WebDevStudios.

The truth is that inspiration is around you. You just have to be open to it. Below is a brief list of easy ways for finding blog post ideas, but please know, there are many more opportunities for discovering content ideas than what is mentioned. Before we get started, however, let’s review the importance of blogging and how it can boost the success of your brand.

Why Blogging Is Important

Whether you’re launching a new website or have an established brand, regularly blogging keeps your brand relevant. Here’s how.

• It drives traffic to your website. In the end, what you want to achieve is publishing a blog post that gets indexed by search engines, comes up in search results, and causes people to visit your website. You can’t sell your products and services online without consumers visiting your site. The way to get them there is to create new content (your blog posts) that search engines crawl, scan, and index for internet users to find.
• It establishes brand recognition. If you’re a beauty brand and want to be considered a leader in the industry, consistently offering blog content that is accurate, helpful, and engaging will keep your brand at the top of shoppers’ minds. So, whatever your business category is, you can establish brand recognition just by blogging regularly.

Now that you are convinced you should be blogging on a consistent basis, how do you go about finding blog post ideas? Keep reading to find out.

Conversations

This is my favorite way to discover topics. Mind you, these conversations could be anywhere, at anytime, with anyone. Stay alert.

Coworkers and Staff

What work projects is your team working on? If your staff has encountered a challenge on a current project, write about the solution. Are your coworkers super excited about a recent success? You could recite that story as a case study, success story, or company news.

Peers

Networking events with your peers are the perfect opportunity for finding blog post ideas. Do more listening and less talking at these events. Take notes. Connecting with your peers will fill you with an abundance of information and inspiration.

Social Media

While taking a break from social media is often great for your mental health, you could miss out on captivating topics for your blog. If you don’t feel like interacting, lurk. Browsing other people’s conversations will guide you to what you should be writing about on your blog.

Client Feedback

Client feedback is a wonderful source of blog inspiration. When you know what pains and aches your customers have and how your product or service helps them, you can write fantastic content that targets them specifically.

In your blog post, address their concerns. Provide solutions. Everyone will be coming back to you for answers when they incur the same problems your clients previously had.

It’s important to make it easy to acquire client feedback. Encourage and ask your customers to leave reviews, and make submitting those reviews as simple as possible. If you have one-on-one conversations with your customers, just ask them verbally for their feedback and take notes. They want to let you know how much they appreciate your service and what you can do to improve. They’ll be glad you asked.

Sales Team Feedback

Like client feedback, sales team feedback is immensely valuable. I use the term “sales team,” but this could also include customer service. Basically, anyone on your staff who is at the frontline with direct contact with your client base will be able to provide some amazing blog post ideas.

They know your customers well, what they’re looking for, and what they need. All of this information will make it easier for you to create captivating content catered to your customers. Sales team members will even provide inspiration for blog posts that influence your customers. That could lead to conversions and sales.

Other Blog Posts

When searching for ideas, turn to other people’s content. Obviously, you should never copy it, but use what other people are blogging about, including your competitors, to lead you to new angles and points of view.

For example, this blog post you’re reading now was inspired by “8 Blog Post Ideas You Can Write and Publish Today.” It’s a great article, and you should read it. As I was perusing the piece, I thought to myself, “But what about those times when I’m short on topics? How do I got about finding blog post ideas?” Voila! I now have something to ponder, investigate, and write—and now you’re reading it.

The kingdom of Google is ripe with inspiration. Conduct a simple search on subjects related to your business industry’s category, see which articles are ranking the highest, read them, and invent your own angle and point of view.

Trends

Modern trends make for great content. Keep in mind, though, a blog post about a trend will not serve as an evergreen piece of content, but if optimized correctly, it could garner you some good search engine results. If there’s a trending topic affecting your industry, jump on the bandwagon now and blog about it.

Current News and Events

Like a blog post based on a trend, those that are based on current news and events will also not be evergreen. That’s okay. However, current news and events could directly be impacting your business. Address that impact in the blog post and keep your customers informed.

Something You Learned Recently

We should all make the effort to learn something new daily. Whether you’re attending webinars or a series of classes, when you have that a-ha moment, you should share that with the world.

Learning by experience counts, too. Our engineering team often tells tales of learning something new while working on a client’s website. So, hands-on experience is another way you might come up with a blog post idea. Writing about that moment could impress any potential new clients who have been contemplating doing business with you.

Hopefully, I have guided you to a point where writer’s block exists no more. As I said at the beginning of this article, inspiration is all around you. Open your mind and ears. Soon, you will have your editorial calendar filled out for the rest of the year, and you’ll never have to worry about finding blog post ideas again.

