What Is a Creative Blog and How To Start One

woman typing on a computer, a notepad and pen sit next to her

CopyPress

March 6, 2022

Companies are always looking for new ways to attract people to their websites and brand. But it can feel daunting to create content that stands out from the sea of other businesses already ranking on search engines. If you’re hoping to build your brand awareness and generate a larger audience, it’s important to understand the benefits that a creative blog can give you and the strategies you can use to make it an effective marketing plan. In this article, we discuss:

What Is a Creative Blog?
Reasons Your Website Should Include a Blog
How Do I Create a Creative Blog?
13 Types of Creative Blog Posts

What Is a Creative Blog?

Image via Unsplash @andrewtneel

Creative blogs are posts that give readers helpful and informative content that attracts them to a company’s website. These posts help to boost a company’s brand awareness and create a loyal audience following. Blogs are one of the many strategies that companies use to perform effective content marketing. Creative blogs, specifically, are a kind of blog that uses imaginative styles, designs, and blog topics to help businesses create a stronger brand and online presence. This helps to make your brand more recognizable to your audience.

When you use blogs, your business can attract readers with information while selling your products and services through enticing calls-to-action. Calls-to-action (CTAs) are phrases, links, and other forms of eye-catching writing that encourage your readers to interact with your company in other ways. For example, creating an email sign-up button with the phrase “Sign Up Now” or “Sign Up For Our Newsletter” is a type of call-to-action. (Keep in mind that there are ways to be as enticing as possible. In the newsletter example, also including the benefits a reader may receive by signing up for your newsletter or the things they’ll learn can motivate them to take action.)

Reasons Your Website Should Include a Blog

Here are some of the main reasons your website and brand should have a blog:

Stay Competitive

Blogs help websites and companies keep up with competing businesses and brands. If your competition is doing well, they more than likely are performing some type of content marketing to attract their own audience, which can overlap with yours. Developing your own blog and content marketing campaign can help you get your audience back by publishing similar, helpful blogging content.

A great place to start is researching your competition to find gaps in their content marketing strategy from which you can benefit. CopyPress offers a Content Analysis Tool that compares your website’s content against your top three competitors. Request your content analysis today to see where your website currently ranks and discover new keywords you should be targeting.

“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

Become an Industry Expert

Blogs help companies show their industry expertise. That can help your audience see that you have a lot to offer in terms of industry information and knowledge. This can increase your reader’s loyalty and bring them back to your blog for more content in the future. That’s because they see you as an industry expert from which they can learn and benefit. It also helps to convince them that your products and services might be some of the best in the industry because of your expert knowledge.

Talk About Your Business

Blogs are a great way to tell your audience news and information. So, don’t forget to use that platform to talk about your business and the products or services it offers. That can help inform your readers about your company and everything it can do. It also helps you convert those readers into paying customers. If you try to use blogs to inform people about your business and create customers, it’s helpful to pair calls to action with the major benefits your products or services can give them.

How Do I Create a Creative Blog?

Here’s a list of steps to help you start a creative blog and improve your content’s search engine ranking:

1. Find Your Target Audience

Before starting your blog, it’s important to understand your target audience and what they want to read. Your target audience includes anyone you think would benefit most from your products or services. For instance, if your company specializes in dog food, your target audience is most likely going to be dog owners versus cat or fish owners. One great way to learn more about your target audience is to develop customer personas. These are fictional customers you create that highlight their demographics, hobbies, and interests. This can help you envision your audience as you write to them.

It’s also helpful to conduct market research and analyze your competition. If your competitors create a blog, see what type of information they share and who responds to it. Which articles have the most comments? Which ones did people share most often on social media? Use this information to understand what your audience wants to see. Once you start your blog, it’s also helpful to research constantly and update your target audience demographics, so your marketing efforts remain effective. Using tools like Google Analytics is a great way to uncover information on your target audience as they read your blog.

2. Pick the best Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is a tool that helps you organize and post new blog articles on your website. The system provides you and your employees with the ability to create, publish, and collaborate on content. It’s possible the hosting service you use for your company website already has a CMS that allows you to create and post new content. Some popular website hosting services with CMS capabilities include WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace.

