Professional Blogging Tips
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007If you’re looking to take your blogging to the next level, it’s time to check out some professional blogging tips. By following these tips carefully and consistently, I can’t guarantee you’ll be an overnight success, but you will improve your blog and your writing greatly. Once you’ve done that, it’ll be all the more easier to build a loyal reader base and increase traffic to your site. So here are a few tips to get you started, and if you’re looking for answers to specific questions, you can learn more from this blogging forum.
- 1. Use attention-grabbing titles and headlines. Try to keep your headlines to a few words that really describe or give the reader an idea of what the post is about. 15 word headlines are a big no-no.
- 2. Use original content. People will appreciate your writing more if you have something original to say in your own words. Anyone can blockquote, so stand out from the crowd and let us hear your voice.
- 3. Keep your paragraphs short. 6 or more sentence paragraphs can make your post look overwhelming to readers. That’s not to say your writing itself has to be short; you just need to break up the words a bit to make it more easily digestible. Keep your paragraphs to about 3 sentences or so and your readers will stick around more.
- 4. Build relationships. Interact with your readers through their comments, and make friends with other bloggers.
- 5. Never, ever under any circumstances should you post in all CAPS. It’s like screaming at your readers.
- 6. Before you submit, review your post. Check for errors in punctuation, spelling, and grammar. The more polished and professional your posts are, the better they will be received.
- 7. Spruce up your blog by including relevant pictures in your posts. Pictures can break up the monotony and make your blog look more inviting. A screen full of text is boring.
- 8. Get a custom theme for your blog. Don’t use a run-of-the-mill theme that 5,000 other people are also using. Be different, and be unique. If you can afford it, you can usually get someone to make a quality theme for around $200 or more. If you can’t afford it and have skills yourself, you can alter an existing theme to personalize it, or build your own from scratch.
- 9. If you want to be taken seriously, host your own blog on your own domain. Spend the $5 or $10 per month to get your own hosting. It’ll be well worth it, especially when traffic to your site begins to grow.
- 10. Instead of recycling the same news that 1.5 million other bloggers and websites are doing, put a fresh spin on it with a unique viewpoint or opinion. If you have an opinion on a topic though, be prepared to defend it with facts.
- 11. Generously link to other blogs, and others will do the same for you. If you found something cool on another blog that you’d like to write about, give them credit for it. Stealing content and ideas is not cool.
- 12. Don’t ramble on about 50 different things in one post. Stick to the topic. If you have something else you’d like to talk about, finish up your first post and then start a second.