Blogging Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

Today, I’m going to help you become a better writer online. And if you read this post in its entirety, I think you’ll agree that I’ve met my goal.

There are many different types of writing in this world and each targets a different type of reader. Novels are written for one audience while newspapers are written for another. Magazines are clearly written differently than advertisements are. While all styles of writing use text, each has been refined through time – honed in such a way as to offer the maximum clarity and impact for its intended audience. After all, writing is a form of communication and without it being constructed properly, it’ll be lost in translation.

There’s a new medium that’s come on the scene over the past twenty years – the web. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s pretty much ingrained itself into the lives of almost everyone on the planet. The web offers many things – one of them being writing in all shapes and forms. And like the writing we’ve become used to all our lives, what we put on the web needs to target a specific type of person who is engaging in a specific activity.

What Do People Do Online?

Have you ever taken notice of what you actually do online? If you sit back and think about where you go, who you visit and what you read, I think it’ll quickly become apparent that, for the most part, you’re looking for something. Call it what you want – surfing, browsing, researching, shopping – whatever. The point is, in general, while browsing online, you’re moving quickly and don’t appreciate things that get in the way. While I don’t think I need to say this, I will – writing for the web is wildly different than most of the writing we’ve become accustomed to over the years.

The next time you get a chance, try to watch someone as they’re browsing the internet. If you do this, I think you’ll notice a few things:

They Scan Quickly – You’ll see that people scan web pages as opposed to really digging into them and seeing what they’re all about. Opinions are formed quickly and folks have become used to what to expect. Now, of course I’ve seen exceptions to this claim and have witnessed, first hand, individuals out there who carefully comb through ever detail of what’s written somewhere, but by and large, when people are surfing around, they are doing so at a breakneck pace.

They Prefer Casual Over Formal – I read a lot of books for leisure and am almost always on the lookout for my next read. Throughout time, I’ve decided that I enjoy a certain style of writing. Writing that I can understand. I’m not sure I can count how many books I’ve had to put down because they simply weren’t fun to read. When I’m engaging in something for entertainment, I don’t want to work at it. Remember, when people are online, they don’t want to feel like it’s work to be there.

They Want What They Want – Like I mentioned above, the large majority of people browsing the web are looking for something. They want information – the juice – the goods. If they bump into too many obstacles while searching for what they’re looking for, they’ll leave and look somewhere else. It’s that simple.

And They Want It First – Alluding to what I wrote directly above, folks don’t like sifting through text that isn’t relevant to what they’re looking for in an effort to locate their golden nugget. They prefer to find what they’re looking for front and center. If they’re searching for the reason cats meow, they’d revel over a web page that starts with, “Cats meow because…” If the information they seek is buried too deeply, they’ll surely lose interest before they find it.

They Prefer Not To Be “Sold To” – When I’m online, the moment I feel as though someone is attempting to sell me something, my sniffer shifts into high gear. Oftentimes, I lose trust in what I’m reading because I’ve become so accustomed to the “salesy” impure motive. I feel as though I’m not reading an honest opinion anymore, but more of a premeditated one. Perhaps that’s why so many people jump straight to the “Reviews” section of Amazon.com’s products pages, oftentimes bypassing the manufacturers description altogether.

They Want Help – If a web surfer can’t find what they’re after on one web page, but that web page links to others that might have what they seek, they’re likely to consider the first web page a “source.” I personally know of sites that purely link to others and in turn, receive loads of traffic. Their audience doesn’t have the time or the will to do all the hunting around that the linking site has already done, so they go straight to where they know they’ll find the answer.

They Want Proof – How many product pages have you encountered where all you found was a picture of a product and a short description? I’m guessing you’ve seen more than a few of these and by and large, you’ve moved on from them without any sort of action or engagement. In today’s world, shoppers, surfers and readers want evidence of what the page author claims. They want to read reviews and comments that were written by real people. They want something that they can place their trust in.

They Want It Fresh – Like their food, folks looking through web page after web page prefer to have what they decide as “the one” to be relevant and up to date. If a piece of material online is dated, many times a reader will abandon an entire site because they feel as though they may be wasting their valuable time scanning through more outdated material. Now, I understand that this isn’t always the case. Some material lasts for years and years and other material is timeless, so it’s best to use good judgement here.

Writing For Scanners

As I stated above, readers of online content skim through what they’re looking at pretty quickly. If something doesn’t jump out and say “ANSWER,” they’ll likely move onto something that does. So it’s in our best interest to give our audiences what they’re looking for – FAST.

The question is, how do we accomplish this? Well, I’m sure you’ve browsed around and have read various blog posts and articles that just “felt good” to you. If you’re going to begin blogging or are already blogging, it’s a good idea to take notice of what others are doing. Also, take notice of what feels like it’s a successful strategy and what’s not. What types of pages did you stay longest on and what types did you quickly abandon?

Other than going with your gut, I do have a few suggestions for successfully engaging your readers and giving them what they want.

Short Is Sweet – I suffer from this. Most writers do. We can’t seem to keep our writing as short as it can be. I can remember back to college when one of my professors gave the class a writing assignment that was limited to one page. You should have seen the creative methods students used to squeeze text on that piece of paper. I never knew writing could get so small. The rule here is, if you can say something with fewer words, do it. There’s no need to use fluff to simply add more to your page.

Right From the Start – Have you noticed how I’m bolding some words at the beginning of each section in this part of the post? What I’m doing is actually a strategy. I’m telling you what to do, right from the start. If you read this post once and then wanted to return to it to find an idea I discussed, it helps immensely to have the main ideas at the beginning of each paragraph.

Tiny Words – As intelligent as you think you are and as much as you enjoy reading beautiful literature, you need to remember that many folks out there don’t share in the same pleasures you do. If they stop by your site to read something you’ve written and find it too challenging, they’re going to say goodbye. Keep your words small, easily understandable and friendly for the largest number of people.

Keeping Them Separate – If you find yourself merging idea after idea into the same long paragraph, you may be losing valuable visitors who could potentially return time after time. Think about how wonderfully simply it would be to read one idea per paragraph. Again, from here on out, take notice of how you feel when reading content on the web. Who are the winners and who are the losers?

The Almighty List – This is a big one. It’s actually the most important one. If you take a look at this and the section before this, you’ll find that you’ve just read two lists. People love lists. Lists allow readers to compartmentalize ideas and absorb posts and articles into bite sized chunks. I’m sure there’s something psychological out there that supports this, but from personal experience and from watching this style of writing grow exponentially online, I know it works and that people love it.

Mind Your Audience

I want you to consider something for a moment. If English is your native language, but you’ve taken a few years of French or Spanish in high school, think about attempting to make your way through a website that’s written in one of those languages.

Next, pretend that you’ve never really taken an interest in reading. Say that you’ve spent your life enjoying activities where you “do” things as opposed to “read” things. And because of this, you haven’t built up the skills to read beyond a certain level. Pretend that you’re trying to look up some data on how to fix something or where someplace is located.

Lastly, pretend that you’re over 40 years old. You may well be, which might make this exercise easy. Your eyesight may not be as sharp as it once was and reading long sentences in large paragraphs is a challenge. Now, pretend you’ve landed on a website where the author can’t seem to contain him or herself. They like to write and write and write.

Do you think any of these experiences would make you smile and ask yourself, “Hey, when can I return to this website? Soon isn’t soon enough!” That response is doubtful if the websites you just pretended to visit weren’t written for people like you.

The main point here is, when possible, write so the large majority of readers can understand what you’re writing. You may have noticed that technical manuals have taken this advice and are currently rewriting their text so it’s much more understandable. Also, large websites are rewriting their terms and conditions in a simpler format. Even laws in congress are being reviewed as to allow for folks to more easily digest what’s contained in them. It seems like the popular thing to do.

But how do we do it?

Great question. I’ll give you some great suggestions below.

Simplicity – The best way to go about writing for almost everyone is to never write beyond an 8th grade reading level. That’s probably the safest route to take. If you start off an article with a lower reading level than 8th grade, even better. Once you’ve got someone hooked, you can ramp things up a bit, but be sure to remind yourself to tone your writing down if it gets too long winded and advanced. Consider this introductory paragraph:

“In this post, I’m going to give you the five best ways to become a better writer. The post will take about ten minutes to read. By its end, you’ll know enough to begin a journey of writing.”

