An engineering blog should be a vital part of your digital marketing strategy.
Why is this?
Well, I explore an engineering blog’s importance at length in a different article, but suffice it to say, it plays a vital role in building brand authority and gathering new leads and clients.
In order to fulfill this end goal, your engineering blog has to deliver quality information that helps readers discover a range of interesting topics and learn more about what your company can offer.
But what else does your blog need?
Below, I’ll take you through the 7 elements of a successful engineering blog that converts.
1. Captivating headline
Starting with a great headline is always important – this is the vital first glimpse into the engineering content that will follow, the first impression of your content (or even your site).
An effective headline piques curiosity and tells potential readers what the article is about.
You should craft your headline in a way that visitors get drawn in and are left wanting to read the rest of the article.
This is particularly important if your headline doubles as your meta title, which will be displayed in a search engine’s results.
If your title isn’t enticing enough, why would anyone click on your article or engage with your content?
Since crafting a captivating headline is so important, I’ve dedicated a whole article to tips on writing a great headline, so please refer to that for more ideas.
2. Intriguing introduction
There’s no use in crafting a great headline if you can’t follow it up with a great introduction.
After all, why put in the effort for the title if you’ll lose readers the second they start actually going through the content?
All too often, technical writers focus so much on the actual content that they fail to write an opening that draws readers in and keeps them craving more. The introduction has to grab the viewer’s attention and entice them to want to read more.
Following a marketing model like AIDA could be helpful here, but you could also narrate a story, pose a problem, or provide the first bit of value to convince your reader that the rest of the engineering information will be worth their time.
3. Good structure with relevant subheadings and images
Most engineering content is likely to be long-form and loaded with text and data. But text-heavy blog content can be difficult to digest, especially when reading on a smaller device, and it’s necessary to ensure your blog is very well-structured to keep readers engaged throughout.
One of the best ways to do this is by adding in relevant sub-headings and sub-sub-headings to break up longer pieces of text, and to break up text with sufficient media elements, including images, graphics, or video.
You could even use visual text breaks, like bolding or italicizing parts of your sentences or using quotes and bullet points, to break up walls of text on your blog.
By incorporating sufficient text breaks and visual elements, your content will become easier to skim and will remain more approachable for online audiences.
4. Good web design
Having a good website design to work from is also one of the elements of a successful engineering blog, albeit not one you can influence when crafting content.
Your blog’s design should always come first, and it’s important to focus on branding, functionality, and readability.
Ultimately, you need a blog design that’s both visually appealing but also easy to navigate and one that makes reading your content a breeze.
A good design should include some of the following:
- Enticing blog header
- Navigation bar or menu
- Social media icons
- Readable font
- Links to about and contact pages
- Email subscription forms
When done well, the design of your blog can increase traffic and engagement and potentially lead to higher sales numbers in the long term.
5. Compelling conclusion
If readers have made it all the way to the end of your content (which they hopefully will have if your blog post is interesting enough), they should be rewarded with a strong conclusion.
An effective conclusion ties together the main points of an article, offering a bite-sized takeaway that readers are likely to remember.
The conclusion is also a great place to add a call to action.
6. Call to action
Every blog post should include a call to action (CTA).
While you can include a variety of CTAs throughout your content, you never want to go overboard, as this can very quickly seem spammy.
But the conclusion – or the section right after the conclusion – is definitely a great place to add a call to action. After all, readers have just spent a good while reading your article; how would they know what comes next if you don’t guide them?
A CTA is an image, button, or line of text that prompts the reader to take action.
This may be a sales action, as in guiding the reader towards a purchase or setting up a sales call, but it could also be an information-based action, such as sending a query email or signing up to a newsletter. It could even be as simple as guiding your reader towards another article for more content.
Either way, it’s helpful to give your readers some guidance as to how you would like them to act after having read your content.
7. Consistency
A good engineering blog follows a consistent publishing schedule.
While there’s no hard and fast rule as to how often you should publish a blog or article, being consistent demonstrates to both search engines and readers that your blog is active and thriving. It also encourages readers to return to your site more frequently to discover more.
This is particularly important if you’re using your blog as part of your digital marketing strategy.
Successful blogs are consistently updated at least once a week so that your audience can rely on you to deliver the latest information or discussions.
A blog does wonders for your marketing strategy
By following these elements of a successful engineering blog, you’ll be on your way to making your blog work for you and your company.
And if you need help with getting started, feel free to contact me.
Elements Of A Successful Blog FAQs
Ask yourself whether what you’re writing about offers value, helps your reader, or gives new information. If it does, you should be well on your way.
The content you post should always be based on good keyword research – that means identifying keywords relevant to your field that you can write about and actually have a chance of ranking for. But it’s also worth keeping in mind some other SEO basics, like using keywords throughout the article, optimizing your meta information, using quality images, and ensuring your page loads quickly and is mobile-friendly.
By adding interactive features, like a comments section, polls, quizzes, or forums, you can help build a community and give your readers the opportunity of two-way conversation. This is great as it strengthens your position as a brand authority, builds good customer relationships, and allows you to gather new ideas and insights from your readers.
