Starting a blog is the easy part but getting it noticed often gets overlooked. The old adage of “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t work in the online world. To get noticed, you need to know how to get your blog out in front of the world and those that share your passion for the blog niche topic.
Thinking about starting a blog and not sure where to begin? Need help getting an existing blog in front of your readers? Check out these tips to increase your blogging success.
Creating a Blog
- Setting Up Your Blog – make sure your blog is installed and programmed correctly. Blog programming errors cannot only make your blog visually unappealing but also impossible to be indexed by search engines, RSS feeds and third party utilities.
- Give The Reader Eye Candy – make your blog visually stimulating and match the topic of your blog. If you have an architecture blog, then use an architecture-based theme for your blog instead of a tiled picture of your children playing catch. Speak to the reader through pictures as well as words.
- Stick To One Topic or Niche – what’s your blog about? A consistent topic is important to visitors and if they share in your passion, they will return time and again. When writing your blog, write for the reader but be sure to utilize topic-specific keywords throughout your article to increase authority within that subject matter online.
Show There Is A Human Behind the Blog
- Speak From Your Passion – readers know when a writer is passionate about the subject matter. The words flow from the heart and are effortless. They captivate the audience and make them crave for more.
- Show Your Face – include an “About” page on your blog that has a picture of you and a little information about you, the author. If your blog is about traveling, include a picture of you on your travels. If you build furniture, have a picture of you doing just that.
- Connect With The Reader – create a “Contact Us” page and have the form readily available to your readers so that they can reach out to you. Also, keep blog post comments and ratings open to all visitors so they can start a conversation on your blog post and connect with you about your passion.
Sharing a Blog
- Socialize Your Blog – let your friends, neighbors, family and the world know about your blog through Twitter, Facebook and other social networking websites. If you don’t have time to notify these websites with an update every time you write a new blog post, set up automatic tools to pick up your blog post and submit it to the search engines automatically. Tools such as Feedburner can send an announcement and link to your new blog post to your Twitter friends. There are Facebook applications that can push your new blog post to friends automatically as well.
- Let Visitors Share – always include social icons on all blog posts to let your readers share the articles with their own online social networks. Let your readers make your article more viral and help you get the word out.
- Search Engine Submission – after the blog is created, search engines need to know it exists. Submit your main blog website address (URL) to the big three search engines to ensure it is indexed properly.
- Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
- Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
- Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
In the end, blogging is broken down into three areas: technological, optimization and social networking. I will elaborate on these topics in future blog posts and provide more tips to become a blogging success but for now know that blogging isn’t as difficult as writers fear. It is simply a matter of putting yourself in your reader’s shoes and making them feel welcome when visiting your own little piece of the online world.
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