Isn’t that nice? Short, sweet and simple. It states what a reader is going to get, how long it will take to get it and how they’ll benefit if they follow through and read the entire article. And as a special bonus, there were no challenging words to understand.

Images & Graphics – I know many people who love to browse through images online. If they landed on a page and after they were through with it, I asked them what they read, their response would be, “I have no idea. I just looked at the pictures.” There are more of these types of “readers” out there than you can imagine. Even those who love reading, scan through much of the text to get to the pictures. So the rule here is, add supporting pictures where you can.

Descriptive Titles – This has taken me a long time to get used to, but when I write a post now, I’m sure to include as many descriptive titles as possible. Titles break up long posts and allow readers to sort of “bookmark” where ideas begin and where they end. And within section, I try to use bolding and italics to break things up even further. I’ve received a positive response from this method, so I think it’s worth keeping and using more in the future.

Straight Up and Down – When writing for an 8th grade reading level, it’s helpful to keep your article or post as predictable as possible. If you include part of a paragraph over here, a bubble over there and then finish your paragraph after an image, you most likely just lost everyone who managed to stop by. But, if you began your post or article with an image, said what you want to say and then end your post with a graphic that helps explain one of your topics, your readers will most likely appreciate what you’ve written. The rule here is, write from top to bottom with no zig-zagging in between. The straighter, the better.

How can you check reading level?

That’s easy. While we used to have to gauge at what level we’re writing through our word processor, we can now obtain results online. A site I like to use is called, “Readability Score” because it offers the “Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease” score, the “Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level,” the “Gunning-Fog Score,” the “Coleman-Liau Index,” the “SMOG Index,” and the “Automated Readability Index.” Lastly, it’ll return your article’s average grade level. I check this paragraph and so far, I’m at the 8.2 grade level. Not bad.

Keep It Personal

Which would you rather read – a contract or a story? How about a piece of legislation or a tutorial? Perhaps a dissertation or an email? I think you know where I’m going with this. The truth is, even people who write contracts, legislation and dissertations don’t like reading that type of literature. I’m not even sure they know what they write means. There are times when people who craft this type of material get lost in their words, so they continue to write and write and write. It’s called “hiding.” They feel that if they put enough letters together somewhere, readers will lose interest and stop their reading. Since that’s the writer’s goal, they meet it a lot of the time.

Don’t let this happen to you. Your job is to engage and to keep readers coming back for more. You want them to understand and appreciate what you post online. If you scare them away or bore them to death, you’ve failed.

So, how can you engage your audience?

Back when I was in college in New York, I took a public speaking course. For one project, we had to speak on camera. Since I’m one to “over” prepare for things like this, I wrote my entire talk out beforehand. When it came time for me to speak on camera, I read what I wrote. The comments I got for that project were less than stellar. My professor told me that it seemed as though I was giving a speech. That, “perhaps I should become a speech writer for a politician.” That kind of stuck with me through the years. And what I took away from those comments was that I sounded robotic. I vowed to never sound like that again.

Now, when I write, I try to jot down what I’m thinking with a more conversational tone. I try to bring people into what I’m attempting to convey as opposed to shutting them out with words regular, ordinary people aren’t comfortable with. I try to be friendly as opposed to being a lecturer. Not many people would like to read what a lecturer has to write.

I bet you’re wondering what a “conversational” tone sounds or looks like. If so, just give this post a once over. As I write this, I’m pretending that I’m speaking to you. Oftentimes, to remind myself that comfort is my goal, I think of a particular person and write as if they were in the room with me. Perhaps they’re looking over my shoulder at what I’m typing or they ask me to read to them what I just wrote. Those types of tricks keep me on the straight and narrow.

What kind of voice should you write with?

Below, I’ll share some resources that will help you distinguish between active and passive voice. Remember, for the purposes of writing online, always use the “Active” voice (unless you’re writing for a scientific journal).

Active Versus Passive Voice – Purdue Online Writing Lab

Active Voice Versus Passive Voice – Quick and Dirty Tips

Clear, Concise Sentences: Use the Active Voice

Don’t Beat Around the Bush

I can’t stress to you enough how important it is to offer clear and concise navigation through your post or article. Now, when I say “navigation,” I don’t mean website navigation in the way of links to other pages. I’m talking about navigation in the way of telling readers where they are and where they can go inside the page they’re on.

I want you to do a quick exercise. If you wouldn’t mind, scroll up and down this post a few times and ask yourself if it’s written in such a way as you give you indication of your position in it. I know it’s kind of long, so this one’s a great example.

Before I began writing today, I knew I had a lot of information to cover. With this in mind, I started the post clearly identifying what my intention was. I told you what I’m going to talk about and what you will get out of it. After that, I gave you some brief background on the topic and then dove into the subject matter. Within that subject matter, I labeled each section using nice, large headings. With these headings, I wanted you to really know where you were. And within each section, I created sub-sections to clearly identify what you were about to read with bolded text, followed up by the content itself. Within every article, it’s critical to guide readers to important information and to let them know when they’ve arrived. With longer pieces, such as the one you’re currently reading, the necessity of those principles become magnified.

Answer Before They Ask

Have you noticed that I’ve been sprinkling questions throughout this post and then answering them directly after I ask them? My goal with using this tactic is to predict what you might want to know or need more explanation on and then to give you that detailed explanation. You’ll see various writers do this on blogs, retail websites and basically any type of website that offers user interaction.

If you recall from the “What Do People Do Online?” section of this post, I stated that most users of the internet are out there looking for answers. If they seek answers, they must have questions. The problem is, oftentimes, users don’t don’t quite know what those questions are yet. Many of these types of people are in the beginning stages of their shopping or research or plain old browsing. Sometimes, it takes good ol’ “pointing in the right direction” from a trusted source to get the ball rolling. And if you, as a writer, can point someone in the right direction, that reader may just put some stock in you. If you did it once for them, you may do it again. There are rewards for building trust like this – newsletter signups, follows on Facebook and Twitter, sharing and bookmarking posts and becoming a fan. And that’s how sites grow.

Give It Fast Or They’ll Leave

There are tons of statistics out there that offer data on the average time a user spends on a web page, as well as the bounce rate for a specific web site. The last time I checked, the average time per web page was shockingly short and the bounce rate was over 50%. Can you imaging that? Users land on your page from one source or another and more than half of them leave almost immediately. That’s disheartening, to say the least.

I’m here to tell that your goal with writing for the web isn’t to keep a particular reader on your site longer today, it’s to keep that same reader on your site longer tomorrow. Every time someone lands on one of your web pages, your goal should be to give that reader what they came looking for. Don’t try to trick them into scrolling around, don’t try to trick them into clicking to more pages and don’t try to trick them into navigating somewhere they have no intention of going. The internet is full of tricks like this and all it does is annoy people to the extent that they learn what these types of sites look like and avoid them like the plague. So while methods like this may work today, they won’t work tomorrow.

In order to build trust and an audience, you have to delight people. You delight them be giving it all away, right away. If you can do that in the very first paragraph of your post or article, that’s perfect.

I can give you two examples of companies that employ this strategy today. One is Google and one is Amazon.

Recently, Google began answering common questions in their search results. Those answers come from websites that appear in the search, but Google has decided that by pulling short snippets of information from that website, it can help give users what they are looking for as fast as possible. This creates a good user experience on Google’s website and keeps searchers coming back time and time again.

I may have mentioned that I read a lot of books somewhere in this post. I purchase many of the books I read on Amazon. When I search through lists of books that I feel may interest me, I look for the ones that have the little “Look Inside” graphic on the book photo. I click that image and up pops excerpts of the book, including the table of contents and a few pages from a few chapters. Amazon and the book seller are giving me what I want and because of that, I trust that my purchase with them will be exactly what I’m looking for.

The point is, establish trust with those who visit your website by giving them the data you think they’re after – fast. A little trust goes a long way.

