Do you want to get started with blogging? Remember blogging is a great way to improve your profile, credibility and visibility and drives traffic to your website! This is particularly the case if you are an entrepreneur or small business as people buy from people and a blog is a great way to show the personality behind the business. Here are my Top Ten Tips for Blogging.

1. Plan ahead

Its good practice to have a strategy and think about the aims of your blogging activity and how it relates to your overall business aims. Use One Note, a physical notepad or planning app to record things of interest, save quotes, news items, testimonials, case studies images, topics, questions you keep getting asked so you have a constant flow of blogs topics. Then you can develop a content schedule for the next 3 – 6 months.

2. Frequency

This depends entirely depends on your audience and your capacity to write relevant blogs. It could be daily – for ‘pros’ or if you want to comment on news or fast moving topics. Weekly blogs  are great, providing you have a constant stream of good content. Fortnightly or monthly is better than nothing at all and for most is achievable and it will still help your SEO and your credibility.

3. Structure

Like all good stories your blog should have a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning needs to grab the reader’s attention and let them know they are going to read a fascinating story or learn something new. Break up the middle of text with sub headings and sections. Don’t waffle, have goal in mind, where is the story going?  At the end summarise the story or learning point.

4. Easy to Read

Keep sentences and paragraphs short don’t be afraid of white space on the page. Use Bold and italics sparingly to make a point, too much formatting will distract from your content. Make a blog easy to scan, split it up with headings/lists/bullets/sections. I would aim for a minimum of 400 words for a short read. Longer blogs 800 -1500 words do rank well for Google – the choice is yours!

5.     Add Images

Research proves that posts with images get 94% more views than those without, just make sure they are relevant and of good quality. Create your own blog header with tools such as Canva and find images that are free or royalty free on Pixabay or Unsplash otherwise you could end up with a hefty bill.

6. Add Hyperlinks and Call to Action

It’s good for your SEO to have links to other websites e.g. to articles, more information, research papers, references or quotes. Or to your own web pages e.g. your e-book, course, product or a link to another landing page. Don’t forget to add a Call to Action at the end e.g. invite people to comment or ask people to sign up for a newsletter, a follow or a like on social media.

7. Add the Title

Although I will have a working title, I always go back and re-write my title when the blog is written and when I can get a feel for content. The title (or headline) should tell readers what the blog is about. Think about key words that will entice people to read – but the title still needs to be relevant.

8. Use Keywords

Good key words in blogs will drive traffic from search engines. Identify words that your customers use to find out information – e.g. you might think your provide ‘marketing solutions’ but customers might search for ‘marketing services’ or ‘marketing for small business.’ When the blog is finished re-read and see if you can include more key words in text, titles and sub headings whilst still remaining relevant to your audience.

9. Promote

There are many ways of getting people to read your blog by including links and pictures on your social media channels. You can also publish on LinkedIn as an article and then share once published, you might want to consider changing some of the content or the image/title to avoid duplication of the blog on your website. Upload the blog heading or image, briefly explaining what it’s about or some nuggets of information from the blog. Don’t forget your Facebook or LinkedIn groups or Twitter hours.

10. Reuse

You should be building up a bank of evergreen content you can reuse. Don’t be afraid to update and re-share your blog in the future but check the text, images and links. You could change the headline and blog image to make it look fresh. Different audiences will see your blog on different channels at different times so with Twitter for example you can re-post multiple times.

So that’s a quick whizz through my top tips, just remember to always be thinking about your ideal customer, find your own voice, be passionate and authentic.

Happy Blogging! If you are still not sure and want some help get in touch [email protected]