Tens of thousands of new blogs are created every day, but that doesn’t mean that all of them are being read or even posted to regularly. In my line of work, I have come across tons of businesses that let their blogs go to waste, ultimately flatlining their customer engagement and search engine rankings in the process.
Of course, keeping your blog filled with fresh content can be challenging for even the most experienced writer, and even blogging regularly can return less than stellar results if your content and topics fall flat and fail to grab the attention of a reader.
If your company’s blog appears to be underperforming, perhaps a personal touch is all you need to help drive new attention to your brand and convert those potential customers into permanent contacts. The following are three reasons integrating real-life experience into your posts can make for a more robust and compelling content marketing strategy.
Fresh Topics and Ideas Come Naturally
After starting a blog, many people and businesses run into a wall of not knowing what to write about. The best way to overcome this challenge, as in all writing, is to write what you know. Basing your blogs off of your own personal experience requires no background research — just some time to collect your thoughts.
One of the biggest complaints that we hear from clients who can’t seem to keep up with their site’s content is not having enough time. While a 500-word post that is carefully researched and crafted may take around two hours to produce, a post around the same length that is centered around your own experiences might take half an hour to 45 minutes maximum. It’s not only one of the secrets to coming up with posts and creating them quickly, but it will also help you write for longer periods of time without the need for procrastination in between.
If you’re promoting an industry or product, it is especially important to incorporate your own personal experience. Adding your own voice will help keep your audience entertained while guaranteeing a unique post that is sure to help drive up your site’s traffic.
You Build Trust With Your Audience
There’s a special bond that’s created between writer and reader in all literature, and though blogging may not be considered the same caliber of writing, it fosters a similar relationship. For a business that is trying to get more traffic on their site and consequently new customers, building trust with that audience is absolutely essential.
Adding personal experiences to business blogging will make the readers feel like they really know you. Though trust is difficult to build and tricky to measure, sharing experiences starts to build that foundation. Sharing personal struggles and frustration with an audience creates a more personal relationship by giving them something to relate to and making yourself more seem more “real.”
Telling stories, of course, isn’t new to blogging. It draws on the entire history of humankind; we’ve grown and survived as a species because of our ability to transmit and share knowledge through stories. In fact, stories are such wonderful trust builders because they stimulate very specific parts of our brain. All the biggest bloggers on the internet have come to the realization that personal experience is a vital facet of their craft.
People Will Remember Your Brand
People visit many sites every day, and sticking out from the rest doesn’t always come easy. However, personal experiences may just be the trick to gaining some separation between you and your competition. Anyone who can use a search engine can come up with facts for just about any subject there is, from new tech gadgets to raising kids, but leaving readers with a lasting impression takes talent and creativity. Rather than simply stating the facts, add some substance to your site’s content by incorporating a bit of personal flair and incorporating some stories of your own.
You’ll Give Your Blog a Personality
There’s nothing that will pump personality into your blog quite as quickly as personal experience. Writing style, of course, sets the tone and can give a hint of personality, but if you’re really looking to push the envelope, personal experiences is what will take your blog over the top and bring your content to life. At Eyeflow, we’ve found that adding a bit of personal experience to our own blog has continued to give us an edge over the competition and leave our readers with a little something extra when they are finished reading through our posts.
You’ll Become a Better Blogger
Sharing personal experiences not only benefits your brand as a whole, but in no time at all you’ll find yourself becoming a better blogger in the long term. With the old days of cramming in keywords into every possible sentence and statement long gone, it’s personal experience that will truly help you capture keyword rankings and watch your organic traffic numbers climb.
Just in the past year alone, we’ve reinvented our entire approach to content marketing. Google is continually putting more power into the hands of the customer, so keeping them entertained and engaged absolutely must be your first priority if you want to see your rankings and traffic soar to new heights.
Phil Laboon is an accomplished internet marketer who has consulted everyone from Fortune 500s to Tech Startups. At just 20 years old, Laboon founded the Pittsburgh-based SEO firm, Eyeflow Internet Marketing. In addition to his work with Eyeflow, Laboon is heavily involved with local charities and his investments in tech startups.
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