7 Tasty Blogging Tips

These are the best tips I picked up last week by reading five books about blogging. I hope you find them useful too.

Hello Jor,

You were probably not expecting a message from me. (And I didn’t expect to write one!) But I know you’ve been struggling with your blog. While enjoying my caffè latte (you know how much I love those) I wanted to reach out and share with you a few tips about blogging that I picked up by reading various blogging books.

1) Goal

Everything starts with a purpose. If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve with your blog, then don’t even begin. After all, why blog? Therefore, write down some keywords for your blog, and craft a tagline so that all readers can see what your blog is for.

2) Network

Figure out who is important in the niche where you’re blogging. Find the authority bloggers, check which people these experts are following, and also which followers are commenting on the experts’ posts. Those people form the network you should mingle with.

3) Headers

Apart from writing great content (obviously) the other thing you must learn is how to write great headlines. Treat the title of your post, the introduction, and the image you pick, as half of your message. Together they have to stand out in the hurricane of status updates on the social networks.

4) Audience

Imagine the person for whom you’re writing. (Hey, that would be you, Jor!) Define a persona based on your goal and your target audience. Write your blog post as if you’re sharing a personal message from you to this person. Your imaginary reader will make your writing appear more real.

5) Content

Your message should be inspiring or useful. Obviously. However, make sure to also make your awesomeness scannable using bold markup, italics, sub-headers, bullets, quotes, take-outs, etc. Don’t make your blog posts look like your father’s wedding speech, Jor!

6) Footers

Assuming that you have great content (obviously) the last thing readers should see is a call-to-action. What do you want people to do? Invite them to make a comment, follow you on Twitter, subscribe to a newsletter, or buy you a caffè latte. But at least, ask them to do something.

7) Repeat

Not every post will be a success. No problem! There’s plenty of space left on the Internet to try again. And nothing is easier than trying again with old content. Remember that valuable stuff you wrote last year that nobody read? Tweak it, polish it, and try again.

That’s it, Jor. I hope these tips are valuable to you. (They were certainly a good refresher for me!) Please let me know if you have any other tips for me, so I can share those too. In the meantime, I will order another coffee.

Take care,

Jurgen

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