If your hosting platform doesn’t have a CMS you can use, there are other programs you can get for your business. Companies like HubSpot offer their own CMS that businesses can use by paying for a subscription. Before starting your blog, consider researching potential content management systems you can use and the different functions or benefits they can give you. For instance, CopyPress has a proprietary CMS that we use for our client’s content marketing campaigns.

When you partner with our company, you have access to all the content we produce for your campaign. You can even use the CMS to make edits to the content yourself or leave comments to our writers, editors, and quality assurance team to ensure it meets the standards of your campaign and brand. Because we craft our CMS in-house, we’re also always updating the system and interface to make sure it works for you and your content needs.

3. Develop a Content Calendar

A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan your blog’s content and generate ideas for future blog posts. This allows you to create a consistent flow of content that can help you attract more people to your brand. Readers like it when you show them you can provide constant content and information to which they can keep coming back.

A great way to create a content calendar is using a spreadsheet that your content writers and editors can access easily. This allows you to keep track of the content’s stages and see when someone writes, edits, and publishes additional work. You can utilize a content calendar in other areas of your marketing efforts, like to tease a future post or draw attention to content you’ve already published when you’re sending out a newsletter.

4. Create High-Quality Content

It might seem obvious, but it’s imperative your content is of high quality. Some blogs churn out content as quickly as they can without worrying about the article’s information or quality. Audiences can see that, which can tarnish your customer loyalty, as well as your search engine ranking. As you create content for your blog, try to ask yourself questions, such as:

Is this content informative?
Does it teach my audience something new or useful?
Is it readable?
Is it easily understandable?
Can it provide my audience with something my competitors aren’t sharing?

Focusing on creating high-quality content can show your readers that you care about what you share with them. This is a great way to keep your current audience and gain new audience members through positive word-of-mouth. Looking for content with consistently exceptional quality? CopyPress has a team of writing experts that know how to write engaging and informative blog posts, as well as white papers, research articles, and product descriptions. Schedule a free call with us today to learn more about our services and how our high-quality content will boost your current marketing efforts.

5. Focus on SEO

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the process of tweaking and enhancing your content to improve its ranking and make it easier to find on search engines. Focusing on excellent SEO practices can help your blog reach more people and keep their attention. A few things to remember for best SEO practices include:

Improving content readability
Adding metadata, like image titles and meta descriptions
Increasing the number of backlinks
Targeting specific keywords

Related: A Beginner’s Guide to SEO

13 Types of Creative Blog Posts

Here are some types of creative blog posts you can create for your business:

1. How-To Articles

How-to articles are step-by-step tutorials to help your audience accomplish certain tasks. Most often, these articles are specific to your brand’s industry or field. For example, let’s say your business sells fountain pens. Some how-to article titles might include, “How To Take Care of Your Fountain Pen” or “How To Refill Your Fountain Pen.” These articles provide your audience with helpful information they can apply to the products your business sells.

2. Beginner Guides

Beginner guides are like how-to articles, but they offer more of an in-depth approach and analysis to the subject. They often provide the reader with a tutorial but give additional information along with it. This helps the reader understand everything they need to about the topic. For instance, say you operate a car dealership and you’re creating a beginner’s guide to owning a car so you can establish your dealership’s expertise in the industry. You might include topics such as:

“Why It’s Important to Maintain Your Car”
“How Often You Should Check Your Car Oil”
“How To Check Your Car Oil”
“When To Bring Your Car Into a Mechanic”
“How To Maintain and Clean Leather Seats”
“How To Find A Good Mechanic”

You don’t have to include every single one of these topics in the guide. But each one of these headings is great information for someone to learn if they’re a beginner. Helpful things to remember to include in beginner guides are topics like definitions, tips, and how-to sections.

3. Tips and Tricks

This style of blog lists specific tips and tricks that readers can try to accomplish tasks. Unlike how-to articles, this content specifically focuses on steps or troubleshooting techniques for various tasks. These steps don’t have to be in a specific order and the reader can pick which ones they’d like to try. Some example titles might include “Tips for Investing Smartly” or “Tips and Tricks for Improving Your Client Relations.”