Honesty Is the Best Policy

I remember advertisements for sneakers from years ago. I still make fun of them. They went something like this – “Our sneakers will make you jump higher, run faster and most importantly, better looking!” Now, I’m not sure if these types of ads worked or not, but I sure didn’t fall for what the advertiser was telling me. I knew I wasn’t going to run any faster with those sneakers and they certainly weren’t going to make me any better looking (I’m exaggerating the ad, by the way). What I did know was that the advertiser spent their 30 seconds of air time on the television trying to fill my mind with nonsense. I suppose they thought I was stupid. I wasn’t stupid.

When writing for the web, you need to tell the truth. Especially in today’s world. In this day and age, readers can fact check and verify all day long. If they find that you’re attempting to pull the wool over their eyes, you’ll most likely damage yourself permanently. What’s different about today than yesterday is that once you deceive someone, they can inform as many people as they possibly can about your deceit. Yesteryear, all someone could do was walk over to their neighbor’s house and complain. Today, they can tell the internet. And that includes who knows how many people. It’s not a good idea to have all those people talking about you negatively.

When I use Twitter to learn about people and connect with those who have similar interests with me, I’m sure to review each person’s or organization’s profile page. If they are using Twitter to simply share their wares with others, great. If I find they are offering me a free e-book to make millions online, I steer clear. In the latter case, I don’t believe the bull and I don’t enjoy interacting with those types of folks.

Become a Source

One of my most important goals when writing a post is to answer the questions my readers have. If they aren’t interested in what I have to say, they probably won’t be browsing around this website. But if they are, I take personal responsibility to helping them out the best way I can.

In order to offer the most impact, I continually try to improve myself. I study how to become a better writer so I can communicate more clearly, I review other blogs and websites in a similar industry to mine to assure my relevance, I research various fields in the technology sector to be sure I’m up to date and I attempt to maintain a pleasant atmosphere right here on this site. But regardless of how much I try, I’ll never know everything. And I recognize that.

Take a look at this post I wrote regarding composition in photography. See if you notice anything about it that might assist a reader in becoming more comfortable with the topic at hand. Try to imagine whether or not a visitor to this website might bookmark that post for later use. My hope is that they will and here’s why:

I gave a good background on composition, but I knew I didn’t write about everything. Therefore, I gave the reader options and links to follow where they could learn more.

Do the links that I shared in that post lead away from this website? Yes they do. Do I think the reader will leave? Yes I do. Do I mind? Yes I do, but I’d rather earn their trust and become considered a source for knowledge than get bogged down by the fact that they left. Hopefully they’ll come back when they have another question. Hopefully they’ll tell their friends.

Keep It Up To Date – Make It Evergreen

Evergreen content is material that’s continually relevant and stays “fresh” for readers. You can read all about this type of content here:

What is Evergreen Content? Your Guide to Long-Lasting Content That Boosts SEO

It’s important, so I encourage you to take a quick look.

Since readers don’t appreciate old, dated content and are looking for something to read that’s relevant to their interests, it’s critical to keep what you’ve already written up to date. There are search engine benefits to taking this approach. One simple benefit is that you’re readers will view your page as “evergreen” and as “something to remember.” Don’t believe me? Well, I’ve got a few examples for you. Check out these following pages:

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Google Algorithm Change History by Moz

Is Making Money from Blogging Passive Income? by ProBlogger

If you review each of the above pages, you’ll see they have something in common. They all keep an existing page up to date. In the last link to ProBlogger, Darren talks about one of his photography posts that he periodically reviews and modifies when necessary. The impact upon readers when authors do this is huge. Take a look at the following sentence:

“This article has been kept up to date with the best practices for WordPress SEO since early 2008 and the release of WordPress 2.5, the most recent update was on Sept 8th, 2014, with WordPress version 4.0 being the most current release.”

If that doesn’t keep the reader up to date and establish trust, I don’t know what will. I’ve linked to this page multiple times since it was written and I have no doubts that my readers will benefit from it. And from linking to the page, Yoast receives SEO benefit. Real benefit. Increased web traffic, better and more wide spread reputation and increased earnings. All those are certainly worth spending a few extra minutes keeping a page up to date and fresh.

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I hope you enjoyed this post about becoming a better writer online. If you did like it, please share it with friends. If you’d like to keep up to date with this website and receive all of our posts by email, all you need to do is sign up for our newsletter. Lastly, if you’ve like to read more posts that talk about how to become a better blogger or writer, just check out our “Blogging” category at the top of this page.

The true driving force behind any blog is its content. We can talk about platform, technology and social media all day long, but without interesting and compelling content, we’re nowhere. Sure, we may attract visitors to our finely tuned blogs through creative means, but those visitors probably won’t return if they didn’t find what they were looking for.

In this post, I’m going to talk about how to drum up good ideas for what to write on your blog. Thinking of worthwhile topics is probably the most challenging aspect of any blog’s continued success. Setting up a site isn’t difficult anymore, getting social isn’t a challenge – even good writers are more accessible than they’ve ever been. Since the beginning, the sticking point has been coming up with captivating articles that you feel visitors would like to read.

Proven Ideas For Writing Great Blog Posts

In the sections below, I’m going to offer up some ideas for topics of blog posts. Do with them as you wish, but remember, if you do decide to use one or more of them, be sure your post is of high quality and gives your readers something they can take away with them. In order for readers to visit on a regular basis, you need to prove yourself worthy. Write insightful posts. Write well written posts. Write posts with the intention of having them bookmarked and shared.

Write About a Skill – If you have a hobby or have a skill, write about it on your blog. Even though you may think the internet is already full of what you’re interested in, you’d be surprised how little there actually is. Every day, web surfers from around the globe search for different perspectives on topics they’re interested in. Let yours be one of them.

Answer a Question – If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time and if you’ve built up an audience, you may have been asked questions about the topics you’ve written about. If this is the case, save up a few of these questions and transform them into posts. Personally, I’d write one post per question because I like to expand upon topics. You may choose to write one post that covers all questions. It’s up to you.

Ask a Question – If you need information on something and want real world viewpoints, don’t be shy about asking your readers questions. I know of quite a few bloggers who use this tactic as fodder for future posts. They ask a question to their readers, the readers answer that question (investing themselves in the post to come) and then a post is written that is of interest to many people. You can’t get better than that.

Write Tutorials – The blog you’re reading is based on tutorials. I very much enjoy learning new things and writing about them here. And apparently other folks enjoy doing the same thing, since the internet is swarming with these types of articles. Remember, the web is someplace people turn to for answers. If you have knowledge, turn that knowledge into a tutorial that may benefit readers. You may just get a boost in traffic from it.

Write About the News – There’s most likely something happening right now that people are interested in. You may even have an interest in it as well. If so, why not offer up some commentary on what’s going on in the world? Trust me, it wouldn’t be the first time someone has created content based on happenings around them. Now that I think about it, that’s what the news channels do on TV. Go for it.

Write About Other Blogs – Being a blogger, you may follow a number of other blogs. These other blogs may relate to the topics you enjoy writing about. If they do, seriously consider writing some posts that talk about these other bloggers and some of their posts, in particular. Not much is more powerful, in the way of getting social, than including yourself and others into the fold. By doing so, you’ll be prompting a response from the other blogger and hopefully some back and forth will result, giving way to some exposure for your own articles. Just remember, be respectful and aim to make a friend from the exchange.

Tell a Secret – People absolutely love gossip. I know, many of them won’t admit it, but the front page of Yahoo! and many other web properties thrive on gossip stories. If you have the stomach for it, sharing a secret about yourself may garner an unexpected response – hopefully in a good way. When writers are genuine about the topics they share, readers tend to identify with what’s written. I know of many stories like this that have gone viral, simply because the author was honest and sincere.

Be Critical of Something – Some things need to be called out. At times, it can be quite popular to discuss something that’s going on in the world that needs to be brought to light. If you have a passion or see something that shouldn’t be happening, you’d be surprised at how much support you can earn, simply by being the one to stand up and say “Stop!” If you’re thinking it, other are most likely thinking it as well. At times like this, readers on the internet look towards a leader to create a venue for conversation. You can offer that venue on your blog.

Teach Something – Similar to writing tutorials, teaching your readers about something is a highly valued way of building viewership and loyalty. Now, just to be clear, a tutorial is more of a step by step process that someone can follow. Being taught something is a general enlightenment. You can offer a tutorial on how to install a hard drive on a computer, while you can teach someone what computers actually are. If you have an interest, go ahead and share it with your audience.

