8 Tips to Start Your Blog

I am a big fan of blogging. You can call them articles, blogs, content whatever. But you need to be doing it for your website. Do it once a month. Do it once a week. Do it every day. But make sure your site is producing content on a regular basis. Why? Google wants it. Actually, they demand it. They want to see that your site is producing new content in order to rank in more keywords. So, here are 8 tips to start your blog!

Why Are You Blogging?

In today’s world, there is more focus and attention on what you have to offer and being seen as a leader in your field. Your blog needs to be about that.  Giving your readers VALUABLE information and making you an authority/leader/ expert/professional/whatever you want to call it. Your content needs to have value above all else. You may feel like by giving away too much information for free on a blog, no one will need to hire you or buy your products. The trick is to give away enough information without giving away everything.

Audience

First, know who you are writing to.  If you are nervous about writing, think of it this way. What would you say to someone if they were to ask you about a topic? How would you speak to them? That answer is how you should be “speaking” in your blog post.

Topic

Next, pick a topic. Any topic you feel like writing about. As you continue to blog, your creative juices will start flowing and this will become easier, but in the beginning, you can pick some very general topics like what is your industry and what are the big changes going on in what you do. Feature a client if you like as well.

Title

Now for that topic, you need a catchy title. Add a number into the title to increase your chances of being found. Keep your keyword (the main search word) in your title.

Introduction

The introduction is important. Most people skim.  They stopped reading long ago (I hope that doesn’t apply to you as you read this….) In the first paragraph, you need two or three sentences that sum up your entire post.

Use Bullet Points

To make the post easy to read, you can cut it down into three or more simple statements and then expand on them. This makes it easier for you to write and also easier for the reader to read. So if they are just skimming, they will know the most important info. You can also include facts and data from other sources here to strengthen your points and show that you really do know what you are talking about.

Closing Argument

Think of the closing like the dessert. It’s just a few sweet sentences summing up everything you just talked about. This is also a perfect place to force the reader to do something. Suggest some other articles they might like. Give them an offer that could be great for them. Have them sign up for your list. You’ve got lots of options here but just make sure you have them do something.

Make It Pretty

People like to look at things.  They like pictures.  They like to see things.  Making it visual not only makes it prettier but also makes it easier for them to read. To add an image, there will always be an option to upload media.  From there you can upload your image and play with it a bit regarding size and position just like you would in a word document. Make sure you have permission to use the image.  Don’t just do a google search on images and think you can use them. There are tons of free and paid image sources for you to choose from.  Some do require you to add attribution which is just a little link back to them at the end of your post.

You also want to make sure you add an alt tag. When Google looks at your site, it doesn’t see an image. The alt tag tells google what that image is. Most videos on YouTube will let you embed them into a site.  Just go to the sharing button and it will create an HTML code that you can put in the text editor of your site to embed a video.  It really is as simple as cut and paste to embed a video.

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