8 Tips to Help You Blog Better

Blogging is a great way to build your brand and strengthen your online presence

Blogging is fast becoming a popular marketing tool. Businesses today are encouraging their employees to blog actively on professional/business-related matters in order to build a greater following for the business and its brand in the market. And why not? Blogs are a great way to showcase the business’s knowledge and expertise. If you are thinking of starting a blog, or looking for ways to improve one that you already have, the following tips may help.

1. Consistency: Be consistent when it comes to blogging. If you blog once a week, then make it a point to have a new post every week, if it’s every month, then make sure you don’t miss a single month. It doesn’t matter if your blog-posts are short, make sure you post consistently. That way your readers look upon your blog as an ‘active’ one.

2. Concise:  Remember that a blog is different from a whitepaper. While you may be tempted to show off your in-depth knowledge about a topic, refrain from doing so. Keep your blog posts short—ideally about 3 paragraphs long with introduction, the main body and a conclusion.

3. Spelling and Grammar:  Pay attention to spelling and grammar. If you are not sure of something, make sure to double check or leave it out. Poor spellings reflect badly on your brand.

4. Be Sure: Be sure of what you are writing. Assumptions may sometimes go wrong and this will again count against your brand’s credibility.

5. Respond: Respond to the comments you receive—whether good or bad. Start and participate actively in decisions. Keep your readers engrossed and engaged.  

6. Check out other blogs: Get in touch with other bloggers who blog on similar topics. Comment on their blogs, have a conversation with them, follow their blogs. This will enable you to get a fresh perspective on things, and widen your knowledge base. You could also provide links to these other blogs in your blog post, and vice-versa.

7. Spam: Blogs are often targeted by spammers. Make sure you identify spam comments and delete them. Having spam comments on your blog makes readers think that you don’t attend to reader comments, otherwise how would the spam comment still be live on your blog?

8. Share: Encourage your readers to share your post. Have ‘Share- bars’ that make sharing the post easy on popular Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Tell your readers what is acceptable in terms of content re-use. You can set different limits on content re-use such as permitting re-use only with permission, or permitting reuse with a reference to the original post or permitting only a line or two to be re-used verbatim. By allowing your readers to share your posts, you stand to gain a larger audience.