Write Reviews – Amazon.com sells a lot of books, movies and products. Much of the popularity of Amazon’s pages is derived from the comment sections at the bottom of each one of them. When you think about it, each of those comments isn’t a comment at all – it’s a review of a product. Personally, I read through quite a few of those comments before I purchase anything. And if I can find more thorough reviews on other websites out there, I’ll read them as well. Reviews are extremely popular online, so if you’ve got a knack for analyzing products and media, you should definitely give writing reviews a try.

Run a Contest – If there’s one thing that keeps people coming back for more, it’s to check to see if they won something. Radio stations, car dealerships, television stations and websites have been using this tactic for years – and that’s because it works. Not only does it involve a reader in an intimate way, it also gives you a topic to write about.

Create a List – Have you seen a surge of those, “Top 10 Ways To…” and “20 Best Things That…” posts on blogs lately? Eh hem. If so, that’s because people love it when you do the work for them. I’d be hard pressed to find someone out there who would rather think of all the best ways to come up with great blog content themselves, as opposed to simply reading it in a well constructed list. Lists are gaining popularity online because someone else has done the leg work. And in general, readers are very appreciative of it.

Talk About Yourself – If you have a following, many of your readers may want to know something about you. If you think you know what they want to know, go ahead and offer an FAQ. You’d be surprised at how interested people may be. I sure wouldn’t mind knowing more about some top bloggers out there.

Conduct An Interview – Since this blog has launched just a few months ago, I’ve conducted eleven interviews. I have to admit, interviewing people has quickly become one of my favorite things to do – for many reasons. First, I think it offers a venue for talented folks to talk about themselves. This isn’t something they’d typically do on their own. By offering this to these people, many of them are appreciative. I like this fact and it’s truly an honor to present a bit of what makes someone tick to the world. Second, I learn about them. I enjoy this aspect of interviewing very much and if I like it, my readers surely do as well. If my readers like it, in my book, it’s good content.

Write a Series – One area that I’ve been working diligently towards on this site is to create “series” of posts. You can probably see the formation of these if you browse through the categories above. Recently, I’ve been focusing on blogging and photography, but when I first launched this blog, I was focused much more on programming languages. Readers enjoy series because they are very helpful as bookmarks and they’re organized in such a way that allows the reader to find exactly what they’re looking for – fast.

Write a Bucket List – Since the advent of social media, people have been sharing bucket lists. Nothing is more prone to inviting comments than a list of what you’d like to accomplish in life. The reason these types of lists are so popular is because so many of us have them. Also, the best and wildest ideas are usually included, so by sharing your own, you’re giving others ideas or giving them a peek into your mind. Interesting!

Write a Case Study – The internet is sorely missing good research. As I’m sure you’ve seen, much of what we’ve been reading through the years is merely a parroting of something someone else has already written. This is extremely prevalent in the SEO industry. What would be refreshing is if someone conducted an independent study and published the results of that study. Good, bad or indifferent, I’d surely be interested in reading through the findings of a topic that affects me.

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Behind any successful blog is a host of effective technology. This technology is not only the engine behind what allows to blog to function, but it also allows visitors to read and comment, owners to share and discuss socially and search engines to crawl and return in search results. Without much of what goes on behind the scenes would be a lifeless website that would be difficult to find and enjoy.

In this post, I’m going to discuss how to go about choosing a platform for your blog, how to share your blog through social media, how to manage some of the housekeeping aspects of your blog and how to best optimize your blog for search engines. By the end of this post, you should have a clear picture of what you need to do to create a powerhouse that will operate smoothly and grow well into the future.

Choosing Your Blogging Platform

A few years ago, the debate between which blogging platform to use was mostly between self installed solutions. I believe WordPress, Joomla and Drupal were the primary players and for self hosted blogs, they still are. Today though, with the ever-increasing availability of cloud hosted blogging solutions, the debate is more popularly between self hosted and cloud based platforms. And among those, WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace and Tumblr are leading the pack. But because of the rapid growth, quality of, simplicity of and support for all the major systems, the lines are becoming blurred. I’d venture to say that, for beginning bloggers, whether or not you choose a solution that’s self hosted or cloud based, you’ll be getting a feature rich and community supported venue for writing and sharing thoughts and ideas. What you’d need to primarily concern yourself with is specific feature availability as well as look and feel.

When it comes to blogging, I have to confess that I’m quite partial. The very first platform I ever used was self hosted WordPress. That was way back in 2006 and through the years, I haven’t been let down by the evolution of all those lines of code I’ve come to love. If I discovered the amount of times my fingertips have touched a keyboard while logged into WordPress, I’m sure my head would spin. WordPress began as a lightweight piece of blogging software and has evolved into a full fledged content management system (CMS). And through my days, I’ve given other platforms a try, but nothing, in my opinion, has compared to the intuitiveness of what WordPress has had to offer.

I understand that everyone can’t simply take my word for what’s best, so I’m going to go over some of the primary areas what someone should look for when choosing what they’ll be configuring and writing on for the next few years. If you’re looking into choosing something, feel free to browse through the most critical areas below and learn about them at your leisure.

First, I’ll give a somewhat extensive list of available blogging platforms. Then, I’ll offer some areas you should consider when choosing between them.

List of Popular Blogging Platforms

WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Blogger, Tumblr, TypePad, Wix, Ghost, Squarespace, Weebly, Drupal and Joomla.

Aspects You Should Consider

Cost, popularity, self hosted or cloud based, community size, support, security, availability for own domain, technical ability required, complexity, plugin or extension availability, developer availability, theme availability, storage, user friendliness, updates and features.

I’d say the above lists cover a good portion of what you should be looking at when attempting to decide between solutions. There’s no shortage of information on each and every one of the pieces of software that I mentioned above, so if you’re interested, there’s no time better than the present to begin searching. I will give you a peek behind a curtain, though, and tell you that through the years, WordPress has adapted to what most other blogging platforms have offered. And because of this, today, WordPress owns the majority of market share in this space. If the future is any indication of what they’ve done in the past, things will only get more robust and their market share will continue to grow. Whichever you do decide to go with, be sure to locate and hire a developer who specializes specifically with what you’ve chosen. Each offering is complex in its own right, so specialization is key.

Integrating Social Media With Your Blog

One of the more heavily weighted aspects of blog promotion lies with the use of social media. This is especially true for new blogs that aren’t necessarily appearing in search results just yet. For more established blogs with a fair amount of search engine presence, social media can truly enhance the blogger’s message. Social media’s integration with blogs today is far different than it was just a few years ago. Today, it’s sometimes challenging for a visitor to make the distinction between an actual blog and a social media site. And if social media leads a visitor to make a conversion, whatever that may be, the blogger is utilizing the system correctly.

I’m going to list some ideas below that might help out with a blog going “social.” If you have additions to this list, please leave them in the comment section below.

Establish a Social Presence – In order to do this, you’ll need to first choose which social media services you’d like to interact with. Each one has a different target audience and not all might be a perfect fit for your blog. Do your research on which ones align best with your own audience. Examples of social media networks are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus+, Tumblr and Instagram. The benefits of utilizing one of these networks is having the ability to generate a following. Once a large enough group is listening to your message, you’ll have created an effective method for sharing posts that you write on your blog. And with the way social networks operate, those initial shares may be shared again down the line, creating sustainable traffic for your own website.

Social Share and Follow Buttons – If you’ve been using the internet for any length of time, you surely know what these buttons look like. They are usually colorful and ask that you push one or more of them to post a link to the blog post or page you’re reading on your social network page, thus bringing the post or page to your own followers, front and center. Using social buttons on your blog is an extremely simple and effective way to spread your message.

Create Shareable Video – Did you know that Youtube is the second large search engine on the planet? Have you ever watched a video that had over one million views? That’s right, shareable video is becoming so popular that individuals are now using it as a primary source of income. Wouldn’t it be nice if a large number of people watched a video you released and then were so interested in your message that they visited your blog? It’s happening all over today and harnessing the power of video is as effective as effective can be. Personally, when I look for a product to purchase online, I always visit Youtube to see if anyone has posted something that can offer a better perspective of that product. And the use of video doesn’t stop there. If you have a blog, you can also easily embed someone else’s related video into your own post to offer a greater understanding of what you’re trying to convey.

