6 tips to help improve your blog.

Having a blog is an important strategy for any website owner, but they are often added to a site then neglected as the owner becomes busier. This is often compounded by the realisation by the owner that blogging often takes too much time, or isn’t working for them. Let me offer some tips to help improve your blog?

1. Add value.

One mistake that I see on most blogs, is that most business owners see this as a place to pitch the business, while I agree that a blog is a great place to sell what you do, a visitor does not want to be greeted by a constant flurry of sales pitches. A blog can be a great place to show your prowess and expertise at a particular skill or subject but a user should be able to take away some knowledge from reading the blog and this will provide a reason to revisit. A customer is often interested in how you can solve the problem they have, not how good you are what you do. So cut the sales patter and think about what you would get from the post, if you were to stumble across it from the internet. We all hate to be sold to on the street or in a networking group so why do it on your blog.

2. Be consistent.

I often see blogs that start off with a flurry of posts, which then dwindle to a few posts at different times, then left for months. I’ll be honest in saying that this is something I have been guilty of, in the past. Having a regular schedule can create a consistent readership, and visitors will often grow to expect a post at a set time on a certain day, so its not only about posting regularly but posting at consistent times on the same day. Why not have a look at my earlier post on scheduling your posts in WordPress.

3. Its a gentle jog not a sprint.

When new blog owners start their blog, they are often disheartened about the lack of readership, and can often give up when they look at the number of readers. A readership can often take weeks or months to build up, so you need to keep plugging away and posting good consistent posts. You can improve your readership by creating posts that visitors are looking for. A good way to establish this, is by using your analytics software to gather what keywords are being used by visitors landing from search engines. Try to create interaction by encouraging comments and inserting calls to action in your posts.

4. Don’t forget the images.

Using images can help illustrate your point more effectively. An example of this, can be a screenshot when writing a tutorial or using an infographic in a post when quoting statistics or figures. You can find great images at Unsplash or using the creative commons search at Flickr. Be sure to check the license for commercial use before using the image, don’t forget to ask permission if required. Sometimes a photographer will allow you to use an image even if its not marked for commercial use. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

5. Don’t be scared of posting.

I often hear from people who don’t publish to the web because of the criticism that they might receive. Yes there are some trolls out there who are happy to provide negative comments, but you will get more positive feedback than negative. Some negative feedback can be good to help you hone your writing. If you never post, then you will never find out and we all hear things that we don’t like, often in life, but its how we react to this that will make us better writers. So just get yourself out there!

6. Promote, promote, promote.

Once you have wrote your post this is only the start of the process. You know need to tell people about your posts, and this is where good promotion can come in. Be sure to post to social media when the post goes live and at a later time in the day. So if you set your post live in the morning then post it again in the evening or post it again later in the week. Don’t forget to ask for RT’s and asking your followers to share your posts.

I hope this gives you some tips and ideas to improve your blog, and of you have tips of your own, leave them in the comments below.