Are you blogging to your potential? Any blogger worth their weight cares about continuing to grow in one way or another – more traffic, better content, or even higher conversion rates for a partner business. The question is, what thing could you be doing every single day to be a better blogger?
Here’s a short list of tips that’ll make you more creative and have you producing higher-quality blog content in no time…
Start Writing Things Down
You know how writers in old Hollywood movies used to carry around tiny notebooks to take notes in? Great bloggers do this too! It’s difficult to remember every funny interaction, blog-able story, or interesting news snippet day after day, particularly if you don’t blog often. If you don’t want to keep up with a notebook consider downloading a free note taking app on your smartphone so you can compile notes easily and stealthily.
Take More Photos
Odds are, your blog should have more photos. The more original content you can put out there, the higher-quality (and more sharable) your blog will be. Photos are one component. Forget adding clip art or paying royalty fees for stock pics – why not take more photos yourself that can be used to enhance content you’re already going to create? The great thing about blog photos is that they don’t have to be gallery-worthy. Pics you snap with your digital camera or iPhone usually work just fine as long as they’re yours.
Dive Into Your Readership Market
What does that mean? Figure out who you’re blogging towards – Is it moms? Contentious shoppers? Tech geeks? Then figure out where they hang out online and start inserting yourself into the community. Follow other bloggers and influential people on Twitter, friend them on Facebook, and of course, set Google alerts to find out what’s new in the field you’re blogging about. Knowing what’s going on day-after-day within a market will help you write pointed, relevant content rather than stale news.
Start Blogging Daily
“Daily!” you say? “That’s, like, seven times a week!” Most serious writers will tell you that they get up every day and writer for a certain amount of time regardless of whether they feel like it or even have anything to say. They just write! Blogging is the same way. The more you do it the more comfortable you become with your own voice and the easier and more intuitive it will become. Odds are, the less time you spend nitpicking every post (and the more time you spend creating new posts) the better your blog will be.
Read these as well:
- 5 Smart Ways To Make A Comeback to Blogging After A Lengthily Absence
- Keep your blog Busy, When you are Lazy
Read Other Blogs
It may seem obvious, but too many bloggers blog in a bubble! It’s imperative you spend time each and every day reading other blogs, even if they have nothing to do with the content you deal with. You’ll get a feel for other people’s tone, how their layout affects your user experience, and also about what their commenters like or don’t like to read about. Don’t think of other blogs as competition for your blog, consider them a valuable resource for fresh ideas and inspiration.
Being a better blogger is all about consistency. It’s tempting to write a couple of posts a month and wonder where all the new traffic is…your blog should speak for itself, right? Blog communities are living, breathing things and they take nurturing like anything else. Blogging is a craft just like painting, cooking, or singing and you have to work at it to get better!
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