Social Proof, Badges and Boxes – People like things that other people already like. That’s just how we work. It’s as if someone else has already done our homework for us and can vouch for the party we’re interested in. One way to demonstrate to new visitors that our blogs are trustworthy and popular is to add a box to the sidebar showing off how many followers we have. You may have seen the Facebook “like” boxes that display friend’s faces. That’s a prime example of what I’m talking about here. Your blog would be fairly difficult to ignore if thousands of others have already said, “I like this.”

Comment Areas – User comments are extremely popular for readers of blogs to browse. It’s oftentimes the comments that attract someone to a blog as opposed to the post itself. I can remember a friend telling me, years ago, that she preferred to visit one of my blogs simply for the comments. I suppose they were entertaining.

While comments have traditionally been an “on site” source for going social, they’ve recently migrated off site as well. Through the use of plugins, it’s simple to integrate social commenting services, such as Disqus, Livefyre, Facebook Comments and IntenseDebate into our blogs. What these commenting systems do is, not only add a visitor’s comment to our blog post page, but also share it throughout their own network, bringing more visibility to that comment. You may have seen examples of these types of comment systems on news websites where there’s a lot of back and forth regarding a hot topic. Those comment exchanges would never have erupted the way they have without going social.

Measuring, Analytics and Security

With the operation of every blog, or website for that matter, comes a bit of back end responsibility. What I’m referring to here is the responsibility of measuring the success of your blog by viewing specific metrics that relate to previously decided on goals, confirming your blog is in good standing and functioning correctly through the eyes of search engines as well as securing your blog against internal and external threats. In order for your site to endure through the long haul, each and every one of these areas needs to be addressed and maintained.

Measurement and Good Standing

Two popular free services to monitor blog health, from the perspective of search engines, are Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Both of these tools are effective at alerting you of site errors, displaying various statistics regarding your website’s indexation levels and performance, show linking relationships both inside and outside your blog and allow you to set your web property to a specific configuration.

Website Analytics

As they say, if it’s not worth measuring, it’s not worth doing. Luckily, there’s a plethora of website statistical and analytical tools available for us to measure the success of our blogs. Some are free and some aren’t. Much like the research you’ll have to perform in order to decide which blogging platform you’d like to use, you’ll have to research which analytics solution you’d like to take advantage of. What’s important is that you find the service pleasant to work with and that it effectively accomplishes what you need it to.

Some of the more popular website analytics tool available are Google Analytics, Clicky, Mint, KISSmetrics and Open Web Analytics. Obviously, there are many more services available, but what I’ve listed above should keep you busy and offer what you’re looking for.

The primary function of any analytics solution is to measure website traffic. Today’s services go much further than that though – they now offer insights into how effective your marketing efforts are, what websites link your yours, multiple ways of breaking down and analyzing data and more.

Website Security

There are two critical areas you need to consider when launching anything of importance on the web. One of these areas is website backup and the other is website security. While your host might offer backup options, it’s a good idea to manage this aspect of your blog yourself, especially if it gains traction and becomes popular. Web hosts are notorious for falling short of expectations when it comes time to recover lost files. Be sure not to fall victim to this.

While there are many services that offer website backup, I find that CodeGuard works well, is easy to use and is extremely intuitive. It operates like many other backup services in that it can either take a snapshot of everything on your domain or just specific files. Other similar services include BitCalm and Revert.io. While I’ve never worked with these two, I can suggest you look into them.

When it comes to website security, content delivery networks (CDNs) are becoming extremely popular. Their configurations vary, but what’s becoming common is that a CDN operates as a sort of middle man, standing between your server and the outside world. All traffic passes through the network to get to your files, offering a layer of protection against threats. Some of the primary advantages of utilizing a CDN include load balancing, multiple data center content delivery and protection from DDoS attacks, bot access, remote file inclusion, sql injection, cross site scripting and more. Some even offer a firewall to limit access to your site from unwanted visitors.

Some of the more widely known CDNs are Incapsula, CloudFlare, Distil and MaxCDN. Remember, these services don’t just offer distributed content delivery – they offer website security as well, so some research is in order.

Optimizing Your Blog For Search (SEO)

In the final section of this article, I’d like to share some resources regarding search engine optimization with you. Luckily, I’ve already written some in-depth and insightful posts relating to this topic, so I can simply redirect you to them. But before I do that, I’d like to impress upon you the importance of delving into the world of SEO as it relates to your blog, because nothing is worse, blogging-wise, than spending a good amount of time and effort on content generation and receiving an underwhelming volume of traffic to it. Optimizing your blog for search is critical for acquiring the readership you deserve, so take the time to browse through the articles I link to below. You’ll likely pick up some good knowledge and hopefully implement what you’ve learned on your blog.

3 Website Link Building Tips You Never Thought Of

6 Amazing SEO Tips For Small Business

7 Search Engine Optimization Tips For Small Business

New Website SEO Checklist

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Before you actually install any blogging software on a server, it’s important to consider a few key areas that relate to your blog’s presence on the web. While some of the following topics may seem rudimentary, giving them due respect may save a lot of headache in the future.

In this post, I’m going to cover the three most critical steps any future blogger needs to take before they even think about platform, hosting or SEO. By taking the time to make sense of what needs to happen at this stage of blogging strategy, a content developer can focus on more important areas down the road, such as author cultivation, article generation and publicity.

How Does the Blog Relate To Other Web Properties?

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been blogging since 2006. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a lot of success and well as endured many failures. What I’m attempting to convey here is that I’ve manged to accumulate years of experience and with that experience, I’m willing to let you in on some simple techniques (or bits of awareness) that will pave the way for some of the success that I’m able to look back upon.

Location

The first and foremost area any future blogger needs to consider is where their blog will exist online. Back in 2006, I decided it would be best to install WordPress software on a private hosting account I had set up through a hosting company. While this type of configuration is still widely available, many other options have presented themselves through the years.

Today, bloggers can work with, not only self hosted solutions, but with hosted ones as well. For instance, WordPress offers a hosted blogging platform as does Blogger. Squarespace, Tumblr and Medium are others, just to name a few. The choice you make today, as to what configuration you choose, will impact your writing career for a long time to come. I’ve followed many folks who began with a hosted blogging solution, only to decide, later on, that they had grown to such a point that they would need to move to a self hosted one. You can imagine to trouble that could cause – from manual labor to SEO impact.

I think the primary takeaway from this is that you need to consider where you’re blog will be set up and where it will reside. Think hard about the commitment that you’ll put into your content, because if you feel that you’ll create an audience large enough in the future, you may want to skip the hosted blogging options and jump straight to installing software on your own server.

Relationship

More along the lines of organization and keeping things straight in your head, it’s important to consider what relationship your blog will have with your other presences online. Today, an ever growing number of people own and operate websites and use social media. If you were to install and begin to develop content on a blog, how would you organize it with your other web properties? Would you incorporate your existing social media into the blog or would you keep things separate? Would you create more “social” web assets that you link to exclusively from the blog as opposed to using more formal ones that you link to from your existing website? Or would you continue to use personal social media accounts to further promote what you intend on doing? All these questions might seem trivial, but trust me, it’s one of the areas that frustrates fresh bloggers every day.

The next question you need to ask yourself relates to what types of social media you will include on your blog. It’s quite simple to include your latest tweets from Twitter, recent posts from Facebook, along with some videos from Youtube. If you decide to do this, which accounts will you use. Visitors will surely visit those accounts from your blog, so it’s a good idea to parse out these ideas very early in the game.

Lastly, it’s critical that you decipher where you’ll install your blogging software (if you do decide to install it) in relation to any existing website. I can remember back to 2006 where I set up my very first WordPress install – I uploaded the software to the root directory of my hosting plan, much like the website you’re on right now. If you’re not sure of what I’m referring to, think about URL paths of some blogs you’ve visited in the past. They can vary greatly. Here’s an example of how I had the choice of setting up IndustryDev:

https://industrydev.com
https://industrydev.com/blog
http://blog.industrydev.com

The first example above shows WordPress being installed in the root directory. The second example shows WordPress being set up in a sub-directory and the third shows it being set up in a sub-domain. I’ll discuss these three options below.

