What are some tips and tricks every blogger should know? How often should you blog? Or what are the do’s and don’ts in the blogging world! So here are a few tips and tricks that will help you when you’re trying to build your blogs traffic and your readership.
How often should you blog?
Blog at least three times per week; yup that’s it! Your posts can be about anything you want it to be, you can divide it up among as many post as want (if it’s a story type of post), and you can blog more often than that if you want to. The idea is to increase your blog readership and views by doing one thing and that one thing creating CONTENT! You need to be creating meaningful content targeted to YOUR specific audience, discussing the topics that are key for the people you want to find your blog AND staying on topic to keep that readership coming back to read more.
Build a relationship with the readers
It doesn’t matter if you just started blogging, or have been doing it for years. Creating relationships with your readers is the most important part of your online presence, and will impact your success more than numbers will. Knowing your target audience will help you form more meaningful online relationships. Once know who you’re talking to you can figure out how to connect with them, how to bring them into your site and what you can write to help them out. Whether it’s to make them laugh, bring them new recipes, DIY/Craft projects or tutorials. Are they staying at home moms, working moms, business owners or business men? Do you want to connect with them via Facebook or Twitter? Are you sharing on those platforms too?
Be prepared and have a plan!
Be ready for whenever inspiration strikes! It will happen when you least expect it and when it does write it down. Have your phone, a notepad, a napkin, or email/text yourself… anything that will allow you to write down ideas as you get them. It doesn’t matter if its post ideas, DIY ideas, recipe ideas or anything you think that’s worth writing down JUST write them down, you never know when you will need an idea and when you’re ready the ideas will be ready for you. Never have writers block ever again. Take those ideas, and form a blogging plan or blogging schedule.
Let’s talk pictures!
Make it visual, every post should have at least ONE image. Pinterest gives us more motivation to make these images outstanding; I will talk about this more in a bit! Just remember the more visual, the better. People usually judge a post from its pictures before actually reading the content. Just remember to follow the rules. Never take an image from another blog or website without permission first. When you get permission always give the proper credit back to the owner. Every site has their own guidelines, so the model solution is to take your own pictures, create your own images.
Watermark your images, some people don’t respect the rules and take what is not theirs to take. Watermarking images help protect your pictures from anyone else trying to claim them as their own. You can you free programs as Gimp, PhotoScape or Pixlr.com for adding your own personal watermark.
Resize the image before uploading it to your post; you can do this with the programs mentioned above. Images between 500 pixels wide are perfect and will help upload time on your site!
Save your images with a search engine friendly title, this helps with SEO. Instead of PNG01258.jpg, use a name that will help people find both the image, and your site. People use images to search what they are looking for, especially when searching recipe related inquires this will help them find your site easier and faster. Ex: brownies-for-a-crowd.png
Make it shareable!
If someone likes what you post has to say they are more likely to share it with their twitter followers, Facebook friends/fans, or on Pinterest. Readers should be able to easily share your content on all social media platforms, so make it available for them to.
Give life to an old post!
Are you a recipe/foodie blogger Or a DIY blogger? Have old post that you would love to get more traffic? Why not revamp it? Make a new image for it so it’s more “pin-able” Pinterest is the new thing right now and has the potential to bring you a lot of traffic. How to make an image pin-able you ask? Make sure the post, recipe, or DIY title is on the image… having a recipe that only used 5 ingredients to make the perfect pesto? Add that blurb on the image “5 ingredient pesto”. Maybe you have a craft project that only used 7 steps? Add that on the image! You want to intrigue the person who is searching, so capture their attention.
Be consistent with branding.
Have colors, logos and links match on your social profiles that are connected to your site. This will help the reader identify your brand.