The post Finding Blog Post Ideas appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Surge of New Content

Every single day something new is happening or information is changing. There is a surge of new content that is being added to the internet every minute, every hour. Your website content is in competition.

Whether you want to be the first to break news, be among the top in search results for the specific topic you’re reporting on, or have something imperative to share with your audience, no other content management system will help you win the race to publish information quickly and easily like WordPress.

Now, you might think that publishing information on social media allows for publishing information quickly, and it does. However, you lose control of the content when you rely solely on it.

• Tweets cannot be edited for typos and other errors. If you goof, you have to delete that tweet (after others have already viewed it) then start a whole new tweet all over again.
• Publishing on a social media website keeps traffic there at that platform. You benefit greatly from driving the traffic off of social media and back to your WordPress website. You want to be the source of the information you’re trying to share. Don’t let Facebook get the credit for that.
• Social media algorithms get in the way of your posts being seen.
• Because of the surge of content, a social media post has a limited lifespan.

How to Publish Information Quickly on WordPress

Still not convinced that WordPress is the way to go when you want to publish information quickly? Here are the features that make it possible.

• User profiles are easy to create and add. If you have a new content contributor with breaking news, add them easily in WordPress. Limit their access to your site by setting them as an Author. They can create their Draft article in no time without affecting or being able to access any other content on your website.
• Draft at a moment’s notice. Now that your author is set up as a user on your WordPress site, this person can get to publishing information quickly, save a Draft, and make it ready for editing.
• Make a preview of the article available internally. If peer review is required prior to editing and publishing, in WordPress, an Author can set their saved Draft to ‘public preview’ and share that link exclusively with internal peers for notes and recommendations prior to the Draft being seen by the editor or administrator in charge of publishing.
• Edit immediately. Once that Draft is saved, anyone whose User profile is set to Editor or Admin can now go into that Draft, edit, proof, improve the article, and publish as soon as necessary.
• Schedule or publish on the spot. Once the information has been approved, the editor or administrator can schedule publishing or make it immediate.

Who Benefits

Anyone can benefit from the power of WordPress, but here’s who we think really needs to be able to rely on it for publishing information quickly:

• Government entities – From COVID-19 updates to emergency notices, data, updates, and other information needs to be available immediately for citizens.
• Healthcare providers – Who doesn’t want to know ER wait times, whether or not a hospital is at capacity, or vaccination availability from your healthcare service providers? This is information patients want to know now.
• Educational institutions – If classes are cancelled, publishing a notice on your WordPress website is essential, whereas, sending out a tweet or Facebook post does not ensure all of your staff and students will see that notice.
• Media – Obviously the media publishers are the ones who really benefit from the power of WordPress. Breaking news happens fast and WordPress makes it so easy to publish quickly.

The WordPress market share surpasses 40%. That’s huge. People are catching on to the benefits of this content management system. You should, too. If you are under pressure to publish information quickly, contact us, so we can get started on getting you in the position to benefit from the publication speed of WordPress.

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Benefits of Content Collaboration

Relationship Building

Content collaboration is an opportunity to strengthen your current business relationships. If it’s been a while since you’ve been in touch with a source of previous referrals, collaborating on content with them gives you that chance to revive communications and relationships. The same can be said of previous or new clients, as well as vendors and technology partners. Your success is influenced greatly by the relationships you build and maintain. Content collaboration could be the boost you need to enhance them.

Reputation Building

You probably have already established a great reputation for yourself. That’s important. However, if you’re trying to attain new customers—people who have never heard of you before—it’s much easier to impress them when your brand name is associated with another, perhaps one that is more commonly known than yours.

The day we partnered up with Constant Contact for a content collaboration was an exciting day, indeed. You’d be surprised what a little name-dropping can do to build up your reputation. Oh sure, in social settings, name-dropping is frowned upon, but when it comes to content collaboration, name-dropping is a great benefit.

Backlinks

This isn’t shady at all. Your motivation for content collaboration should not simply be backlinks, but don’t discount that benefit. Backlinks drive traffic to your website and your collaborative content partner. This particular gain is a win for you both.

A New Point of View

Your opinion and know-how of a certain topics are limited to your specific experience. Bringing in another point of view, or lending yours if you’re the one providing the content, adds a fresh perspective. On the WebDevStudios blog, we had blogged about SEO on a few occasions, but when we brought in Pam Aungst, we had a whole new level of expertise to offer our readers, especially since Pam’s focus is primarily SEO. Presenting a new point of view on your company’s blog can be a real game changer.

It’s fun!

