Writing blog posts can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, depending on your goals for your blog. If you write a blog for fun with no long-term goals for driving traffic or making money from your blog, writing blog posts requires little more than translating the thoughts in your head to your keyboard and then online. However, if you want to grow your blog and monetize it, you need to consider several issues before you write and publish content on your blog. Determine your short- and long-term goals for your blog to identify how to apply the following considerations to your writing.
Using different formats for your blog posts
A blog post can be just a few sentences or many paragraphs. Some blog posts include an image
and no text, whereas others might contain a complete tutorial or an online lesson teaching
readers how to accomplish a task. Think about your audience (or at least the audience you
want to have read your blog content) as you write your blog posts and create content that
would appeal to them. The variety of blog posts in the following list gives you a starting place to
help write your own blog posts.
Current events: Write about something you heard about in the news.
How-to or tutorials: Share your expertise in your blog topic by writing a tutorial or instructions to help your readers accomplish a task or an activity.
Interviews: Contact a prominent person who works in a field related to your blog topic and interview her for a blog post.
Link love: Find interesting blog posts across the blogosphere that are related to your blog topic and publish a post that provides links to those posts to help your readers find new blogs and to help you connect with other bloggers.
Lists: Write your top five tips or suggestions or your top ten must-have products to help your blog readers. Alternatively, write a list of don’ts or a similar list of warnings.
Opinion: Write a post that simply provides your opinion on an issue or event.
Photos: Post a photo related to your blog topic.
Polls: Ask your readers for their opinions by publishing a blog post that includes a poll or
survey.
Reviews: Write a review of a product, an event, a book, or anything else related to
your blog topic.
Coming up with titles
The first thing visitors to your blog will notice about your blog posts are the titles of those posts. With that in mind, you should consider a few issues as you compose the title for each of your posts. Write titles that
Arouse your readers’ curiosity: Just like an advertising headline, your post title should lure readers in and entice them to want to read further.
Are relevant to your readers: Web surfers are busy and have little time to read deeply on any page to find content that matters to them. Write headlines that are easy to understand, and make sure the post delivers the content that the title suggests.
Include searchable keywords: Search engines value blog post titles strongly in terms of prioritizing your content for keyword searches. Be certain to include important keywords in your post titles.
Considering search engine optimization
If you want to grow your blog by attracting new visitors, you should write blog posts with search engine optimization in mind. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! love blogs simply because the content is updated frequently. With each new blog post comes a new entry point and a new way for a search engine to find your content. Take some time to research keywords that are relevant to your blog topic, and then use those keywords in your blog posts and titles. Each blog post you write should be optimized for a specific keyword phrase, and all your keywords should be relevant to your overall blog topic. If you’re serious about growing your blog, invest time and effort into finding out how to write for the Web with an eye toward search engine optimization.
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