10 Blogging Tips and Tricks That Always Work

It seems like every few months, another organization comes out with tips and tricks to making blogging more effective. A problem with these tips and tricks is that they often are time sensitive. What worked, say in 2018, may not work so well today.

However, there are blogging tips and tricks that have managed to withstand the test of time. They worked when they were first uncovered, and they still work today. Here are ten of those blogging tips and tricks:

Have a blogging goal.

Before starting a blog, make sure you have a goal. Are you trying to promote the company and products or just address topics of general interest? If the blog is used for product promotion, the more subtle and tactful it is, in most cases, the more effective it will be. Sometimes just adding links to a product being discussed – without mentioning the product by name – is the best bet.

Know your audience.

Writing for cleaning professionals would not be the same as writing for facility managers. The writer must take these factors into consideration.

Be safe, not sorry.

Remember that anything said online is open to the world to see; do not post anything you would not want picked up by a search engine—especially anything that could be termed hurtful or overly negative.

Pick a blogging attitude.

Ranting and complaining may work with some blogs but it rarely works in business-to-business blogs. It’s always best to stay educational, positive, and hopeful. In business, upbeat is always best and should be the tone of all blogs even if something negative is addressed.

Proofread.

Typos, grammar errors, spelling mistakes, and run-on sentences all stand out more online than they do on paper. Good rule of thumb: Keep titles at no more than eight words; sentences max-out at 20 words, and paragraphs at about fifty. Always proofread everything before publishing.

Use photos selectively.

If a photo is added, make sure it is relevant to the story discussed. Also, add ALT text that includes keywords for the blog (more below)

Interact with readers…fast.

If someone responds to your blog, write back as soon as you can. Interaction breeds more interaction, which gets picked up by the search engines.

Keep it alive.

Blogs should be posted regularly—at least once per week—to be effective. And here is another trick. Old blogs never die, they just get repackaged. If you wrote a blog several years ago but the content discussed remains relevant, just give it a facelift. A new title, a bit more content, new images if necessary. And, re-date it. When we post things online, your website will automatically give it a day. Make sure you update the date, so it looks like it was posted more recently.

Effective bloggers are willing to change.

There probably has never been a medium that has changed as quickly as the Internet. Stay attuned to changes in the ways blogs are presented and be aware of new Web portals and opportunities that develop.

Keywords.

You can spend an hour or more tweaking a blog with keywords. Here’s a shortcut. Select three key words. Test them using Google Suggest seeing if they are used in searches. Have a primary keyword in your title; one or more in your first paragraph, and then sprinkle the rest about everyone hundred words. Finish the blog with a keyword. If you have subtitles (recommended) add at least one keyword to the titles and make them H3 or H4 headlines. Update: SEO programs such as Yoast and Rank Math now suggest keywords for blogs and most all types of posts. Plus, these systems now grade your post, either giving it a green light or a score. Before publishing anything, always make sure the post gets a green light or a high score.

SIDEBAR: What is blogging?

In the early days of the internet, blogs were called weblog. Typically, visitors had to log onto a message board to see what were then termed logs posted by others. These were typically short. They allowed users to make comments about other logs or about issues of common interest to those participating in this weblog.

More information on blogging can be found here.

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