[How to] Writing The Worst Inbound Marketing Blog Post

Think about a time you read a blog article you thought would never end – a meaningless Myspace post or a story before a recipe that goes on for eternity. Most of the time you leave the page with no better understanding of the topic, a headache, and a plan to search elsewhere. 

Inbound marketing blog posts are meant to do the opposite. They’re intended to captivate the audience with relevant, compelling information. With practically unlimited options when searching for information, inbound blog posts help you stand out in the crowd of online buzz and develop relationships with your audience.

What is an Inbound Marketing Blog? 

To properly understand inbound blogs, first, you need to know about inbound marketing as a whole picture. On a high level, inbound marketing puts you in the right place, at the right time, with the right content, so you can connect with prospects as soon as they start their search. 

How does that relate to blog posts? 

You may remember the days of blogging on LiveJournal or Myspace. It was meant to connect with readers looking for content on a specific topic, from funny cats to musings on life. Users would read posts, interact with them by leaving impressions, and come back later to read more. If the content was irrelevant, you didn’t receive impressions or any returning visitors.

The same concept applies to inbound marketing blogs for your business. You publish articles with intriguing and useful content, prospects find the posts and view you as a credible source, resulting in more interactions with your business in the future. 

Successful inbound marketing addresses a reader’s pain points while optimizing content to try to be the solution to the reader’s problems. Optimizing content involves writing in a way that your target audience and search engines will see and understand. 

You’ll need to understand the user’s search intent to create meaningful content that will create and foster future relationships between the user and your business. Inbound marketing blog posts should have a purpose, draw readers in, and solve their problems. 

What NOT to do to Master the Art of Writing for Inbound Marketing

You may be thinking, writing inbound marketing content sounds simple. Write a blog with compelling text, continue publishing new pieces and you're all set.

That’s just not the case. 

Writing blog articles is an art form. Similar to painting a picture, one wrong brush stroke and you need to rethink your entire piece. To avoid writing the worst inbound marketing blog, here are three things to avoid:  

1. Skipping the basics
2. Writing without intention
3. Ignoring the inbound methodology

1. Skipping the Basics

First and foremost, you need the basics when it comes to writing a blog post. You can have the most compelling content, but without the basics your piece will not be seen or understood.

If you search for the basics of blogging, you will find thousands of results. Without getting too granular, a solid blog article that keeps Google’s search algorithms happy has:

• Keywords 
• Structure
• Links 
• A call to action

Google evaluates keywords to understand users’ search intents and determine how relevant your article is to their needs. Blogging best practice is to include keywords in your text in a way that is natural -- not shoehorning them in every other word. 

The structure of a blog post is the foundation of your piece. When you build a house, you start with the foundation – if it isn’t solid, the rest will crumble. Like building a house, your blog needs a structure that is easy to follow for Google and your reader. 

You may think that writing a blog article linking to external websites will drive traffic away. In reality, linking to reputable websites increases your credibility. Google wants to make users happy with relevant, meaningful content. If Google views your links as valuable information to readers, your site’s authority will increase. On the other hand, if a user clicks an outbound link from your article to an untrustworthy website, your site will be viewed negatively by the user and Google as well. 

External links aren’t the only links that should be in your blog posts. Linking internally to your website helps Google easily read your site and increase your ranking as it sees authority. Additionally, readers will have access to more resources from your site – increasing traffic and the likelihood of gaining a customer.

Pro Tip: Always set your links to open in a new tab to ensure your reader can always find their way back to the original piece!

Resource: Our specialists want to help you learn the inbound way. Check out these B2B blog examples as a guide when writing your next piece.

2. Writing Without Intention…Or the Wrong Intention

To keep readers engaged and show Google your site and its contents are relevant, you need to establish a purpose for your writing. In simple terms, your content has to be worth their time. If not, your audience will go somewhere else. 

If you’re writing about the benefits of pencils, don’t write about why you need water bottles. Ignoring posts or clicking off of an article to find better results is easier than ever. By rambling about irrelevant content your credibility diminishes and the chances of the reader becoming a customer follows suit. 

If prospects are searching "how to write for inbound" and discover a blog raving about the awards your company has won, they will probably not stick around. In other words, don’t lose business before prospects even have a chance to view your products or services. Write in a meaningful way. Be the solution to the user’s search. And keep your focus on them. 

3. Ignoring Inbound Methodology

The inbound methodology is crucial when it comes to inbound blog writing. It’s like using car parts to fix a car instead of those meant for a fighter jet. There are three stages: attract, engage, and delight. Attract new visitors to your site, engage to turn leads into customers, and delight by creating useful content to keep them interested. Think of the inbound methodology as a flywheel -- if one of the three parts isn’t working, the flywheel has no force. 

Implementing an inbound strategy requires the flywheel parts (or inbound stages) to work in harmony. Only targeting the delight stage will reach a small segment of users and not generate any new visitors in a meaningful way. Similarly, only attracting visitors to your site will likely result in no repeat business. Ensure your content matches the audience that you’re targeting and meets them at all stages of their buyer’s journey.

Writing the Best Inbound Marketing Blog

It’s easy to go down the wrong path and produce a blog post that doesn’t do its job. 

Mastering inbound marketing blog writing doesn’t just happen. It takes experience and knowledge to create successful content. 

By optimizing your content and keeping the reader at the center of your focus, you’ll have a good foundation for implementing an inbound strategy. 

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