Blog, as defined in Merriam-Webster dictionary is a site on which someone writes about personal opinions, activities, and experiences. The surge of information that the internet provided makes practically everything at the touch of your fingertips. Bloggers pop out in almost every corner, offering unsolicited tips and sharing anecdotes for just about everything, food, travel, work, fashion, even conventional wisdom.
In a business perspective, a blog is an excellent idea to keep a website up-to-date and to reach out to potential customers. How? When people search for certain topics, there is a chance that they will come across your blog and then, voilà ! A potential new customer!
So, should you start blogging? By all means yes! I’ll be more than happy to show you what I have.
1. Determine why would you blog
Would it be to share your travel anecdotes? To have an outlet for advice? By determining your purpose, you can start to have a clear idea of topics that you would like to write.
2. Dare to write
Fortunately, blogging is always better when it is written in a casual, simple and easily understood format. There is no need to use big words (unless you prefer to). Just keep your grammar and spelling in check (wait for our next post for hacks) and you should be fine.
3. Gather audience
You can share the link to different social media groups to gather an audience. Personally, I don’t do it often for I always go for quality. I am at my happiest when I manage to create an impact on a single person on what I have written rather than a huge number if they just read my post to kill time. Just my opinion of course.
4. Make your title simple
There are 2 titles in WordPress, your main title, and your SEO title. SEO title is the one that should be keyword rich. Example, imagine when someone tries to search for interview tips. A title with “10 Interview Tips” has more chances to come up in the search result rather than “Interview Wisdoms to get by”. SEO title and the main title does not have to be different. I will write more extensively about WordPress next time!
5. Add visuals
Let’s face it, people tend to have a short attention span. So, if your blog has 500 words, some portions can be left out while scanning. Make it come to life with stunning photos, videos or infographics. Do not forget to add photo credit if you will use someone else’s visuals.
6. Stick to a schedule
I am guilty of this one before. Stick to a realistic schedule, let’s say once or twice a week. There are times when ideas are starting to flow and you feel an invincible blogging machine. And of course, there are moments when you literally racked every topic possible and you cannot write a single post. By sticking to a schedule, you can have a good head start on preparing for topics or other ways to be creative in your next blog.
I will share a more extensive guide to blogging to help you along the way. Watch out for it!
Photo credit: Picjumbo
