When it comes to writing about weddings, it’s your favorite topic. There’s just something so beautiful about every part of this celebration of love, from the different choices the bride has to make choosing her dress and custom bridesmaid dresses, to how the happy couple chooses to decorate their ideal venue. And you’re always coming up with topics for your wedding blog, from 10 ways to include your pets at the wedding, to 5 Instagrammers to follow if you want your wedding makeup to be on fleek. But lately, you’ve been thinking that there’s more you could be doing.
And the fact is, there is. It’s 2018 now, and things are always changing in the blogging world. So if you want to stay current, get more followers, and be a successful blogger, follow these surprising content-writing hacks:
1 Don’t go too crazy with SEO
Sure, SEO is important. After all, it’s going to be what gets you hits whenever anyone Googles the topics of your blog, so you still want to optimize your images and titles and use all the right keywords. But as Google gets smarter and Facebook changes their algorithms for what pops up first in newsfeeds, what’s going to matter most is high-quality content.
The fact is, content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders, so you have to think about how you’re going to separate yourself from the crowd of bloggers writing about the same things you are. As blogmutt.com says, “too many writers worry about percentages and keyword density. Just remember keyword stuffing satisfies bots, not readers.
Your job is to give readers a reason to come back to your blog. To do that, your job is to be an industry expert that provides quality content.”
2 Be smart about your links
As mentioned above, when it comes to writing the highest quality content, you need to be truly informed about what you’re writing about. It’s more than just linking to this or that article on the Internet--it’s about linking to the best. That’s why Google Scholar is such a great tool to use.
According to Kissmetrics, “To really unleash the power in your article, you can back up your statements with scholarly research, peer-reviewed studies, and other important published works.” And that’s where it comes in.
This is going to give you way better results than a normal Google search would. Additionally, you’ll want to use Advanced Search, which will provide you with results that are much more specific and accurate than a regular search. Don’t forget to check your old posts for link rot, too--only 62 percent of sites are actually archived, so make this a regular practice.
3 Check back in with your audience
When you started your blog, you did everything right: researched other blogs like yours, found out where your audience was spending most of their time on social media, and you might have even taken a course in content-writing specific to the wedding blogging industry. We know you’ve worked--which is why you don’t want that work to go to waste.
Now that you’ve been running your blog a while--whether that’s months or years--it’s time to check back in with your buyer personas. Send them another survey now that you’ve got their emails. There’s a reason 65 percent of companies that exceed lead and revenue goals have updated personas within the last six months, and that’s because as your audience changes, so should your content. If young people getting married are suddenly in debt because of a recent economic development, for example, that’ll affect your marketing and content-writing strategies.
4 Create a special place for writing
Finally, don’t forget to go back to the basics if you’re ever stuck. We know that you’re busy, that you’ve got a constantly-changing social media calendar, contacts you’re trying to make in the industry, and clients to appease. It can get distracting--and if it’s too distracting, it’s going to get in the way of your writing, and, therefore, yourfinancial success. Considering that 97 percent of writers don’t finish writing the novel they wanted to write, it’s important you use the best strategies possible to write.
So if you haven’t already, it’s key that you create a special place for writing. Whether that’s designing your own in-home office, finding the perfect spot at your favorite cafe where you can set your coffee cup to one side of your laptop and your phone on the other, you’ll want a place that feels like a real workspace. It’s a great way to beat writer’s block and get more serious about your writing.
The fact is, no matter how experienced you are as a wedding blogger, there’s always still more to learn and new ways to make your content even more relevant and successful.
What surprising tips do you have for wedding bloggers looking to improve their content?