Nearly every website comes with a blog component. Having a ready-made platform for your posts is the easy part. Maintaining a successful blog, though, can be a lot more challenging. Factors to consider are developing a focus, gaining popularity, and how your blog looks and “feels”.  Knowing how to promote your posts to a large audience is challenging.

Many factors go into creating and maintaining a successful blog. Here are 5 basic tips to help you create the best formula for your blog.

Posting on a Regular Basis – Consistency is the basis for any endeavor. It forms a habit and builds upon effort. Initially, readers will find your blog through promotion; email, social media, word of mouth, etc. By posting consistently, your readers will refer back to your blog with an expectation of new and interesting content. Readers quickly lose interest in a stagnant blog.

Length of a Post – The length of a post varies considerably based on the subject and your target audience. For SEO purposes:

According to Searchengingland, longer content (1,000+ words) tends to help websites show up in search results. Forbes indicates that an average of 600-700 words per page is optimal for SEO. (Jan. 2018)

Short blogs should not be discounted. Even a relatively short post can keep your readers interested.  People are busy and want to be able to get a lot of information without having to read a long post.  A lot of times long posts get put in the “I’ll read this later” category by the reader.

Search engine optimization and ranking should not be ignored either. Shorter posts, though, are acceptable and will keep your short-attention-span readers interested and returning for future reads.

Speaking of Post Lengths – Keeping search engine optimization and ranking in mind, there are ways to get the search engine’s attention while catering to busy readers.  This includes formatting your content.  Break up your text with quotes, graphics, bullet points, and asides. Bullet points draw the reader’s eyes to the specific information they are most interested in.  Asides are information provided in addition to what you’re writing about without adding more text to your post.  This could be in the form of an external link to an article or to one of your previous posts.

Know Your Audience – Successful blogs focus on their target market. Your post topics will have an exclusive focus on information that is of interest to your niche. In addition to writing relative posts, you’ll know how and where to promote them for maximum exposure.

Add your blog to Google Analytics. Find out what topics resonate with your readers and continue writing and expanding posts in that vein.

Evaluate What Works – Take a look at the design of your blog. Is it easy to read? Is it formatted correctly? How is the information being received by your readers?

The Search Bar –  Include a search bar on your blog. Readers want to be able to search for the topics they’re interested in.

Subscriptions – Include a subscription form and RSS feed subscription opportunity.

Sharing – Include social share buttons on each post.  Social sharing is a great way to gain exposure to people you may not otherwise be connected to.

Comments – This is a personal choice. Unfortunately, spammers are experts at exploiting comment forms. You may prefer to forego comment forms for that reason. Instead, promote your posts on social media and via email marketing. You’ll still get direct exposure without having to deal with spam.

Incorporate these 5 tips for maintaining a successful blog and see a quick and positive change. If time’s not on your side, give me a call. I can help!

The post 5 Tips for Maintaining a Successful Blog appeared first on Second Self Virtual Assistance.

Creating a blog post is more than putting “ink to paper”.  A blog will rise and fall according to the readers’ perception of your knowledge and credibility.  Protect yourself by avoiding these blogging pitfalls.

Information – Not Sales – The best blog posts are the ones the reader learns from.  The worst blogs are those that filled with sales pitches and links to “buy my product”.  When readers feel the only thing they’re getting from a post is a sales pitch, they will click away and never return.

Length Matters – Blog posts should be no less than 300 words long and no longer than 750 words.  The minimum number of 300 words is acceptable to Google.  The longer the post is, the more likely the reader will “save it” to read later.

Spellcheck and Grammar – Read and reread your posts for spelling and grammar.  It’s easy to overlook an error.  I’ve been guilty of this until I found a cool little tool called, Grammarly.  It’s a free grammar and spell-checker.  It’s added to your Chrome browser.  Anytime Grammarly finds a misspelled word or incorrectly used grammar, it underlines the error.  Put your cursor over the error and a pop-up appears with the correction you need to make.

Tell the Truth – Use catchy headlines to capture the reader’s interest.  Be careful, however, to state only the facts that you have thoroughly researched.  Take the time to do your homework.  Incorrect information can lead to the downfall of your credibility.

Don’t Copy Your Neighbor’s Post – We could get away with copying our neighbor’s test answers in school.  The classroom we’re appealing to now, though, is a worldwide bigger.  It’s okay to quote someone else or acknowledge your resource.  It’s not okay to plagiarize.  Copyscape is a great tool to check to see if your website content has been copied.

Use these five tips to avoid blogging pitfalls in your posts.  Make your posts informative, the right length, with correct spelling and grammar.  Check your facts and be careful that none of your content appears copied.

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