Professional Blogging Tips

Here are tips to help you blog professionally – whether you are operating your own blog or using one of the paid-to-blog companies. Many of these points are what separate the professional bloggers from the amateurs.

1. Never publish a post without ensuring that every single word is correctly spelled, that the words are used correctly in the sentence, and that the grammar and punctuation is perfect. Believe it or not, your readers will call you on poor spelling and grammar – and advertisers may as well.

2. Never publish a post unless you are absolutely sure that your facts are correct. Failure to do proper research can result in ruining your reputation not only in the market that you are blogging in, but also in the blogging community as a whole.

3. While SEO is important, your first goal should be to turn out a great blog a blog that people want to read, and can easily read. If you don’t have the ability to produce a blog that has the potential to gain readership, your blogging efforts are a waste of your time – and theirs.

4. Pay careful attention to the template or design that you choose for your blog. You don’t want anything on the page that may irritate or distract your readers. The page should be laid out in a clean and organized fashion.

5. Lighter backgrounds with darker text are easier to read. Experts recommend white backgrounds with black or navy blue text. You don’t have to go with the black/white advice, however the lighter background is highly recommended for easier reading.

6. Use the category feature of your blog! If you don’t use this feature, your visitors will not be able to find past posts that interest them easily and in most cases, they won’t even try. They may not be interested in today’s post, but they may be highly interested in a post you made three months ago. Make it easy by setting up and using categories.

7. Make sure that your content is original. You can get free content from numerous sources. Unfortunately, it is content that is being used on other websites and blogs. This hurts you in terms of search engine optimization, and it fails to give your readers ‘fresh’ material.

8. Choose a tight niche for your blog. This will eventually provide you with a closer following of dedicated readers. It also makes it easier to keep your blog organized, and you will find that your blog makes more money this way. It also reduces the amount of competition that you have overall.

9. While the niche for your blog should be tight, each blog post must be even tighter. Stick to one topic in each post that you make. Don’t drag your readers all over your blog topic. Keep it tight and stay focused – so that your readers can also stay focused.

10. Expert Opinions vary on the length of the post. Some say that you should keep it short – around 300 words. Others say that you should post between 750 and 1000 words per post. Research leans towards shorter posts, because of people’s attention spans. However, this is really dependant on your topic.

11. Keep paragraphs short and easy to read. A paragraph that covers ten lines won’t do. Keep paragraphs under five lines, if possible, but avoid paragraphs that only contain one or two sentences as well.

12. Spice up your blog with videos. You may even consider adding your podcast to your post. The videos and podcasts don’t have to be your own but they do need to be relevant, and you do need to add textual content as well.

13. Make your content scannable. Many people don’t want to take the time to read but if they can scan the post, and see that it will interest them, they will take the time to read it. You can make the post scannable by making important words bold.

14. Your blog should not be one bold page of advertisement. Use images that relate to your posts, but avoid the use of banner ads. If you use AdSense ads, don’t overwhelm the reader with the ads. The blog should be useful to the readers first and foremost not to the advertisers.

15. Shoot for a lower amount of traffic. You may think this is an insane concept, but it really isn’t. What you want is quality traffic not unqualified traffic in droves. The qualified traffic is where you will make your money.

16. Unless your blog does not have any other form of revenue, do not have buttons that ask for ‘donations’ or ‘tips.’ This works well only on blogs that are really not designed to be income producing blogs.

17. Know when to start a new blog, with a new topic. If after three or four months, your blog isn’t earning enough revenue, you have a problem. Either the topic isn’t profitable enough, you aren’t promoting the blog in the right way, or you aren’t producing a high enough quality blog. Either
make changes, or move to a new market.

While this not meant to be a complete blogging course, I hope it has made things easier for you. When I first started, there were courses similar to this one, but they were packed with “too much” information. I wanted something easy and quick!

I wish you the best in your online ventures and good luck