Q: What tips and tricks have you learned about blogging?
Chrysta Bairre, asked this. She has a personal blog that she values. “I have kept a personal blog for many years,” she says. “I have enjoyed many benefits of blogging, including expressing my thoughts and experiences, sharing knowledge, making new friends/connections, and deepening existing friendships/connections.” Now she wants to start a blog for her business.
A: Christa, the first step is figuring out what you want to achieve with your business, and whether a blog would be an appropriate tool for this. The blog is really just a tool. What goals do you have that a blog can help you achieve? You gave a very clear set of reasons for your personal blog. You need to have as clear a set of reasons for you professional blog.
A blog can be a great way to build up Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your web site. Then you need to be aware of your keywords and make sure they are consistently featured in your blog. And speaking of which, for SEO, you need to blog on a steady basis. Blogging at least once a week is the place to start. Some bloggers have had magnificent success by blogging every day.
You have to be easily readable, so keep your blog posts succinct. As others have suggested, having a personal style is also good.
But it always comes back to…what are you trying to achieve? A blog can be very effective, but there are plenty of other tools that are effective. Make sure that you’re spending your time and resources on the tool that will help you the most!
And Richard Derwent Cooke, who has been running his blog ( http://www.i-change.biz/blog) for more than two years, gives these helpful suggestions to Chrysta and other potential bloggers:
1. Always be yourself.
2. Don’t take it/yourself too seriously.
3. Post regularly (but only if you have something worth saying!).
4. Make the layout interesting … use pictures, etc.
5. Develop a style and a virtual template. I now know what constitutes a “me” type blog, and I can knock it out in about 20 minutes.
6. To post them, I like Live Writer. It’s free and very easy.
7. Keep your eyes open for good plug-ins; they can make quite a difference.
8 Use WordPress.
9. Host it as an integral part of your own site. (It looks better, and Google loves it.)