URL Path

When installing blogging software, you have a few options related to where you’d like to put the files. Each has their own pros and cons.

In the first example above, as I’ve already mentioned, the blogging software files would reside in the root directory of your domain. This is a popular choice of configuration for those who are sure their website will never expand. By expand, I’m referring to, say, including ecommerce software or a photo gallery. The blog files have already claimed the highest position in the directory hierarchy. Now, I understand that it’s rather simple to form new sub-directories to install outside galleries and web stores, but according to my organizationally conservative mind, that idea isn’t optimal. I am particularly against mixing and matching directories and files from, and inside of, different pieces of software.

If you think your blog may expand into the areas I just mentioned above, it may be beneficial to install it in a sub-directory. If you did this, you can cleanly expand into various areas by simply creating more sub-directories:

https://industrydev.com/blog
https://industrydev.com/store
https://industrydev.com/gallery

I’ve done this in the past and it works well. The only thing you’d need to concern yourself with is which area of the website your visitors will be directed to once they land on the root domain. For example, if someone visited:

https://industrydev.com

I could easily redirect them to any one of the sub-directories above by including a short snippet of code in the website’s .htaccess file. This is called a 301 redirect and is extremely common online. The only issue with this solution, for some, is that if you ever decide to remove all sub-directories from your domain besides your blog, you’d be left with your blog using the “blog” sub-directory. And that can get annoying to look at and in some circles, can be perceived as unprofessional.

What many businesses are doing these days is installing their blogging software on sub-domains. This has become increasingly popular from an organizational standpoint as well as a protectionist one. There are many search engine penalties floating around out there and, according to some folks, keeping any new piece of web real estate separate from any existing one is a good idea. It would be a shame if your current website was, unknowingly, under a penalty from one of the big search engines and you set up a new blog under the penalized domain. That blog would have little chance of ever gaining any traction.

The downside of this solution is that, since sub-domains are considered totally separate websites from each other, any new blog or other piece of software wouldn’t benefit from the existing reputation of a healthy website. The longevity of what’s been previously set up can help tremendously in regards to search engine attention.

Whose Blog Is It Anyway?

In this section, I’m going to focus on larger blogs that are operated by multiple personalities. For an idea of the types of blogs I’m referring to, please take a look at Smashing Magazine, Web Designer Depot and Hongkiat. Each one of these blogs was initially launched by one individual, but has grown into an endeavor managed and contributed to by a wide variety of individuals. When web properties evolve into larger entities, such as the examples above have, a hierarchy needs to be established. A chain of command, if you will.

If you’ve ever operated a WordPress blog, you may have encountered the “Users” section in the administration area. In this area, each user account is listed. And for each user account, a role is granted. Currently, there are five roles to choose from when assigning one to a user. The roles are administrator, editor, author, contributor and subscriber. Just as a note, I didn’t list those roles in any particular order.

When managing a multi-contributor or multi-user blog, you need to be careful in assigning roles to individuals, both inside the administration area as well as in the general sense of the word. Basically, each player needs to know what they do and who they report to.

Let me give you an example of what I’m referring to. For IndustryDev, I have one administrator account and it belongs to me. This is the broadest and most powerful role someone can have granted to them and by having access to it, whoever is logged in can add or edit any post they would like, as well as alter the look and functionality of the entire website. Needless to say, the administrator role is reserved for very few people. And those people would need to have quite a large stake in this website.

All other roles below administrator utilize select permissions, from adding and editing posts, granting various authority to others and that sort of thing. These roles, based on their structure, would be appropriate for editor, contributors and so forth.

When managing a multi-user blog, there needs to be a “go to” person. In this case of IndustryDev, that person is me. If I decided to add contributors in the future, they would have their own contributor accounts, with lesser capabilities. All contributions would also be edited and posted by me. The reason for this is simple – to keep the tone and continuity between posts in line with the vision of the entire site. No matter how straightforward a contributor’s intent, there always needs to be a role where someone oversees all content that’s published. In the print world, this position is called, “Editor in Chief.”

Now, in the future, if this website became large enough to sustain tens of contributors, I would certain expand roles to include a few more content editors. I simply wouldn’t have enough time to edit everything myself. If this were to occur, I would train the editors so they understood in what direction I’d like the site to point.

What Type Of Content Will You Publish?

Many, if not all, multi-user blogs, as well as some single-user blogs have some sort of set of “rules” that govern what the content that’s posted should look like. These rules are an overarching “idea” that will keep the content that’s published in line with where the blog is supposed to be headed.

While smaller blogs may communicate these rules of blogging to their contributors and editors, it’s helpful to post an “Editorial Guidelines” page on the blog itself. While covering editorial guidelines in depth is out of the reach of this post, I will link to a few sources from outside website that offer a clear picture of what this topic relates to.

How to Craft Editorial Guidelines That Drive Great Content – CoSchedule Blog

11 Editorial Guidelines Every Business Blog Needs – Hubspot

Editorial Guidelines Template – KristeenBullwinkle.com

If interested, please take a look at the sites above. They’re very thorough.

Regarding blogging guidelines and editorial guidelines, I’ll list a few of the primary topics covered below. This will give you an idea of what’s contained in the posts above.

Post Originality – Covers how original each post should be and how much material from previous or outside posts may be included in the current one.

Audience – Describes who the target audience is and how each post an effect the market at large.

Type of Content – Talks about what type of content the blog likes to publish. For example, IndustryDev enjoys posting content that’s related to tutorials, informative posts as well as interviews and inspirational types of articles.

Formatting – Covers the specific formatting requirements for each post, including word and character count, reading level, headings, capitalization and links.

Media – Describes what type of media is allowed and encouraged in posts, along with usage restrictions and formatting requirements. Also includes the use of screenshots.

Promotion – Talks about permissible promotional efforts, along with common channels used to bring awareness to each post and the website in general.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless when creating guidelines for a blog, but they do a great job of streamlining operations and keeping new contributors and editors informed of what the managers and owners would like to see published and how each item is promoted.

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So many things in life need purpose. Without purpose, it seems as though we can flounder for untold lengths of time. It’s only until we define exactly what we would like to achieve, that we can get down and make progress.

In this post, I’m going to discuss blogging with goals in mind. When I refer to “goals,” I’m referring to honest goals. You’ll see what I’m getting at after you read the first section below. I’ll be going over how to discover what your blog should be all about, blogging with that purpose in mind as well as setting yourself up for the future. It’s with this type of planning that you can hopefully and eventually call yourself a successful blogger.

What Does Your Blog Hope To Achieve?

I’ve been creating and writing on blogs since 2006. Many of them have been and continue to be successful, but as common with many prolific bloggers, some have failed. Of those that failed, I can now identify the reason for failure. I had no clear purpose and direction I wanted to take the blog. Things were fuzzy in my head. What began as a great idea quickly turned into a project that had no true purpose and it showed in my writing. As time went on, productivity suffered until I finally pulled the plug. This type of scenario occurs far too often on the internet.

From all that I’ve gathered since my early blogging days, I’d have to say the most important aspect for any blogger to focus on is having a set vision for their blog. It’s focus that drives projects like this through to building an online reputation and an eventual following. Clear goals are an absolute necessity. It’s unfortunate how often this first step to blogging is overlooked because by focusing on goals and vision, many bloggers could enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Goals

Have you ever struggled with productivity? Let me give you an example of what I might be talking about. Let’s say you were in charge of mowing lawns in a neighborhood. You have ten accounts and ten lawns to mow. During any given week, all lawns need to be mowed at least once. What often happens with situations like this is you wonder how many lawns you’ll cut one day and then you wonder how many lawns you’ll cut the next. At the end of the week, you may have missed a lawn or two or may have to mow the majority of the lawns on the final day. What if there was a better way to manage your time?

Setting Goals Helps You Define Targets

If you decided that it would be better and more productive to mow two lawns per day during your five day work week, you would know exactly what needed to be done each and every day. Why does this matter?

