Over a decade ago online socializing took place around blogs. But as social media channels like Facebook and Twitter grew, blogging has shown some decline particularly among younger people according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But blogging is still growing among those over the age of 34. For those in business it offers many advantages, some that you won’t get through the major social media sites.
Blogging offers advantages like:
- Building a brand and image as an expert
- Improved search engine rankings
- Increased traffic to website
- Ability to share more in-depth information, beyond 140 characters
- Presents an opportunity to interact with clients or potential clients
- Helps educate clients, potential clients and key stake holders about your business and industry
- Creates a way to standout from your competition
- May help in finding new business opportunities
- Helps build your network within your industry
But how do you grow readership? Many people start blogs only to realize that they don’t have an audience. It’s important to become part of the blogging culture to build readership. Create a blog roll and link to blogs that you enjoy or the audience you are trying to gain will enjoy. Take the time to read other blogs and comment on them. Offer to do a guest posts for blogs that you think the audience might have an interest in your blog as well. You could even invite other bloggers to write a guest post for your blog.
Be sure to include keywords in your post by going through your content and selecting the main topics. Use a program like Google Adwords keyword selection tool to see popular search terms and try to find a way to include that in your content.
Share the blogs through social media and bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit. Syndicate your content through an RSS feed to automatically share it with many different places.
Find ways to share your blog posts with customers by including your blog address or even your latest blog headline with your email signature. If your company has an e-newsletter, include some of your blog content in the newsletter or some kind of teaser to get people to click over to it. If there’s a blog post that you think certain customers might benefit from, send them an e-mail and let them know about it.
Even after several decade, blogs are still very relevant today. What are some of your top tips for blogging? Let us know in the comments!
But what if you have no ideas on what to write?
Here are a few tricks you can use to help beat the writers block.
The phrase “writer’s block” can arguably be the two most hated words for any blogger, website owner, or content strategist. It’s easy to understand why because it doesn’t take much for writers to start feeling worn out, bogged down, or completely out of ideas. However, creativity is never too far away if you know how to look for it. I have five suggestions that can help weary writers find new blog writing topics.
Recycle and Repurpose Your Old Content
Repurpose old posts. Even though you might feel like the biblical quote “there is nothing new under the sun” rings true, there is still plenty that you can do starting with things you have already written! Try going through your archived posts and look for opportunities for new content. Maybe a post has information that is outdated or your opinions on a topic have changed, which can make for an easy opportunity to write fresh content.
Competitor Research
Research your competition. Make sure you are staying up-to-date with your competitors and what they are talking about. Odds are you will find a lot of discussion about a topic and in turn, that discussion could easily be a post for your site.
Create a Guide
Create a guide, eBook or tutorial. If you feel like you have already covered a topic well enough, it is always a good idea to write a guide about that topic. A guide or eBook allows you to elaborate on your expertise and easily helps readers learn.
Guest Post
Guest blogging. Encourage guest posters or even become a guest poster yourself. This will not only help build your site content, it will help build trust and bring in a whole new audience of readers to your site.
There are countless other ways to help you with content writing ideas. Whatever your industry, make sure you are researching your competition, updating your content, keeping vital information easy to find on your site, and promoting your site to new audiences by guest blogging.
Be sure Not to Have any bad habits
Some cynics say, blogging is so 2004 except it’s totally not. As new social media continually emerges additional discussions erupt debating the importance of blog writing. But while others insist blogging is broken and attempt to bury it alive, the rest of us smile inward at the accusation, grab a laptop, and start to write compelling content to solidify our online presence. Sure, it isn’t as easy as it used to be because there is a lot of competition. However, you can crush the competition by ensuring you avoid these bad blogging blunders.
1. Self absorption
This is a big one. Building a brand through blogging is less about you and more about them. A blog exists to give away information, to solve a problem, or to entertain the audience. When you write a blog, you have to focus on the reader and give them compelling reasons to stay. Once you have given all that you can give, give more. Because after you have given enough you can ask for something in return, and some people will actually respond. In essence, you need to give more than what you might be asking for. If you give something of value, a bigger fraction of the audience will take action.
2. Irrelevance
People are going to be interested in what they are interested in. That wasn’t a trick sentence. My point is: don’t try and sell a bag of only yellow Starbursts to everyone, even if those are your favourite. Target your content to those who are interested and make it relevant and relatable to them.
3. Uselessness
As long as we’re talking about relevant content, remember to craft compelling content as well. I discussed some content marketing essentials here. But what I want to make sure you don’t commit is the crime of being boring. There’s always that guy at the office, the guy who gives an hour-long lecture about why Star Trek devotees are Trekkies and not Trekkers despite the fact that you’ve been inching for the door. Avoid being that guy.
4. Impatience
You’re not going to gain an online presence and build the best audience known to the blogosphere fast. A lot of the frustration that comes with blog writing is the fact that it takes time, like most successful things.
Plenty of blogs build slowly and then gain momentum. At the six-month mark, try asking:
Is my mom the only one interested in my topic? If so, choose something more interesting.
Am I trying to take more than I give?
Do I network with other bloggers? Do I support their work so they can support mine? It’s okay to have these ulterior motives–most bloggers do.
When it comes down to it, blog writing is an excellent and effective way to build a powerful online presence if you do it right. So how about you? What blogging blunders would you put on the list?
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