4. Listicles

Listicles are any type of article that gives the reader a list of information. Whether it’s a list of potential places to visit, books to read, or even tips and tricks, as long as you write it in a list format, it’s a listicle article. Readers love lists, and having several options for them to try helps attract them to your content. You can even use unique items in the list to mention your products or services while still maintaining the reader’s attention.

For example, CopyPress offers a wide variety of content writing services. We understand how to create a high-quality blog with a range of posts. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more ways working with us can boost your content marketing efforts.

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

5. Recipes

Recipes are a very popular form of blog posts. They often work best with companies in the food or cooking industry, but it’s still possible for other brands to use them in creative ways. For instance, let’s say your business publishes books. You could have a recipe blog on how to make a cake decorated like a book.

For marketers, you may share a favorite recipe from your team members every Friday as a fun post rather than a business-related one. While writing a recipe blog, it’s helpful to include your cooking or baking process, and then provide the recipe at the end of the article.

6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) is a great blog post that can answer your audience’s questions about industry topics or your products and services. This is helpful to your brand for several reasons, including:

Giving customers helpful information
Providing all that information in one place
Targeting several long-tail keywords for better SEO

For the last one specifically, each question that you place as a heading in your blog is a search term someone’s typing in about the topic. With well-written content, you can rank higher on search engines for each of those questions and search terms.

7. Industry News

Industry news covers anything that people might find interesting about your industry or field. These types of blogs are especially helpful for business-to-business (B2B) companies. For example, let’s say you run a television commercial company. Other businesses who want to use your commercial services might find interest in a recent study about the positive effects of television advertising. Writing a blog about it can help you inform your audience while simultaneously selling your services.

8. Current Events

Current event blogs are like industry news, but they target trending topics that have a larger audience. You can focus your current event blogs on industry-specific topics, or you can try to associate major headlines with your company’s products and services. For instance, “How Spider-Man Could Benefit From Our Services.”

These types of blogs help you target currently trending keywords to get your content seen by more people. Though it’s possible you might attract more readers with a headline like the one above, it’s almost always better to focus on your target audience and those who might benefit best from your products and services.

9. Product or Service Spotlights

Spotlights are types of blogs that detail the products and services your company offers and highlight their benefits. This content often works best when you’re releasing a new product or service, or you’re currently offering a big promotion and sale. You can inform your readers about the new product and mention the discount at the same time. However, it’s important to use these types of blogs sparingly so your content doesn’t become one big advertisement catalog.

One thing you can do to keep these types of posts from seeming too self-serving it to insert real customer testimonials within your content so your potential customers and clients can relate more to how your products and services can benefit them.

10. Product or Service Previews

Similar to spotlights, these blogs give a teaser about a new product or service before its release. It allows people to get excited about what you’re hoping to offer in the future. You can use these types of blogs to generate a bigger email list by promising to notify your users of the product’s release when the time comes. You can also use the blog to generate pre-orders of the product and create sales revenue before its official release.

11. Interviews

Interview blogs allow you to share an interview you conducted with your audience. You can interview employees, managers, customers, or industry experts and give a transcript of that interview to your readers. These allow you to highlight important industry information, demonstrate how a customer benefited from your business, or talk about the company’s mission and values.

12. Guest Posts

Guest posts are blogs other writers or industry professionals create for your website. This can sometimes be like an interview blog, but instead of answering pointed questions, the writer gets to address the readers directly and share information with them. You can even create a guest blog for a different website or brand to attract more readers to your own site. Use the guest post to talk about your company and its values, or offer your point of view on an important industry topic.

13. Recycling Old Content

Recycling old content helps you develop new blog articles more quickly while using research and information to which you already have access. You can take an infographic, white paper, or video that you created in the past and turn that information into a helpful blog article. Use the same information, but talk about it differently or create an update on what you talked about before. This helps you target a similar keyword as before while creating new and exciting content for your audience.

Developing a creative blog for your website can help increase its overall traffic and create a loyal following for your brand. Start by finding your target audience and create informative, entertaining content you know they’re going to enjoy.

Ed Pronley

CopyPress writer