The Best Way to Blog

The Best Way to Blog

If you're starting a blog or you just want to update your existing blog or give it a good facelift there certain things to know before you head out into the blogging world. 

First of all, what you want to accomplish with this blog? Are you blogging for monetary reasons or simply to get your thoughts out there? Are you blogging for information, supplying people with information that could be useful and helpful or are you simply using it as a platform to vent and let your creative juices flow?

WHO

Whatever your blogging reason is there are certain ways to get it to be found and in front of the people you really want to see it. Depending on the topic that you want to discuss, you will want to build your categories and your tags around a certain niche. If you're too all over the board the search engines have no idea where to categories you and therefore it's difficult for you to come up for anything on the search engines. If you're more specific about a topic or the entire blog is going to be about real estate worth going to be about cooking were going to be about outdoor activity, whatever it is try to make at least 60 to 70% of each blog post about that topic. It's okay to throw in other random topics and posts that are not about the main topic, but you want the majority of your post to be about the specific topic that you want to cover.

SET UP

Once you know the topic you want to make sure the blog is set up correctly with the right name title, description, and meta-keywords for the homepage. If you're talking about a specific area such as Orlando Florida  or Louisville Kentucky you may want to put that in the main title of your home page. If you're not local and you want to appeal to everybody across the country and the world then you want to put the main topic of whatever it is in your title such as food, recipes, cooking if you're mainly discussing those types of topics. If you're discussing business such as commercial or industrial topics that can be handled all online then you will want to include that in the title as well. Remember, Google and other search engines will also use tags and keywords in your description to better assist people searching for whatever it is that you are talking about so make sure that your keywords and topics are also in your description. Depending on the type of platform you have this may be in the user profile or tools section.

LAYOUT

Once you have the basic premise of what the blog is going to be about then you'll need to make sure that your pages and your menu is laid out in such a way that's not confusing or too loud and noisy for your readers. If they have to struggle too long to look for the topics they want to read about they may find themselves clicking away and finding some other site. You want to keep people on your site as long as possible and to do that you need to give them an easy and navigable menu. You may also want the menu to change or have it be dynamic depending on the topic that they are on; for instance, if you're discussing real estate buyers and then you'll want more topics for buyers on that page such as applying for him home loan or mortgage, tips to buying, a search field etc. and the same goes with the sellers or any other topic that you're discussing. If you're talking about outdoor activities such as paintball is or laser tag and you want to use other menus and other topics on that page to direct people to more information about the same topic.

SHARE

After you have the layout and design the way that you want you want to start adding blog posts and social media. Make sure that all your social media is easily accessible on each blog post so you can put this on the sidebar or have it at the top of each blog post for people to also share on their social media. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to share and like your information because the more people like it and share it the more you will get noticed by the big search engines like Google.

GET READERS

Blogging is not difficult but it does take some finesse to get readers interested. You want to evoke some sort of the motion so that they must read more. If you're a landscaper and you're talking about landscaping than talk about why someone would need a specific type of landscaper or a design that appeals to the eye. Give them a teaser title or link with in the content that makes them want to know more, click on the link, and go to more posts about that topic. Remember, you're trying to keep them on the page as long as possible. Let's say you have a blog about transmissions; you want to find out why someone would want to read about transmissions, start a conversation or ask some questions that engage your readers, and start the discussion through the comments.

Regardless of what your blog is about, and he can be about anything from tattoos to legal issues and everywhere in between, you need to find out the reason behind the blog, why you are writing, who you want to target, and keep them on the page by trying out their emotions in content and through clickable links throughout the text. (Most of the links in this post are to great blog examples)

Get out there and have fun blogging.