On the face of it, blogging is fairly straightforward – pick a topic, write about it and you’ve got yourself a blog.
However, dig a little deeper and you’ll realise there is much more to running a successful blog than meets the eye.
Whether you’re running a blog to promote your business, or you want to one day turn blogging into your main job, there are a few blogging tips and tricks to help you on your way.
This is not an exhaustive list – rather, the top seven things which should be at the forefront of your mind when writing your blog.
So here goes…
1.Make commenting easy
Use your blog as a conversation starter, not a dictatorship.
If people love what you’re saying, let them tell you!
Ensure all your blogs have a comment section at the bottom to encourage interaction on your site.
2.Use calls to action
Humans are simple creatures.
We need to be told to do something before we actually do it.
Use encouraging calls to action to get people buying your product, reading another blog or signing up to your mailing list.
Don’t use the boring old ‘contact us’ or ‘get in touch’.
You can do better than that.
Try ‘sign up for FREE gifts’ or ‘put me to work’ or even ‘read the next juicy blog post here’.
3.Offer value
It may sound obvious, but if you’re not providing something of value, people aren’t going to read it.
Make sure you know what your target audience is searching for (see below) and focus your efforts on that.
Research what you’re writing about, provide high-quality backlinks so people can find out more if they wish and, if it’s a topic which has been covered lots before, make your blog unique.
4.Encourage guest bloggers (and vice versa)
There aren’t many things which will give your blog kudos like having a top-quality guest writer.
It may sound like an odd prospect, inviting someone else to write your blog for you, but if you choose wisely it can add real value.
For example, maybe your blog is all about surfboards – so why not invite a wax maker to write all about the best wax to use on your boards?
Equally, offer yourself up to write blogs for other sites – if nothing else you’ll get a backlink.
5. Do your keyword research
This one is quite possibly the most important tip of them all.
There’s absolutely no point writing a blog about something no one is searching for.
Once you’ve picked your niche, you need to start thinking about keywords – in other words, the phrases people are putting into search engines when they want to find information about a certain topic.
There are lots free tools out there such as the HOTH and Moz, so use them to find the keywords around your niche, and see which ones are getting the most search volume.
6. Remember to think about search intent
Just as important as keyword research is search intent.
This is the reason why someone is searching for a particular keyword. What information are they looking for, and are you providing it?
The purpose of a search engine, such as Google, is to provide the right information people are searching for by sifting through millions of webpages to find the best ones.
For example, if someone searched ‘PlayStation 5’, what do you think their search intent would be? Most likely, they want to buy one.
However, if they searched ‘PlayStation 5 reviews’ this tells us they haven’t made up their mind yet and want to do a little more research.
There are four types of search intent: informational (searching for information); navigational (trying to find a specific website); transactional (wanting to buy); commercial investigation (looking for reviews and comparisons).
Know the type of search intent your target audience has and use this to guide your blog content.
7. Be consistent
In order to either have a successful blog as your main business or make the most of your website’s blog section, you need to post regularly.
If blogging is your main gig, you should be posting at the very least once a week. If it’s part of your business website, once per month is the minimum we’d recommend.
Always remember – don’t post for the sake of posting.
Provide value to your readers (see above).
Our blogging tips & tricks
You should now have some actionable tips to take forward and use in your blog.
If you’ve enjoyed this article, please check out the blog for more similar topics.
And don’t hesitate to give us a shout should you want help or advice with your website.
