There’s so many great benefits to writing a blog for your website like improved SEO, greater social reach and proving your expertise, if it’s done well.. Before you set off writing and publishing haphazardly, check out some of these great blogging tips for success so that maybe one day your blog may even become a money making machine all on it’s own.

1. Write about what you love

As the saying goes “Do what you love” so it is for a blog or vlog for that matter. You need to have a genuine interest in what you do and what you will be writing about, preferably you need to be passionate about your topic. That passion and enthusiasm will shine through if you let it and make your blog memorable and exciting! That passion’s hard to emulate with a topic you don’t care about. Besides, would you really want to spend all that time and effort writing about a topic you have no interest in?

Be an enthusiastic writer and let your passion for your topic show. After all, your readers are going to be interested in your topic and they will need to be able to relate to you. Have fun with your writing!

2. Produce Quality Content

The whole point of a blog is to create and share something of value. So it should go without saying that you should write quality content, but we’ve all seen otherwise, so here it is in our number two slot. First of all you want your reader to enjoy what they are reading and learn something. Whether they learn something new in a topic they are interested in or learn of your expertise in the topic, hopefully they learn both.

Quality content is more likely to be shared and isn’t that the point in writing a blog, to share? Generate quality content that is likely to be shared by others, not just yourself. After all we are talking about blogs, not diaries.

A couple tips to make the experience better for the reader is to keep your paragraphs short and even shorter bullet points. Keep it short and sweet! Add some great visuals that enhance your topic and grab the readers attention as well as break up the text to make it less intimidating to read.

It’s true, a good blog can boost the SEO of your website, but it has to be quality content. Bottome line for your blog to work in any way is that you’ve got to have quality for your blog to have an impact. So take your time and come up with good, quality content. Also, follow these steps!

3. Publish Frequently

The exact time between post can vary, although too long between posts and you may loose momentum for your marketing efforts. It’s best to have a schedule of when you’ll post a new blog and try to stick to it.

Perhaps you’ll choose to publish once a month or once a week. For those super ambitious bloggers, publishing multiple times per week or on a specific day so all of your subscribers have something to look forward to. Besides, doesn’t everything just work better when things happen on a schedule.

It’s quite simple really, the more posts, the greater the potential that someone will like one of your posts enough to share it. The more times your content is shared, the greater chance someone else will discover your blog.

4. Make it Shareable

Since sharing your content with others is the point, make it easy for other people who like your blog to share it themselves. The easier it is to share, the better. Most blogging software will have a built in system to do so, but don’t be afraid to ask for a share.

On a completely unrelated topic, if you like this blog post, please share it!

5. Be Consistent

Be consistent with what you do. When I coach others, I will often say that “consistency is key.” With that I mean that when you put in consistent effort you will often yield a more consistent reward for your effort. With a consistent effort, it is also easier to find and fix any deficiencies in your process.

Specifically with blogging, keeping a consistent stream of content of a consistent quality will lead to consistent rewards for your effort. So be diligent with your writing and keep it coming. You have to be consistent to see any rewards for your hard work.

6. Research Keywords Before Writing

Before you start writing, do a little research on your topic and use a service like Google’s Keyword Planner to discover some great keywords to include while you are writing your blog. While you are searching for key words or phrases, look for ones that offer a higher level of searches with a lower level of competition. When you include such words and phrases in your blog, it helps you show up more often in searches.

It’s all about being found! Research what to include for the best results and use the words and phrases in the context of your content. If your content is focused around those keywords and phrases, even better. When you are able to do this, your blog will be created with SEO in mind and be found more often.

7. Write Content About Your Products and Services

When you are writing, keep in mind what you are selling. I’ll argue that everyone who is blogging is selling something and that’s not a bad thing. Whether it’s a product, service or an idea, there’s some message that the writer is attempting to impart upon the reader. So for your blog, make sure it gives a message to the reader that is on topic with what you do.

Your blog is your personal publishing company and the best promoter of your products and services. If you are in a specific business, make sure you are writing about your most profitable product or service, the one you want to sell more of. This will help give you the best return on the time investment of producing a quality blog.

8. Grab Them By The Title

Don’t let readers skim over your content without taking something away from it. Better yet, pull them in so they actually read your content and not just skim it.

One of the best ways to do this is with the use of titles. You will want your titles to be clear and to the point while also being somewhat witty, creative and exciting. Grab their attention and interest to make them give your writing a second look and read further into your blog.

9. Sub-Headings Are For Skimmers

This is something you should take into consideration and do right meow. If you are skimming, you probably just missed that..

“Missed what?” you say..

Exactly, you missed it because you were skimming. For writing your blog, use sub-headings to convey the general idea in an exciting way to pull the reader further into your blog. Basically, the same idea as the title, but an integral part within the blog itself.

Another great reason to use relevant sub-headings is the powerful impact they can have upon your SEO. I’m not kitten around, use sub-headings, you’ll thank me.

10. Image Optimization

Your work needs to have at least one image and the higher quality image, the better. Make sure the image has relevance what you are writing about in your blog, don’t mislead or confuse your readers.

A great image will do many things for you like grabbing the attention of the reader when your blog is shared via social media and your image is shared with it. When images are placed within the article, they can be used to keep the readers attention, give them a little break from reading before continuing or help pull them along through your blog.

An image will make your blog more searchable if it is formatted correctly. Which will make your blog show up better in searches, yes images effect SEO.

Without an image for every blog post you are actually making it more difficult to share your content.

11. Promote your content

Now this is super important and believe it or not, often forgotten. When you publish content to your blog, don’t forget to promote it and then promote it and when you are done with that you should promote it again. If you have some great content, don’t be afraid to share it.

It happens, probably fairly often that someone will write a blog and then be reluctant to share it on their social media accounts due to one reason or another. Without getting into the psychology of such decisions, let me just say don’t let your nerves get to you, don’t over think it, just share it. The benefits of sharing far outweigh any negatives you might be thinking of.

Do as much as you can to promote your own blog, use social media, email and even paid options to get it seen. If you don’t share your own content and get the ball rolling so to speak, understand that there is a good chance no one will ever see your blog..

12. Use Email, Grow Your List

First of all, if you are writing a blog and not using email as a way of promoting your content, you really should be. Email is an amazing way of staying in touch with your audience, don’t hesitate to use it.

With all the different social media channels out there and advertising options, email still has the greatest ROI. There’s no reason not to use email to promote your blog and send subscribers special updates letting them know when you’ve published new content.

There are a ton of ways to get subscribers to your email list by adding incentives. Be creative and grow your list, thus growing your audience and the impact of each blog post.

13. Measure Your Results And Adjust

You’ve put in a lot of effort to create quality content, learn from it. Measure the performance of your blog using a tool like Google Analytics to determine what is working for you and then adjust accordingly. It’s always a learning process, so don’t be afraid to change things as you go and as you learn.

If you need help, don’t hesitate to ask. Blogs are a great tool to relay information and should be interactive as we create and share content for everyone’s benefit.