As WebDevStudios’ Marketing Strategist, it’s my job to coordinate our content collaborations. It’s so much fun. I get to meet new people, pitch ideas, and brainstorm. Plus, there’s so much enthusiasm that comes with that moment when our collaborative content is published, especially when social media sharing and tagging is involved. Every player in the collaboration walks away with a feeling of camaraderie.

Ideas for Content Collaboration

Guest Collaboration

Probably the easiest way to collaborate on content is by inviting a partner to be a guest author on your company blog. We love doing this at WebDevStudios, but remember, it can work the other way, too. You could reach out to a business partner and offer to write on their blog. However you decide to accomplish a guest collaboration, just know that it’s a win-win situation for both the guest author and the company blog.

Case Studies

A case study is one of the strongest ways to create a content collaboration. It’s like an in-depth article combined with a positive testimonial. Case studies take a lot of time, but the payoff is incredible. As is the case with guest collaboration, a case study can work both ways.

You could invite clients who have encountered success as a result of using your products and/or services to relay to you their story, which you can, in turn, develop into a case study; but you can also offer your account to one of your vendors or technology partners, who can create their own case study based on your success with their products/services. Case studies are often published and shared online, which means backlinks and exposure.

White Papers

Like case studies, white papers are in depth, take a lot of time, but provide ample reward. White papers are more informational without a sales angle, unlike a case study. However, they’re just as valuable. While you could easily develop content for a white paper on your own, collaborating with a partner just makes your content that much more impressive and trustworthy.

Testimonials

Testimonials are super easy. Simply provide your partners with a glowing statement about their products and/or services, using your company name. You could also have your clients do the same for you. Testimonials work much like a case study, but only take up about a quarter of the time. While it’s not lengthy in terms of text, testimonials still count as content collaboration.

Offer Yourself as an Expert Resource

Just like with testimonials, providing your expertise or opinion in the form of a quote for someone else’s blog post is easy content collaboration and takes very little time. Reach out to your partners and offer yourself as an expert resource for any upcoming content they have on their editorial calendars. A simple quote along with your name, job title, and brand can garner you some new interest, a backlink, and credit as a thought leader in your field.

Ready to get started on some content collaboration? You’ve got this! Begin by reviewing your partnerships and clients. Identify some viable options. Then, go over the different types of content collaborations listed above and think about which opportunities work best for your chosen partners and customers. Now, reach out! Start the conversations and move forward. Again, content collaborations benefit everyone involved. Keep that in mind as you approach your content collaborative partners, and if anyone needs any convincing, just send them a link to this blog post. Good luck!

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Insourcing content is not an off-the-wall notion nor an act of desperation. It’s a common practice that has been a part of everyone’s marketing strategy since the beginning of, well, online content. Yet, insourcing content continues to be a challenge for most businesses. I think it’s due to some myths.

Myths Getting in the Way of Insourcing Content

• Employees beyond content creators can’t write.
• Staff members who are not part of the executive team have nothing worthy to contribute.
• No one has the time to blog.

These myths are about as valid as the story of Medusa. I have never been able to figure out where they came from other than, maybe, impostor syndrome. One, anyone can write. You don’t need to have a degree in communications to achieve that. Two, any person well-versed or experienced in their field has knowledge and expertise to contribute. Lastly, if blogging is treated no differently than any other work task, supervisors and project managers can easily schedule time for it.

There! Those myths have been busted. Now, let’s move on to the strategy of insourcing content.

How to Insource Content

Once you approach the strategy of insourcing content with the beliefs that everyone on your team can write, they each have something valuable to say and contribute, and time can be scheduled for blogging, sourcing content internally will be less arduous and frustrating. Here’s how you do it.

Support and Encourage Contribution

Your organization needs to be set up to support and encourage your team to contribute to your company’s blog. In some cases, you may want to make blogging mandatory. This depends on how you operate.

In other cases, you may want to set up a policy that clearly outlines:

• Whether or not blogging is mandatory
• What is expected of those blogging
• The process for submitting a blog post for publication
• Any style guidelines your company may have

Regardless of whether or not you set up a policy for content creation, you definitely want to communicate to your staff members that you have faith in them that they can write, that they have something important to contribute, and that you will help them schedule time to blog. Address that impostor syndrome head-on and make your team feel supported and encouraged to blog.

Make It Easy

The easier it is for your team members to blog for your company, the more likely and often they will do it.

Use WordPress

While WordPress is designed to achieve more than being a blogging platform, it’s the software’s content management system setup that makes it so easy for insourcing content. Create User profiles for your various staff members, set their roles to Author, and any one of them can log in and create a Draft blog post.

