Optimise your Accounting App blog posts with these tips

For the last few years, I’ve reviewed several hundred Accounting Technology blogs weekly and curated them for the Accounting Apps newsletter.

I’ve compiled a list of tips to optimise your blog post reach and ensure the content resonates with accountants and bookkeepers.

1. Simple. Helpful. Visual. Entertaining. Human.
2. Micro-learning. Focus on including technical information and insight.
3. Make sure blog post titles are interesting and can be clearly understood by someone perhaps unfamiliar with your solution. People reading your blog post may not always be on your website – it’s important the blog title and content are clear about what you’re referring to. For example, We’ve made some updates to our colour scheme. vs We’ve made some updates to our colour scheme at Solution ABC
4. Don’t include personal names in the blog post title – such as Tony’s Top Tips.
5. Keep blog post titles evergreen, by avoiding dates.
6. If you have a global audience avoid the use of seasons. Yes, it’s homely and nurturing. But if your audience is not in the same season zone as you, it is jarring to them and reminds them you are not a local provider. The use of the word FALL is also confusing, as it has several meanings, and for many countries does not mean Autumn. Remember this only applies if you have a global audience.
7. Review and update older blog posts, and republish or reshare them.
8. Show, don’t tell the reader what to do. Guide them. Take the reader on a transformative journey, without being preachy.
9. Listicles or blogs titles that start with a number perform well.
10. Ensure the blog post includes over 350 words of text.
11. Attack posts are generally deselected.
12. Space the publishing of posts over several days. That is don’t publish a full month’s worth of content on the same day, as it will only be considered for one newsletter.
13. Include at least one strikingly visual image. I recommend including a 200px * 200px as the featured image (This means it will appear on social media shares too). Canva is an easy to use option for creating graphics. Click here for free stock images.
14. Gifs are effective and eyecatching. They can be used to share simple process instructions, and are attractive on social media. This is my go-to Gif Maker, but there are many other options.
15. Balance out blog posts about your company, with what is useful for the community. Yes, posts about staff members are nice and help people understand your culture, however, they are unlikely to drive traffic to your website.
16. Avoid blog post titles like “We went to ABC conference” instead highlight learning from the conference, and weave into the blog post details of the conference you went to. e.g. “Capture the negativity and flip it into positivity” is more interesting than “We went to ABC conference” and may lead the potential reader, to go to your website. It is rare that a post about a non-accounting conference would be included, so you may leave the conference aspect out altogether.
17. Make sure all links work. Make sure all e-books automatically download. Seriously. Test them. Get someone else to test them too.
18. Case Studies can be effective, but be sure to highlight the industry, the profession, and the benefit. Don’t say Joe Smith uses <Solution>. Do say Accountant delivers amazing customer experience by using <solution>.
19. Take time and care to complete the Meta description.
20. Robotic writers. It’s OK to use tools to leverage your content, but I’m seeing a growing number of posts that are a hairball of weirdness. Make sure a human reads the article, and it makes sense. My favourite robot is WordTune.
21. Make sure the font is easy to read (I use Open Sans), and it can be read on websites and mobile devices.
22. Review the blog’s appearance on different browsers on a mobile device.
23. Test if your feed works here: https://validator.w3.org/feed/