Setting Goals Enables You To Measure Success

You can’t know if you were successful at something unless you can measure your success. You can’t measure success if you don’t have anything to measure. By setting goals, you can measure whether or not those goals were met. If they were, you’re on the correct path.

Let’s get back to blogging. How would we set goals for any particular day of blogging? Well, that would depend on the vision of the blog that I referred to above. If you’ve decided that your blog is about auto racing and the vision you’ve established for the blog is to inform your readers about the history, current events and future path of auto racing, you might set short term goals like this:

Monday: Find all auto racing news from the weekend and compile a summary to post.

Wednesday: Gather all auto racing events that are occurring presently and discuss them in a post.

Friday: Gather all auto racing events that are planned to occur over the weekend and compile the information in a post.

Now, this is a simplistic view of what specific goals might be for any blog, but this type of thing certainly would clarify what needs to get done. If an author was able to follow a schedule for this, they would know whether or not they were achieving their goals.

Now, whether or not these goals are fulfilling the vision of the blog remains to be seen. Is traffic increasing? Is user engagement picking up? Are newsletter subscriptions growing? The success of these types of overarching goals depend on the quality and necessity of your content. The big question is: do your posts matter and does anyone care?

The way to determine if your blog is of value is to reduce what you plan on doing to reader need. If you research your market and find that there’s a hole in it that can be filled by your writing, then you’re in good shape. You can set your daily goals to meet that need. As time progresses, you can tweak the short term goals to align more with what your readers want.

When defining a vision for a blog, it’s important to dig deep to the real reason you want to launch it. Many beginning bloggers don’t have a clear reason, and therefore end up with a muddled vision. It’s not likely that you want to “create the best blog around” or to “bring your readers information that’s worth reading.” It’s more likely that you want to make money blogging. The way to do that is to build an audience by writing posts that visitors what to read, to grow a mailing list by enticing readers to join and to increase reader engagement by offering a place to comment on posts and replying to those comments in a timely fashion. If you’re able to grow an audience, you’ll surely find a way to monetize the blog. But the most critical aspect to stay aware of is what the true purpose of the blog is. If it’s to make money, that’s fine.

How To Define Goals For Any Blog

As you may have noticed, the short term goals I outlined above won’t really work well for a complex blog that’s hoping to attract a high volume of readers. This is because I simply listed those goals without taking much into consideration. Believe it or not, there really is a structured way to discover and record what a particular blog’s goals might be – both for the short term and the long term. For the explanation and examples I’m going to talk about below, we’ll keep the same auto racing blog we worked with above.

How Does a Blogger Keep Track of Goals?

The trick here is to write them down. Not only does this have an organizational aspect to it, it also has a psychological one. When someone “writes something down,” they, more than likely, commit to it. It becomes official. And when it comes to recording goals for a blog, a simple piece of paper will do. Just be sure to isolate the sections for “Blog Vision” and “Blog Goals” from each other. While they’re kept separate from each other on paper, it’s important to remember that both of these concepts rely on one another going forward.

The Best Way To Identify a Blog’s Goals

If you think back to your college or high school days, you may recall a term called, “brainstorming.” Brainstorming is when people, and in this case, stakeholders, toss out ideas that are free from criticism. The idea behind this type of activity, as it relates to gathering goals for a blog, is to unearth the reason for being and methods and tools that may help lead to success.

One of the primary questions you need to answer during your brainstorming session is how your blog will affect your readers and your market at large. If you remember what a blog truly is at its essence (a medium of communication), you’ll arrive at what you’re after rather quickly. But remember, stay fluid during this effort.

If you were launching a blog today, ask yourself:

1. What can your website audience learn from your content?

2. How does what they actually learn compare to what they wanted to learn?

3. How can you better educate yourself based off of what you’ve learned from your visitors?

4. What is it that you can offer to the public and how can you get more involved?

5. How to you create the “go to” blog in your chosen market?

Now, I’m going to go over the process of how to correctly answer each one of these questions below. Be sure to follow carefully, because there’s a process in action here.

If we take a look at the very first question above, regarding what your audience can learn from your content, we can say that they’ll be kept up to date on the events in the auto racing industry that have happened, are happening and that will happen in the not so distant future. With that answer in mind, we need to think about how offering this type of content aligns with your blog’s vision of growth and eventual monetization. If we can conclude that by giving your audience what they’re looking for as it relates to quality and up-to-date news regarding auto racing, we can identify your first blogging goal:

1. Become established as the primary provider of current information surrounding the auto racing industry.

Now, if we look at the second question regarding the relationship between what your visitors actually learn and what they visited you to learn, we can conclude that the question can’t be answered yet. Since you haven’t exactly written much content at the time of goal discovery, you don’t have any data on what visitors are looking for. Luckily, this conclusion offers a very specific goal. That goal is to:

2. Collect user data on visit intent, whether it be from direct emails, outside forums, traffic statics and other sources, to become familiar with what a particular user has in mind when they land on one of your web pages. You can base future posts off of this information.

Let’s look at the third question from above. What can you learn from your visitors and how can you educate yourself from that knowledge? If you already know, based on previous research, that the types of visitors you’re seeking love to tell stories about their adventures at the races, a goal for the blog might be:

3. Make a comment section available for blog visitors to share experiences with other readers. This will promote a “community” aspect on your blog and will keep your posts “sticky” with readers coming back for more. Also, from the visitor comments, you’ll become educated on how your visitors perceive auto racing and will enable you to write more thoughtful posts in the future.

If we look at the fourth question from above about what you can offer the public and how you can get more involved, you might say that since you have deep knowledge of auto racing, you can offer the most accurate commentary in the industry. You also might have a question/answer section on the blog, which will help build trust with your audience. This might lead to the following goal:

4. Keep your information accuracy high by staying involved with the industry and be sure to learn something new every day. Also, keep close contact with your visitors so they’ll return to your blog and consider it fresh and up to date.

If you ask yourself how you can shape your blog to become a “go-to” resource in the auto racing world, I think you’ve already answered this question. By keeping your previous goals in mind, your visitors should regard your blog as a resource they appreciate and value. So for this last goal, you might want to:

5. Stay active with your blogging schedule and be sure to continue to offer consistent and thoughtful posts that visitors enjoy engaging with.

With the above example goals, you should have the knowledge and framework necessary to define your own blog’s goals. Because there truly are no two blogs alike, each set of goals may be different. Just remember, while dealing with this type of project, it’s not the actual goals you come up with that matter as much as the framework for the goals you create. You can always adjust and tune your goals as time goes by, based off the framework you create today.

Measuring Your Blog’s Future

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about blogging, it’s that setting up and launching a blog with the expectation of visitors from search engines today is much different than it was just a few years ago. In the past, I could set up my infrastructure, add content I felt visitors wanted to read and watch the traffic flow in. It was much more about just content back then. While getting mild traffic wasn’t very difficult in those days, getting big traffic was much more of a challenge. In order to accomplish that, you needed a brand people recognized.

Today, getting even minor traffic is a difficult. In order to attract these types of visitors, you need to work hard and publish content people truly appreciate. Search engines no longer give gifts. They want you to earn what they give you.

With this in mind, I recommend that you treat the first year of your blog’s life like you would an experiment. As an experiment, you would create, feed, nurture, observe, monitor and evaluate your web property. It’s the data you capture from your blog’s first year that you can use for the rest of its life.

In the final section of this post, I’m going to discuss some milestones and measurements you can make during the beginning of your blog’s, hopefully, long and happy existence. Some measurements might include visitor traffic, engagement and readership. It’ll be sort of like creating a five year plan for your life, but it’ll only cover one year and it’ll be for your blog. And like the goals we identified and set above, the milestones and measurements you create for the first year of your blog can be used as measurements of success. I’ll cover some of these milestones below.

Launch – This is likely the most exciting time of your blog’s existence. It’s at this point that you’ll most want to publicize and build interest in your site. Do you have friends who are bloggers? Tell them about it. Do you have a large social media following? Tell them too. Share the launch with related publications. People are always looking for fodder for their own blogs and websites, so share your blog’s value and upcoming plans with them. They may just include you in something they share with others.

