5 Rules For a Kick-Butt Blog
Posted by Admin
Posted June 16th, 2008
Most people jump on the band wagon and write up a blog expecting it to be an instant traffic and money machine. Unfortunately, to their disappointment, it doesn’t turn out that way - it’s a miss rather than a hit.
Here are 5 basic rules to keep in mind when starting and running a blog.
1. Know your audience
What you write has to be interesting to your readers or they won’t stick around. Even if your blog is a general journal for your own personal notes and stories, it is still best to know the minds and wants of your readers.
You MUST give them what they want.
On the other hand, the reasons for most people who keep a blog is not always to feed their personal motives but to appeal to their audience with info they are searching for in a way that is fun and easy to follow.
Therefore, it is very important to post articles, stories and news that everybody in your target audience can benefit from while they understand and enjoy them.
2. Bring it Life With Pictures
Nobody wants to read a whole page of black and white blog scribble. For most of us, our writing is not any Shakespeare masterpiece. Help your blog readers enjoy reading and browsing around your blog by mixing images to it.
For one, a picture of you or something related to you or your blog will do a lot for branding. Photos and images help break up the text and in some instances, can be used to further demonstrate a topic more easily - such as a graph or diagram.
Just be careful when choosing images from the web. Most are copyrighted so always check the source to make sure you have the right to reprint the image on your blog.
Also, you don’t want to upload any image that will offend anyone reading your blog.
3. Make your blog Informative or Entertaining or Both
Blogs give you the freedom to write anything you want, but that won’t help you if you are blogging to make money on the internet. Readers only visit your blog to read some news or info they are looking for or to be entertained with humor or photos and videos.
Your blog posts have to be beneficial to your readers - either to give them an “ahaahhh” moment or to bring a smile to their face.
If you can’t provide your readers with what they want - either info or fun then you are going to find it hard to keep your readers on the page let alone get them coming back.
4. Avoid Making your Blog a Confusing Text Book
To make your blog as interesting as possible, try to make it easy to read and to navigate around for your reader. Having hundreds of links all around the page will confuse them.
Also, be careful with the words your use. Write using simple words - simple enough for a school student to understand. If you do have a blog targeted to a very tight niche, you will need to use technical jargon so this is the exception.
Short blog posts are usually better than long essays. People want to find the info they are looking for as fast as possible and don’t want to spend all day reading your 1000 word post.
Eye-capturing blog post headlines will stop readers from scrolling and get them reading. Be creative with writing your blog headlines. Keep in mind that most internet users usually scan your website than read each post word for word so deliver some interesting facts and starting with a captivation headline.
5. Make your blog Inviting and Interactive
UGT - or user generated content is one of the most powerful features you can have on your blog to please your readers and the search engines. This is achieved by making your blog interactive. The most common form of interavtivity is to allow comments on your blog.
To get comments, you need to write either a very informative post, a controversial post or incorporate some sort of bribe to get readers to post. Of course, these aren’t the only ways to attract comments, so be creative.
After someone posts a comment, try to keep the conversation going by commenting yourself about the comments. People love to feel the human side of a website so a blog they can participate in will be a blog they will come back to and tell their friends about.
Conclusion
Blogs offer so much for people to share their passions, expertise and even make money by using a blog as a marketing tool. Anything onlin where writing is concerned, you can’t beat a blog for user and reader ease of use.
Follow these 5 rules of successful blogging and the rewards for your hard work will pay off - you’ll have a kick-butt blog people will come back to!
Firepow Revealed Crew
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