Before you get to the part of your business where you’re working with an amazing design team like Blazer on trade show displays, you’ll have to work on getting an audience – and that can be one of the hardest things you’ll have to do. Even if you know exactly who you’re targeting, creating a website design that captures readers is tricky.
Deciding What You Need
What do you want to get out of your company blog? Are you looking to point readers in the direction of past posts? Or, do you want those people reading your blog to sign up for a newsletter or other piece of content? Figure out what your goal is based on what you need the most (or mix the two), and then design blog pieces accordingly.
Hit ‘Em Where It Matters Most
Here’s an interesting fact: most people do not read all the words that you write. Instead, the vast majority of readers will skim your content, look for major points, and then move onto the closing line to see what it’s all about. What does this information tell you? A few things:
- Highlight the key takeaways, and readers will look at those highlights first.
- Make sure that you have a good Call To Action (CTA) at the end of each post.
- Consider a “P.S.” at the bottom of each post.
Why a “P.S.” closing line? It just so happens that the “P.S.” is one of the most read components of any blog post, email, or letter. If you want someone to understand your point, put the most important thing that you have to say in that P.S. line. Try it out on your blog, and see if it works by testing and analyzing your blog traffic. What’s that? You don’t analyze traffic? Yikes!
Why Analysis Matters
It’s not enough to know that some people are reading your blog, or that you have ‘x’ amount of website visitors. You have to drill down the content by looking at your blog posts, figuring out how many people have read those posts, where those people are coming from, and – most importantly – where people are dropping off (or where they stop reading). From there, you can try and figure out why people leave your site or don’t sign up, and you can tweak your blog accordingly. Most of the time, readers don’t translate into new sales leads (or don’t sign up for your newsletter) because your blog content is lacking. Really, it’s that simple. You can’t fill a blog with useless details, and expect people to read what you wrote, or to sign up for your email alerts. Would you want to know when a new post that’s full of nothing important has been added to a blog? Not really, right? Well, the same thing is true for your potential clients. If you create a blog that’s full of important notes, ideas, and interesting information that’s easy to read, people will sign up for your newsletter – if you create the right CTA or “P.S.” line, that is.
When to Start
Every website should have a blog. When you build your site, put a blog page on that site, and start filling it will gold content right now. But, don’t forget the closing lines that seal the deal, and remember that you won’t get it right the first time. You have to play around with different formats, and you have to analyze your traffic in detail. When should you start defining your blog goals? Right now. Once you have people reading your blog and visiting your website, you can start thinking about the trade show displays that you want to create – now that you have such a captive audience, why not move that onto the show floor? Make sure to leave us a note if you have any questions about trade show displays, or follow us on Facebook for additional details about what we do. In the meantime, start blogging! P.S. The Blazer team creates more than just display booths. Take a look at this link to see our the things that we do in addition to creating amazing display booths!