2 Months – Hopefully, by the two month mark, you’ve been writing quality content that is easily shareable with those who might want to consume it. It’s this type of content that search engines like to gobble up and return to users once all the search related factors on your blog are in sync. Be sure that your blog has all the necessary plugins and configurations set for proper search engine indexing. Remember, it’s likely that you’ll be getting little to no direct search engine traffic at this point. That’s not important. Search engines have algorithms that restrict brand new properties from showing in results. What is important is that your content is churning in other ways. Whether it be through social media channels or newsletter subscriptions. If you pretend that search engines don’t even exist at the two month mark, you’ll be doing yourself a favor.

4 Months – It’s at this point that you’ll want to begin promoting your content with social media in earnest. You’ll likely have written enough posts to sustain some targeted traffic, so it’s time to show it off. Make a goal for yourself. Perhaps you’d like to receive 50 visits via social media for a specific frame of time. At this point, it’s also important to review what you’re writing. What type of response is it getting? Is one type of content being received better than another? If so, that type of content is what you should be focusing on.

6 Months – At six months, you want to take a step back and admire all your hard work. You’ll also want to take note of what’s worked and what hasn’t. Have you written in a particular style or with a particular structure that your readers appreciate? If so, remember the success of those cases and use them for future posts.

9 – 12 Months – By this point, you should have earned yourself a small following for your blog. If so, take note of how many visitors there are, how much your blog has been mentioned on social media and how many newsletter signups you’ve gathered. It’s all about data. You want to record as much as you can to work from so you can create future goals to achieve. It’s also about creating a customizable and measurable framework to look back on and measure against in years to come.

Like I mentioned above, the first year for any blog is mostly about creating the content that’s going to rank long down the road. There’s not much you can do about search engine traffic at this point, so it’s better to focus on writing quality posts and articles. Later on, if you’ve done your job well, the traffic will begin to flow.

Part #1 – Understanding the Concept Behind Blogging

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I’m a blogger. I blog. This is what I do. People ask me all sorts of questions that surround my line of work and I’m often all too excited to answer them. One of the most popular questions I receive is, “What is blogging? I mean, what do you do?”

I get it. Not everyone is up to snuff when it comes to the ins and outs of the internet world. A lot has changed in the past ten years and the folks who really never had a grasp on the business model behind print, television and radio still don’t have a grasp on the business model behind blogging. Surprisingly, whether you’re producing content that people consume in their hands via paper, watch on a screen hanging from the wall, listen to while driving or read from a tablet or phone, you’re essentially doing the same thing. You’re creating content that people enjoy. You’re answering questions and connecting with those who matter most.

In this post, I’m going to discuss a bit about the history of blogging, along with how a blog may benefit you if you’re a business owner. I’m going to focus primarily on blogs as an ancillary device to support the primary operations of a business website. I’ll also talk about some of the areas that need focusing on while creating and nurturing any business blog online today.

Let’s Define Exactly What a Blog Is

Through the years, blogs have meant many different things to many different people. For some, a blog is merely a personal journal – a sort of recording – of the day’s events. For others, a blog is a complete website or perhaps an add-on to an existing website that’s more interactive with a designated audience. However folks choose to define a blog really doesn’t affect what the actual definition is. Yes, there is a definition:

Noun: A regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.

Verb: Add new material to or regularly update a blog. “It’s about a week since I last blogged.”

I’m not sure the above definitions of a blog are very accurate. In my opinion, a blog is a website, or portion of a website, that “lives.” It’s regularly updated and displays pages as “posts.” Each post normally has a date attached to it, so viewers can gauge the relevancy of the material (written too long ago or very fresh). Blogs can have multiple authors and multiple categories and tags. It’s also important to note that blogs generally display their posts in reverse chronological order, so the most recent are the first ones visible.

Think about it this way: a website is generally, once designed and displayed, static. Sure, there may be updates to the site here and there, but overall, the pages you see on a traditional website will be there until the next overhaul. This, of course, excludes active ecommerce websites.

Blogs, on the other hand, are regularly updated. They are meant to be fresh. It’s actually disappointing to visit a blog today to find that the last post was written month or years ago because blogs are meant to stimulate conversation. Also, with the advent of email marketing in the blog arena, blogs can harness a “newsletter” effect, where each post is automatically sent to subscribers. Simply put, blogs have a heartbeat.

Why Blogs Are Critical For Business

Over the past few years, I’ve seen huge growth in business blogging. It’s almost as though someone flipped the light switch on and things are running full steam ahead. If these businesses continue to trend as I currently see them trending, blogging may actually become one of the business’ primary functions.

I suppose we have to ask the question: “If someone has a business and has information to share, shouldn’t that information reside on the business website?” Of course it should. The thing is, while websites do host a huge volume of information, blogs host a much different type of information. We can compare business websites to lectures or seminars. The information presented through those mediums are monologues. Blogs can be compared to the meet and greet after the lecture or seminar, where folks chat among themselves and discuss questions and concerns regarding what they were just presented. Blogs are effective tools to update clients or stakeholders with more informal opinions and topics. Oftentimes, stakeholders visit a business blog before any other section of the entire web property because that’s where they feel they’ll find what they’re looking for. Blogs excel at nurturing relationships.

So, what types of information do blogs present? Well, think about tips and tricks, tutorials and ideas, thoughts, opinions and finally, discussion. Oftentimes, the comment section below a blog post is the most valuable area of the entire page. Personally, when I head out to look for information on the web, I regularly visit posts that I’ve visited in the past, knowing full well that the comments have experienced some churn. I know new information may have been added by others.

In order to continue operating a successful and regularly visited blog, businesses need to be mindful of one word: value. Each and every piece of content that’s shared with the world via a business blog must offer valuable insights. If customers and stakeholders take notice of, what I like to call, generic content generation, they will leave only to never return. Generic content is worse than no content at all. So it’s critical that any author of a post on a business blog be an expert in their field with the ability to translate their thoughts into a compelling, opinionated, persuasive and somewhat unique piece of work. That’s the type of content that keeps people connected and coming back for more – because it’s trusted and valuable.

Strategies For Creating An Effective Business Blog

While this is only the first post in a series of posts that discuss how to effectively plan for and execute on the creation of an effective business blog, I will touch of what future posts will cover. And as those future posts are written, I’ll link to them from this one below.

The five areas I plan to write about are:

Goals – What exactly would a business owner hope to achieve by setting up and operating a blog? What use is it? What’s its purpose and how can the business benefit from creating timely content for its customers and stakeholders?

Strategy – This is where I’ll talk about how a business owner will get from point A to point B. I’ll discuss how the blog will sit alongside an existing website and who should be the primary “overseer” of the operation. Lastly, I’ll cover the “rules” of the blog and what types of guidelines should be implemented to assure maximum success.

Technology – In today’s world, there are almost countless choices for blogging platforms. I’ve been in this field since 1999 and I have to tell you, I’ve never seen anything like the growth and creativity that we’re experiencing today. But, with all this change comes confusion. What’s the best blogging solution? Are there pros and cons to each? Is one better suited to a business owner’s needs than another? In the technology section of this series of posts, I’ll talk about and answer all of these questions.

Content Creation – This area is really where the rubber meets the road. I’ll talk about what types of content might be most effective for a business blog as well as how to seek out and recruit the talent that will write that content. Effective content creation is arguably the most important area of any successful blog because without it, all we’ve got is another piece of software sitting somewhere online.

Implementation – In this final section, I’ll discuss how to launch a blog and how best to manage it. As I mentioned earlier in this post, blogs are living, breathing entities on the web and to remain effective, must be treated as such. This means that a publishing schedule must be adhered to and a strong search engine and social presence must be initiated and cultivated. I’ll discuss all these topics and more.

There’s a lot that goes into creating and managing a blog, but if done correctly and if the “formula” is followed, the payoff can be huge. Some of the largest websites online are blogs and, while I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, money can be made by blogging. Remember, if you’ve got something to say that’s of value to someone, they’ll surely listen.

Part #2 – How To Define Achievable Goals For Blogging

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I hope you enjoyed this first post in our series of posts on how to create and manage a business blog. For more effective tips on blogging, please visit the category listed at the top of this page. Also, to receive each of our posts directly in your email inbox, be sure to sign up for our mailing list.