We are constantly asked by clients how to blog successfully. Well – how better to share our blogging tips than by blogging about them?
1. Think about who you want to attract, and what they might enjoy reading.
Although we are a design company, and obviously blog about our own work and office news, we also blog about things that we enjoy or have an opinion on. For example we also comment on techy products, local issues and business news. Be careful blogging purely about your business – aside from getting stale you also don’t want to start giving too much publicity to potential competitors or giving away your trade secrets for free! Scope out your industry publications to see what is trending, think about giving it a seasonal slant, offer top tips and 5 best/5 worst style lists as these are great ways to get people to read your blog – people like lists and tips!
2. Set aside some time
Set aside 30 minutes, or even an hour. Spend a little time reading what others have written on your chosen subject, put on some music (or don’t) have some food (or don’t) – whatever gets you in the mood to write! Take a break from checking work-related emails, stick the answerphone on if you have to. It’s only half an hour – the world isn’t going to end, but your blog post will thank you for it.
3. Optimise!
There are a few key tips you want to follow about SEO – the first rule is to pick a target keyword. This is a word or short phrase (usually no more than 3 words) that you want be found for on search engines – for example on this post I might use ‘writing blogs’ or ‘blogging advice’. Then you ensure you include the keywords in your title, first sentence of the post, and a couple of times throughout. Writing with keywords in mind also helps you stay on-point and stops you rambling, but be careful that it still all makes sense and you aren’t using the keyword for the sake of it! You can get very handy SEO plugins for some common blog platforms (e.g. wordpress) which help you by rating your blogs SEO and giving your pointers on how to better optimise. Another good tip is to link back to old posts in your article. Only do this if the subject comes up naturally, but it can help both readers and google crawl through older posts that might have slipped off the front page.
4. Update regularly
How many times have you visited a blog only to notice it has only been updated once in a blue moon, or very regularly a long, long time ago. Trust me, we know how hard it can be balancing a busy business with keeping a regularly updated blog, and we all get writers block sometimes, but making the effort is worth it. If you find it hard to find the time then set aside a particular slot – first thing Monday morning, as a creative break on your ‘hump day’ midweek or last thing Friday evening, whatever you feel works best for you. If you do prefer to write last thing in the evening, make sure you schedule your posts to go out mid-morning, apparently the best time to post for comments and views is between 9.30am and 11.30am Monday to Friday – so avoid posting at a weekend even if you write better then.
5. Promote – get social
What’s the point of writing a blog if no-one ever reads it?! Promote your new posts across all your social media channels, and make sure you tag or send to anyone mentioned in the articles themselves. Know a forum or group where people discuss the topic you wrote about? Drop a link and comment there too.
So what are you waiting for? Get blogging!
