7 Tips on How to Blog Smarter

Tip 1: When it comes to content, quality > quantity!

Some of the most successful blogs out there publish a multiple number of articles every single day (Mashable would be a good example here). The important thing to note is that these websites place emphasis on quality rather than quantity. As a blogger, you should only post when you have something to say, rather than posting frequently. And when you do, make sure that your post makes a clear point. What Google, as well as your visitors really want from you is valuable and high-quality content.

Tip 2: Know your audience: This is essentially marketing 101. It is important… no, ESSENTIAL rather to know who your target market is, and what kinds of readers would you want to attract to your blog or your website. Design your marketing and publicity campaign once you’ve determined who makes up your target market, and who are the people who will read your blog, subscribe to you via RSS, leave a comment on your blog, and so on and so forth.

Tip 3: Make sure that your blog finds a specific niche for itself. Narrow the niche of your blog down to make its focus as specific as possible. This will allow you to (a) determine who your audience or readership is, (b) make it extremely simple and easy for you to create content for your blog, and (c) know which keywords are valuable in the niche, how competitive they are and what you’ll need to do to rank for them. For instance if you choose to blog on sports, what you could do is blog about your favorite team, or one of its players who you are a fan of. This will make it easy for you to create content (as you’ve defined the scope of the content), as well as make it easy to attract traffic (you will target fans of said team/player only).

Tip 4: Keep your posts short. Long posts are generally harder to read, especially in one sitting. Think about this from your visitor’s perspective; wouldn’t shorter, numbered and/or bulleted posts be easier to read for your visitors? Keep your posts short and easily-comprehensible. If you’re doing an article that exceeds a 1000 words, for instance, it might be a better idea to break it down into smaller, more digestible chunks – such as into a series of multiple posts, or maybe even split a single article into multiple page (called ‘paginate’).

Tip 5: Encourage comments and feedback on your blog. Comments and feedback helps engage readers and build a community of highly-dedicated and loyal readers around your blog. Make sure that you participate in all discussions yourself, and are an active part of the comments section.

Tip 6: Make a blogging calendar and follow it religiously! This is probably one of the best pieces of advice anyone will give you, when it comes to blogging smart, or blogging best-practices. Set a blogging schedule – one that lets you post regularly and doesn’t interfere with your professional and personal commitments as well. Determine topics relevant to your blog, and plan them out for the next 4-5 weeks. If possible, you could even create a couple of posts in advance, and put them on schedule on a date and time in the future. Make sure that you set time aside for blog marketing and publicity, guest posting, commenting, etc. A blogging schedule will allow you to stay on track and stay focused.

Tip 7: Create dedicated/separate Facebook and Twitter pages for your blog(s). These are two of the most popular social media platforms on the internet, which means that it is essential for you to have a strong presence on all these social networks. Make a totally separate page/profile on these social networks for each one of your blog, and make it a point to keep those pages updated (follow the 80-20 rule when it comes to updates: 80% external links/news, 20% of your own/your blog’s). In addition, use a social media dashboard such as the excellent HootSuite to manage all your social profiles from one single window. I mentioned Facebook and Twitter only, as they’re two of the most popular social networks on the internet right now, and hence applicable to blogs in just about any niche. There are plenty of other social websites out there which might be applicable to yours (as a little research will reveal), and it is imperative to have an active presence on each one of them.