I’ve been blogging now for 2 1/2 years and have been on a journey that’s taken me from writing passionately to no-one to having a regular daily audience who (thank you, lovely readers) interact and respond to me. I’m often asked by clients how they can get the best out of their blogs, and so here are my top tips on how your blog can win you more business. I hope you’ll see that it’s not rocket science. It’s just about persistence, passion and authenticity.
Embrace the design. We’re visual creatures. Give us a lovely looking blog and we’ll want to stay and chat. Expect us to read something unattractive and it doesn’t matter how compelling your words, we’ll struggle. One of my all time favourite blogs is Decor8. Some of you may find the style OTT, that’s fine. You can’t win em all. Personally I love it! It’s beautiful!
Use twitter and other social networking tools to tell people about what you’re blogging! Driving traffic to your blog is one of the main points about this – don’t post day after day and not tell people what you’re doing! Install a Plugin to push links to your posts (not spam) into your twitter/ facebook/ linkedin accounts.
Make it easy for others to retweet your post if they find it useful. TweetMeMe does this well.
Add an inspiring (non-cheesy) image to every post. And I find the bigger the better, so mine take up the full width of my post window. Reject cheesy stock photo images and find some that really inspire your readers.
Post regularly. 2-3 times a week is good, every day is better. We always used to get frustrated with my mum when she first got her mobile phone because she’d never have it on her when we tried to call her. “But no one ever calls me on it” she’d say. “Well why do you think that is?” we’d retort! Eventually she started taking her phone out with her and we started calling her on it. It’s the same with blogging. You have to persevere. You might be writing to no one to start with, but if you write with passion and conviction then your audience will find you! And you don’t have to sit down and write every day – most blogging platforms enable you to schedule posts, so you can be writing while you’re away!
Give plenty of advice. That’s what people come for. But beware of lecturing or patronising. They won’t thank you for that.
Use your comments and retweet mechanisms for direct feedback on what your readers want. I learned that people want to see what we’ve been up to, which is why I regularly run my “In the studio this week…” feature.
So I think those are my top tips, but how about yours? What else can you add to this list?
Hi Fiona, wonderful blog! Great stats (very jealous). Perhaps your next post could be how you achieved that.
My tips? Clear navigation, informative posts, good subjects, easy to subscribe, immediately understand subject or niche, combine with social networking, link to blog directories and social media, ask for comments, be enthusiastic, and have fun!
Thanks Alice. Excellent points. Thank you!
Thanks again Fi, let meknow when you’re doing a blogging workshop x