These days, a blog can be much more than a tool used to express your thoughts and opinions with the world. While it can serve as a platform to get a message out to others, it can also help you increase visibility for your brand and even help secure your financial future. Let’s take a look at some tips that can help you be a successful blog writer and quickly build your audience.
1. Have a Central Theme to Your Blog
Your blog should be focused on a specific topic that you can create interesting content about. For instance, you may want to write about college sports, web hosting or the political landscape in your state. Focusing on a single topic allows you to focus your energy as well as bring consistency to your blog that your readers will appreciate.
2. Create Content on a Regular Basis
Whether you write a new post once a day, once a week or once a month, make sure to have a schedule and stick to it. This gives your audience something to look forward to while conditioning them to check back at regular intervals. If your blog has just launched, you can generally get away with posting once or twice a month as you build your audience.
3. Write With SEO In Mind
When you write a post, you want to give it the best chance to be read by as many people as possible. Therefore, you will want to conduct proper keyword research to increase the odds that you rank for words and phrases that people actually search for. You also want to make sure that your content loads quickly and is easy to read on mobile devices as that also plays a role in search rankings.
4. Write Content That Can Be Easily Shared
The more that your content is shared through social media and other channels, the better you look as an authoritative source. This means that you want to create and format content that people will want to read and share with their friends. Listicles and infographics are quick and easy to read and absorb, which make them appealing to a mass audience.
5. Don’t Obsess Over the Details
The worst thing that you can do as a writer is think too hard about what you are writing. While you don’t want to create content that is shallow or full of spelling and grammar errors, you can get away with minor mistakes in usage from time to time. Remember, your audience cares more about your overall message than they do about being the grammar police. Therefore, your focus should be on communicating with your audience even if your content isn’t perfect.
6. Online Readers Like to Scan
It is important to understand that online readers like to scan content and look for the main idea or ideas within it. Using short sentences and paragraphs no longer than 75-100 words can help keep your reader’s attention. You should also use paragraph headings or bullet points to help your reader find what he or she is most interested in learning. Bold or highlighted text may also draw the attention of your reader to the most interesting portions of each post.
7. Don’t Be Afraid Of Controversy
As a blog writer, it is paramount that you have a point of view and are willing to stick to it. This is true even if your viewpoint may be controversial to some of your readers. While you may lose a portion of your audience for taking a stand, you will just as likely gain new readers who appreciate that you tell it like it is.
8. Don’t Take Shortcuts
If your content is good enough, it will be shared and rank highly for relevant search terms. The last thing that you want to do is keyword stuff or try to buy links for your posts. This is a sure way to get your blog banned from Google and other search engines. It also makes your blog look amateurish while making you look like a sloppy writer who is only in it for a quick dollar.
9. Avoid Being Too Promotional of Your Goods and Services
Blog content may be a great way to showcase your skills and cement your status as an expert. While it is OK to mention that you have written a book or have other products or services for sale, your blog posts should not be overly promotional. You want your readers to come away from a post having learned something or otherwise felt a connection to you or the content. If your readers trust you, they will buy your products or sign up for your coaching sessions because they want to as opposed to feeling forced to do so.
10. Have Fun
You tend to write better when you are in a good mood whether you are writing about web hosting or what you had for lunch today. In general, you also tend to write more when you are positive about your career and enjoy the writing process. Therefore, if you didn’t sleep well the night before, got into a fight with your spouse or simply don’t feel like writing, it may be better to step away until you feel better. If you don’t enjoy the process, it will feel too much like work and the quality of your posts will suffer.
Being a blog writer is about more than just creating content. You have to cultivate your audience and know what it wants to keep readers coming back for more. Once you realize what they like to read and how they like to engage with your content, it will become easier to establish your brand and use your blog to market yourself as a leader in your niche.