Learning how to successfully blog isn’t something that is accomplished in a day. Especially as more and more blogging techniques come out all the time in the way of SEO trends and dynamic content methods, it’s becoming more and more complicated to create a blog post that actually lands on all levels.
Look at these tips to get you going in the right direction.
Basic Blogging Facts
First, understand the basic concepts involved with blogging and why you should do it. Blogging from a business standpoint falls into three categories, sometimes simultaneously: SEO stats, a tool to drive traffic and to engage with customers and potential clients. This can take an element of fun out of blogging for some.
Think about this in terms of a novelist. Writers can free write and craft pieces for the hell of it, usually as a creative exercise, but the product put forth to customers goes through rounds of editing and serves a purpose. Your blogging content should follow this same flow. Writing for fun is great and all, but writing for business requires more discipline.
Blog posts should be thought provoking and answer questions that potential customers and clients have, inform them on issues pertaining to your business and give them tools to help their own endeavors along. Blog posts shouldn’t be fluff. Even if you want to create a blog post with the only goal in mind being “boost site traffic,” this content should still be quality enough that people want to click and get involved with your business.
Start Scheduling Content
When you’ve got a set of blogs put together, it’s time to start posting them. Pick a schedule to use for blog posting and stick to it. Posting once a week is a way to keep your blog regularly updated, but play around and see what works best. You can do this on your own or use a content management service to help you post your content when you need to.
Scheduled content is a way to keep your blog current while eliminating a lot of the stress that comes with remembering deadlines or forgetting to blog at all. Keeping to a schedule also lets your audience know when you’ll be updating.
Keep Topics Relevant
Your blog topics should be relevant to your interests, or, namely, your business’ interests. If it pertains to your business, it’s possible to blog about it. You can be as stringent or as lenient with what this means as you wish, but there’s a limit to how far you can stretch this concept.
For instance, if your business focuses on automobile parts and maintenance, blogging about current car racing event is relevant to the business. A how to guide on how to change a tire is relevant to your business. An article about cars owned by celebrities is relevant to your business. Your opinions on the current box office numbers, however, should stay away from your business’ blog.
See how the example shows various ways to keep the topic focused on automobiles but slants the topic in different ways? This can give your blog variety and grasp a wider audience than a narrow set of blogging topics.
Titles and Facts Are Essential
Your title can really make or break the amount of traffic you get from your blog post. Titles should be catchy and entice people to look into the meat of your article. Include keywords and focus on things that your audience can learn. Great examples are “How to…” and “What You Didn’t Know About…”
In the same vein, actually give them the content you promise. There’s no way to measure whether or not something is “The Top” or not, but remember to use actual facts, statistics, quotes and figures from reliable sources.
Use Red Pen Liberally
Learn how to objectively edit. There’s the obvious work you need to do with grammar and syntax, but also know when something needs to be cut or included, or how to rearrange things. This also includes breaking up text to make it more dynamic and editing for length. Add images, include HTML edits and include links to sources. When in the editing stage, cut out the fat and make the meat look terrific.
SEO Starts
If you’re using WordPress, there’s a nifty add-on called Yoast that can help you optimize your blog post to be SEO friendly. If you aren’t working on WordPress, you might be on your own.
First, start understanding the basics of search engine optimization. This can include title length, image rules, keyword density, and how your readable your post is. There are a lot of SEO resources that can help you get started, so get searching.