Also, by utilizing the Enable Public Preview feature, your team can easily share their articles with colleagues and peers for review prior to publishing. WordPress is super easy to use. If your employees are able to create Microsoft Word and/or Google documents, they can definitely learn how to use WordPress.

Assign Topics

Again, you’re going to have people on your team who don’t think they have anything essential to say. So, have a list of topics in mind that you know you need to cover on your company’s blog. For example, let’s say you run an eCommerce shop that sells beauty products and you know your customers are dealing with ‘maskne,’ which is acne caused by the constant wearing of a face mask. A product buyer on your team could very well craft a blog post listing five products from your eCommerce website that are perfect for combating this dreaded skin issue. Being a buyer, this staff member probably would never think they could write for your company blog, but who better to recommend your products and sell their benefits in a blog post other than the person who is buying these products for your company to sell to consumers? When you already have a list of subjects you want written and present them to your team, various employees will realize they are the perfect experts to tackle these topics.

Write an Outline

Once you’ve assigned a topic to your employee, it would help them out a lot if you organized the structure of the blog post for them. As you are insourcing content, you will find that not all of your staff will need outlines, but for the ones who do, having an outline will help them keep their thoughts organized. An outline simply makes writing for your company’s blog easier. Here are some elements to cover in your outline:

• Deadline
• Publish date
• Blog post title
• Keyword/key phrase (On the outline, note that the keyword or key phrase needs to be used within the first paragraph of the article for SEO purposes.)
• The structure of the blog post (Example: introduction, key points you want addressed within the body of the article, closing.)

Schedule Blogging Time

If your team member knows that they have four hours on Monday reserved for blogging, it adds to the ease of their task. Even if your employees are not hourly employees, just verbalizing a mutual understanding that they are being given time to write as opposed to performing their usual duties will put them at ease and help them feel supported.

Make It Rewarding

The real purpose of the engineers, project managers, project strategists, and support technicians at WebDevStudios (WDS) is to serve our clients. So when these teammates carve out time during their hectic days to contribute to the WDS blog, I make a HUGE deal out of it.

First and foremost, I edit and proof and do all I can to make my already-smart coworkers sound smart. Look, typos happen; and sometimes, communications aren’t as clear as they could be, especially when a very technically-oriented person is trying to write a piece that someone who isn’t so technically-oriented can understand. My goal is to take all the knowledge and expertise they have poured into a blog post and clean it up so that it reads like an award-winning piece. In the end, our authors are appreciative of that effort.

Each contributor also gets a byline so it’s clear who wrote it. There are far too many company blogs out there with no author byline. That has to stop. When insourcing content, don’t let your brand or company take complete credit for the articles on your blog. Give credit where credit is due.

Additionally, we share our content all over social media, and when possible, we even tag the writer. Last but not least, because our WordPress agency utilizes Hey Taco! as a part of our company culture, I always give a taco to whomever wrote the blog post published that day. By making blogging a fun, rewarding activity for your staff, insourcing content will be fun and rewarding for you, too.

Insourcing Content Don’ts

What you really need from your internal contributors is their knowledge and expertise displayed on your company blog. Do not place all of the responsibilities that come with content marketing on their shoulders.

• Don’t ask them to handle the SEO of their blog post. It’s one thing to ask your contributors to place your desired keyword or phrase within the first paragraph of their article, but the overall SEO of the piece needs to be someone else’s job, such as a corporate editor or marketer who is experienced with this strategy.
• Don’t expect contributors to add images. Some of your authors might feel comfortable sourcing images and adding them to their blog posts, but some may not. If a team member leaves a Draft post sans images or any kind of media, just take care of that aspect for them. Remember, you want to make blog contribution easy.
• Don’t edit out their voice. The moment a staff member publishes a blog post on your company’s website, that person is going to feel really proud. However, if you remove their voice and tone from the article, they’ll probably end up feeling deflated. Let their personality shine, so long as it doesn’t clash with your brand messaging or image. I, myself, have been known to edit out cuss words and emojis from our company blog posts, but I always keep the cheeky jokes and humorous GIFs!

One More Tip…

Has it occurred to you that when you are insourcing content, you are also recruiting your team members to act as brand ambassadors? Just a moment ago, I mentioned that when your employees publish a blog post, it gives them a sense of pride. That feeling will translate into action when these authors go about sharing their published articles all over their social media. That’s a boon for you and your brand.

So, don’t despair if your organization can’t afford to hire content creators or freelancers to maintain a lively blog for your website. Rely on insourcing content from within your company. Follow these tips and watch your blog and web traffic grow.

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