There are many different ways to approach writing a blog. Whether you are a beginning blogger or an experienced blogger, here are 15 tips to help you keep your audience engaged and potentially attract a new audience.
- Always make sure your blog post title has an eye-catching title. After spending time writing an amazing blog you want to ensure your audience will read it.
- Know you audience. You should always try to be creative and ready to write about new material but you need to make sure the material is tailored for your audience or you risk losing them. The last thing you want is to lose your audience after you worked so hard to attract them.
- Blog about a popular topic relative to your content. If other bloggers are writing about a popular subject relative to your field then you should address it also. Your audience wants your thoughts about popular topics. They may even send you a question or email asking you to blog about it.
- Tie your blog to current events. This point also ties into point #3. You want to ensure you are focusing your blogs on the most current events. By doing this you alerting your audience that you are always engaged and they can always count on you to inform them of current events.
- Write about what you are passionate about. Sometimes this can be tough, as you may need to write about the latest event and may not be passionate about it but have fun with it. Get creative!
- Always try to include data and facts. Your audience wants to connect with you on every level and the more data you can offer that supports your content they more likely to believe you and return for more information.
- Optimize each post with great visual images if available. Anything from images, to graphs and charts can engage the reader longer.
- Keep it short. You will only capture your audience for a brief period of time. Make sure you use that time wisely. Give them what they need and end it. The more you write, the more your readers will start to drop off. A successful blogger named Joe Pulizzi wrote, “A blog is like a miniskirt. It has to be short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject.”
- Optimize your blog for SEO by using SEO keywords to attract new readers.
- Turn Conference Presentations into blog posts. There is a great site named “Screenflow” that can help you post your presentations on your blog which helps add some variety to your blogs.
- Be consistent with blog posts. You should post weekly or more than once a week if possible. Once you gain your audience, they are going to expect a post from you on a consistent basis. If you start disappointing them by not meeting their expectations, they will stop engaging and you could start to slowly lose your audience.
- Make your posts social. Make sure you utilize all social outlets out there. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all great examples of places to promote to your blog.
- Open up your blog for questions. Create a weekly Q and A blog. By doing this you connect to your audience on a personal level. Ask them what would they like you to write about? What ideas do they have in reference to a specific topic? Then address these questions in your next blog.
- Always have a call to action. Ask your audience to sign up for email, twitter, or any other social networks. Get as creative as you can to increase your followers.
- Lastly, create a blog checklist. Is your spelling and grammar correct? Did you tweet about your post? Did you respond to any questions that were asked? There are many great checklist examples online to use to help you develop this checklist.
