Creating a Successful Blog

So you have time to read blogs? Why? Don’t you know what you want in life?

Said a philosopher who had no concept of having to battle with a financial position.

Benefits of Writing a Blog

Most of us aren’t completely aimless in life, we have some kind of plan and guess what, we do like to read blogs, because we like to write blogs. It is as simple and as complicated as that.

Why do we write a blog?

• To Spread Awareness
• To Inform or Educate
• To Meet others
• To hear Independent Perspectives
• To Promote something or someone (not discussed in this blog post)

There are more similarities between people from diverse cultures than there are differences. We can learn so much from each other if we keep an open mind.

Choosing Topics for Blog Posts

Develop your own personal voice and blogging style by writing quality content that might be useful to others.

Perhaps the best way to stand out from the crowd and make an impression upon people is to produce content that impacts them in some way. Write something that matters, that helps people, that solves a problem, that enriches people’s lives, and you increase the chances of them coming back again and again.

artofblogging.net

Write Interesting Blog Content

Blog posts are interesting to readers if you:

• Write about topics that you know well or in which you have some expertise
• Write about something that is dear to your heart
• Post about subjects you are passionate about
• Ask questions of your readers to engage the audience and build your own blogging community.
• Keep posts short and succinct as much as you can! Long posts tend to bore the reader. Everyone is time poor.

Tips on Increasing Blog Traffic via the WordPress Reader

• Research your topic to see what others have written previously and how this blog topic performed. Google can also give you an idea of the most popular questions the public has about any given subject. This can help you structure a post to answer those questions.
• If you reset the publication date on a post multiple times, WordPress will drop your posts from the WordPress reader for a while.
• Too many re-blogs of other sites will also result in your blog not appearing in the reader which means less new people coming across your blog.
• WordPress does not want to have lots of duplicate content in their reader. New bloggers often make this mistake in an attempt to gain new readers. Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect.
• Visit other bloggers who are writing about a similar subject.
• Share your post via a Hyperlink in Pinterest and social media

Commenting and Blog Etiquette

• Be kind to those who take the time to comment on your blog and visit their blog.
• Reading and commenting on other blogs can only help to build your community and increase your readership.
• Find a blogging challenge that interests you and join in. There are many types and it is a good way to build a blogger community of like-minded folk.
• Long comments are interesting. Bloggers love long comments. It is hard to begin a conversation if you receive a comment that merely says, “Great Post.” It could even be a spammer as it is not specific enough. Think about what you liked about the post? I usually try to keep the conversation going by asking something further about the topic which leads to a deeper, more fulfilling conversation.
• No one has time to read every post of every blogger that you might follow. Liking posts is no ongoing substitute for a real comment.

Tips on Formatting a Blog

Themes and WordPress bugs

• Some WordPress themes do not present all that clearly on every device. I was using a Twenty Twenty theme that did not show allow a comment option and did not format well on some devices. Check how your post and blog presents on various devices.
• Customize the chosen theme with a colour or featured post to stand out from the crowd
• Add a featured image to each post where possible. This creates interest in the WP Reader.

Tips on Formatting Blog Posts

Use Headings and Subheadings

• This is good for SEO. It also aids in making your post organized and flow.

Useful Widgets for a Blog

• Include a translation option for speakers of a language other than English
• Add a Follow option for Email and WordPress Readers – this is ESSENTIAL
• Link other Social media Accounts

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Media

• Free blog plans have a limit to how much media storage you have. Resize your photos for faster loading of your site and efficient utilization of storage limits or purchase a paid blog plan.
• I use Imgur or Flickr to add images by linking a URL (saves downloads and uploads). Copy the image location in google, (Right-click), if you don’t have a photo of your own to illustrate the point you wish to make by adding media.
• If your google photos don’t show to other readers, it could be due to your privacy settings in Google photos.

Adding Tags to your Blog Post

• Adding Tags and Categories are useful for helping other readers discover your blog.
• It can also help if you want to check back on a previous post, on your own blog.
• Use up to 15 categories and tags in total.
• Using more than 15, or adding irrelevant or inappropriate tags, will result in your post being bumped from the WordPress reader. The more tags you use, the less likely your post will be featured in the Reader. And that means less new readers and followers.
• Delete old tags that have a count of zero (posts>tags>count)

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Recently I posted about maintaining a blog, and using tags in posts, which led to some really productive comments and conversations.