Something was missing in my blog
I have been blogging for years. But, I realized that my blog wasn’t that organized. Sure, I had lots of cool categories, and yes, there was useful content — but, something was missing. I just couldn’t figure out what was missing until I read Ann Handley’s (marketingprofs) blog about the five food groups of blogging.

They make their blog “comfy”
First of all, Marketing Profs does such a good job of making their blog writing style easy to read, informative, and also they make you feel comfortable reading their blogs. They always seem to integrate coffee, salsa & chips, pets, and other feel good, comfy, and relatable themes into their blogs which makes regular people (like me) want to read their content more often.

The five food groups
Yet another relatable theme was the five food groups. Something we all learn about as small children which is kind of fun, and also is taught using cool charts. I didn’t know that blog entries could be segmented into food types. I never thought of my comedy entries as “desserts.” I never knew that my technical how-to articles could be classified as anti-oxidant rich vegetables. I had no idea that my articles about signing companies could be considered the meat of Notary knowledge. Thanks to Ann’s fun and innovative writing, I was able to get this new concept into my head.

What about mustard?
Unfortunately, not all of my blog articles confirm to the various culinary categories. I was not able to find any condiments. Perhaps if I write a controversial entry, that might qualify as a habanero aioli. And what would be a type of blog entry that would be a bread category?

Here’s what I did…
After long thought, I decided that the important things that Notaries want and need include Marketing, Technical How-To, Funny, and they always like to read about Signing Companies. We publish stories, and other types of content too, but these were the types of content that I thought should be scheduled. So, to make it easier to keep it all organized and regular we do Marketing Monday, Technical Tuesday, Funny Friday, and Signing Company Saturday. It is all well organized, and I often pre-publish the posts months in advance. This also makes the writing process more organized because I know how much of each type of article to write.

The result in blog traffic
I am very happy with the results in my blog traffic. We went from around 15,000 visitors per month to about 20,000. Part of the increase is due to increased traffic from Facebook as we have raised our budget for Facebook advertising and promotion. But, the new organization has helped me optimize my posts in each category rather than just optimize post titles in general. This way instead of just deciding what is popular, I can identify what the most popular themes in the technical category are, and then have a completely separate comparison for identifying which marketing posts are the most or least popular.

So, to sum it up — what was that something that was missing in my blog?
Mustard!

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How to write a notes section if you are a beginner
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