There are a couple of reasons why people blog. One is to share your news or skills and interact with others on the internet. The other is to share information with others seeking it on the web.

Blogging has become such a huge part of our internet life. The benefits of blogging or even building a website has become impossible to ignore. We rely on them for:

• News, information, reviews and even gossip.
• Providing the opportunity to connect and network with other users who share the same passions.
• A great way to build awareness and gather support for social or environmental causes. Blogs are also a valuable tool for gathering support for political parties and candidates.
• Aspiring authors and freelance writers to build up an online portfolio.
• Resumes when applying for jobs, career changes or advancement.
• Promoting corporate standards, vision, and the personality of your company.

If people stopped blogging, there would be a huge hole in the web. Information shared on social media would even decrease.

Blogs can:

• build credibility, increase website traffic, and boost search engine rankings. Businesses are using content marketing to rank posts in search engines, and create leads and revenue.
• foster relationships with potential and current consumers, clients and customers.
• give you the ability to educate others interested in your field of expertise. Travel blogs have connected a huge network of travellers around the globe, and have provided free promotion to the tourism & hospitality industry.

Many marketers say blogging is their most important content marketing strategy, with the top 3 content marketing tactics being; Social Media content (83%), blogs (80%), and email newsletters (77%). Over 91.8 million WordPress blog posts published every month in 2018.

Is blogging for you?

You need to decide what kind of blogging you are getting into. Are you doing it for enjoyment? For promoting your business? Blogging socially? Or are you trying to promote yourself or make money from your blog?

So ask yourself:

• Why do you want to start blogging?
• What’s your passion?
• Who is going to be your target audience?
• What questions can you answer?
• How are you unique?

Suck at writing?

Don’t despair. Many bloggers start of as terrible writers. But while it’s respectful to at least spell check your blogs, and you keep the cussing to a minimum, it doesn’t stop us wanting to listen to what you have to say. Just bring yourself to the table and start writing. After a few blog posts, you will start to feel more comfortable doing it. Once you figure how to make money blogging, additional blogs will help you accelerate the growth of future ventures.

Try these Blogging Tips:

• Have an optimized catchy title, but endeavour to have your SEO title under 60 characters.
• Fill out your page & social media (OG) META.
• Be engaging or informative - quickly. The average reader spends less than 40 seconds reading an article or blog post.
• Search engines love fresh content. Give Google and other search engines new content to index.
• Develop relationships with potential and existing customers. Allow comments and feedback on your posts and ask questions of your readers.
• Become that “go to” resource for helpful, informative content.
• Learn to understand your audience. Get to know what they want to hear, and when they want to hear it.
• Build your email list. Share blogs in email marketing & newsletters. Build daily, weekly, monthly digests.
• Include calls-to-action. No point just writing about bolts, guide them to where the bolts are being sold. Ask for feedback. Send users to your social media or contact pages.
• Try and be consistent. If you blog every Wednesday & Friday, try endeavour to have a post out every Wednesday & Friday. If your content is good, as it should be, readers will be waiting for the next installment.
• Stay focused on your visitors and how your content appeals to their needs and questions.
• Update old posts - by keeping blogs fresh you continue to generate good traffic.
• Try interlinking your blog posts. Encourage readers to blog posts they may not have seen.
• Use related keywords in your content.

Keep them coming back

You’ve got readers now that are enjoying your blogs, but they are finding the website so bloated with ads, pages load slow, you can’t read it on your phone or tablet. So your new reader has tired of your blog & moved on to another.

It’s important to keep your bog website running efficiently. Slow servers who deliver your pages at a snail's pace are a fail. Trying to collect revenue with ads, but overloading your blog making it slow, is a fail. If your readers can’t read your blog on mobiles, that is a definite fail! To keep readers coming back, you need to have a blog site that is easy for readers to use.

A few things to look out for:

• Is the blog looking dated? Is any of it broken?
• Is there too much clutter?
• Does your blog load quickly?
• Would a visitor immediately know what it is about?
• Would a visitor know how to navigate it?
• Do your social media buttons work?
• Is the blog software mobile-friendly?
• Are slideshows functional?
• Is the blog software easy for you to write blogs in?
• Can your blog pages be optimized for search engines & social networks?
• Can mobile users navigate around pop-up opt-in form or ads?
• Are outbound links mobile friendly?