Read All About It! 10 Tips For Better LinkedIn Posting

You may be at the helm of a marketing team and looking for some tips that will whip your staff into shape, or perhaps you're a copywriter looking to break into the digital space - if you haven't delved head-on into posting on LinkedIn yet, what are you waiting for! LinkedIn posts are just another way to blog for businesses.

According to WordPress.com, one of the world's most popular blogging sites, on average over 409 million people view more than 17.6 billion pages of blog content every month. When it comes to business marketing, blogging reaches a global audience in a way that traditional print rarely can.

You don't have to write 'War and Peace' blogs just need to be informative, entertaining and engaging for readers. Forget all those technical and corporate words that you know oh so well. Here are 10 great tips that will help you to draft better business blogs and LinkedIn posts.

1) You're the voice! While competent spelling and grammar is important when it comes to ensuring your blog doesn't become a dog's breakfast - take the time to think about your writing style and voice. If you don't know how to carve out your niche, don't fret! Just remember the language used in blogs is more like a friendly conversation. Think about how you would talk to your potential readers if you were discussing business over coffee. Remember, if your daily dialogue doesn't include the use of a thesaurus, then don't go out of your way to use it in your blog.

2) Time to tackle the topic. No matter your business, it's important to think about what you really want to write about. This can be topics or content that matter to you personally or your business, an issue that's affecting your industry, interesting education pieces, or simply a story that you want to share. This sounds simple enough, but coming up with new content on a daily basis as well as bouts of the dreaded writers block, can sometimes work against your future blogging dreams.

3) Introducing.... You have your voice and an idea, now it's time to come up with an awesome working title or headline. In essence, a title is the most attractive feature of your blog for potential readers. A compelling title that is simple, powerful, useful and bold will also help readers to share your post, attract new readers, and appear high in online searches.

4) Get structured. Now it's time to plan out what you're going to write about. Much like you make plans and lists in your everyday life, doing this in regards to your blog well help you write more succinct copy. Points you want to cover and tentative subheadings can also help to guide your post and narrow down your thoughts, ensuring your paragraphs are well structured and flow beautifully.

5) Have I got your attention? Like a great title, your introduction has to captivate your readers, guaranteeing that they read your blog all the way to the end. A good way to do this is to share a business based anecdote (or your own if you are writing a personal blog). This helps connect the reader with you emotionally. Other emotional connectors include jokes or interesting facts and statistics. Once you've hooked them in, introduce your topic and the reasoning behind the blog.

6) The long and the short of it. Now you are all planned out it's time to get cracking on your content. There is much debate about whether short or long blog copy is better. According to QuickSprout, longer posts receive 68.1% more tweets than those which are short, and 22.6% more Facebook likes. Yet if you are writing business blogs, you know that you are targeting busy professionals just like yourself, so shorter copy may be better suited. At the end of the day you don't want copy that is repetitious or boring, so when it comes to blogging, quality is always better over quantity.

7) In the know with SEO. While you want people to read your blogs, keep in mind that business blogs are also awesome marketing tools. Using particular tags or key words can help to raise your ranking in Google. Also, by attaching popular hashtags when you share your blog to Twitter, this will enable people to find your content across a broad spectrum of social media platforms.

8) Proof read, edit and proof read again. If you have been staring at your blog for a while, take a break, get someone else to read over it and make any edits, then proof read again. If time is not of the essence, go over it with fresh eyes a few days later. This will assist in eliminating errors that you may have missed the first time and a second pair of eyes can also give you much appreciated, constructive feedback.

9) Presentation and final posting. All done? Make sure you add a call to action. This can be contacting your business, signing up for a newsletter list or following your company on social media. When you've done that, it's then time to share your words of wisdom with the world! Blogs with interesting images garner attention and can visually aid in reinforcing your message. Once it's looking good, you are then free to share across all your social media platforms.

10) Always remember... Your blog should be attention grabbing and interesting. This will in turn create desire for more blogs written by you (because you are now an expert thanks to my blog), as well as a burning desire for your products or services. Whatever the main aim of your blog - whether that be to head to your product website, or simply read more blogs, this action should be reiterated in your final call to action message.

Did your mind just boggle learning about blogs? How savvy are your social media skills? If you're a self-confessed Twitter twi-hard, learn more about hashtagging in this 3 part series: Part 1 What’s the ‘hash’ on hashtagging? , Part 2 Getting a handle on your hashtags , and Part 3 Hashing your way to success.