Create a content calendar
You can start by using the actual calendar and seeing what events or festivals are happening in your area. The reason for this is that you may want to create blog posts or articles that are timely and relevant to what’s going on around your business. Also, a content calendar helps you plan what you’re going to write and when you need to have it done by, along with ensuring that you aren’t under pressure each week to produce new content (when you could be busy with other work).
Create a list of blog posts in Evernote
Evernote is a great (cross-device) app for capturing ideas, writing posts, organising posts into ‘tags’ and ‘categories’, and sharing with other members of your team if required. It’s on mobile, desktop and tablet, and it saves all of your writing to the cloud automatically, so you never have to risk losing anything. Our favourite feature in Evernote is the ability to link notes to other notes; just copy the note link by right-clicking on the note title and then paste to where you want it to display. Super handy for lists.
Make sure to cross-reference them
If you’re writing anything technical or making any statements in your writing, it important to back them up with solid evidence or research. This allows your audience to trust you and also shows them that there’s a basis for what you’re saying, not just guesswork. A good app for this is Refme, which will help you to reference any video, website or book, without the hassle of writing the references yourself. This is a real time saver.
Source videos, photos and graphics
Where do you get your images at the moment? We can just take them from anywhere on the web as they may be protected and come along with legal implications for wrongful use. However don’t worry, there is a way around this. Flickr.com will let you use ‘commercial use allowed’ images that you find on their platform – free of charge. For people who prefer illustrations or other types of professional images, they may be better off using Shuttershock.com. Of course, the other option is to get out your camera phone and take the photos yourself! Totally free…nice.
Make sure the design and colours are right
As a general rule, three colours is the maximum that you want in blog graphics that you make yourself – two tones of one colour and then one contrasting colour. If you go outside of those parameters, you leave yourself open to making an image that is too fussy or hard to look at. Take a look at the colour systems of some major brands, they are almost always simple. Coca-cola, Facebook, Apple and Vodafone all use simple colour schemes.
Use eye-catching visuals like infographics
Images are some of the most popular posts to be interacted with online, and infographics are sometimes even more popular than just regular images. Basically, infographics are pieces of information contain in a graphic. People love them because they can absorb condensed information in a short space of time. In other words, infographics offer a lot of value. But if you’re going to make one, make sure that you use some space on the graphic to advertise your business! If you can customise it, you can advertising on it.