Your blog’s content strategy is about more than the type of content you plan to write. It also includes your blog posting schedule and frequency.

Should you post daily? Just on weekdays? Once per week? Monthly? There’s no right answer to cover all blogs. You have to find the right post frequency and schedule for your blog.

Setting Your Blog Posting Schedule

Here are some things to consider when choosing a blog posting schedule.

Your Availability

Any way you cut it, your general availability is your number one consideration. You can only blog when your schedule allows you to do so. Don’t tell readers you’ll post every day if you know you don’t have that kind of time. Commit to something realistic. You can always increase your posting frequency later.

Reader Expectations

While your own schedule is important in choosing your blog posting schedule, so are your readers’ expectations. You have know your audience. If they’re not big readers, a weekly or monthly post might be ideal for them. Posting more often might overwhelm them. On the other hand, if they’re voracious readers, a daily post might be the best fit.

Quality Implications

Another important consideration in choosing a blog posting schedule is how that schedule will impact the quality of your posts. For example, would increasing frequency from three posts per week to five per week cause you to churn out faster, sloppier articles? If so, you’re probably better off staying where you are.

Would cutting back give you more time to come up with well-researched or actionable posts? Then consider giving that a try. As a reader, do you prefer quantity or quality? If quality posts matter more to you, then they probably do to your readers too.

Ways to Increase Your Blog Posting Frequency

If you feel that increasing your blog post frequency would help your blog, there are several ways you can do that. Choose the options that work best for you, your schedule, and your readers.

Write More Posts (Preferably Ahead of Time)

If you’re going to write all of your own posts and you don’t want quality to suffer as frequency increases, consider pre-scheduling them. This is when you come up with a list of blog post ideas early, and you can work on one or more drafts well ahead of their publication dates.

This gives you more time to edit posts. And you’ll potentially have a stockpile of posts ready to publish when there isn’t something more timely to talk about.

Bring on Regular Contributors

If you want to increase your posting frequency on a regular basis but your schedule won’t allow for it, consider bringing on other regular bloggers. You might ask colleagues to contribute, or you can hire freelance bloggers. I do this for my freelance writing blog.

Accept Guest Contributions

Guest posts are another way to increase posts without having to write them all yourself. This is when you accept one-off posts in exchange for an author bio (usually with one or more links included). Guest posts are unpaid (anything paid is technically a freelance contribution whereas guest posts are simply marketing tools for the author).

The upside of guest posts is that you get a diverse collection of content. The downside is that sorting through pitches to find ones worthy of posting can sometimes take as long as writing new content yourself.

Update Old Posts

If you have a large collection of posts in your archives, you might be able to increase your posting frequency by republishing older material. This works well for evergreen posts that only need minor updates. Just touch them up a bit and set a fresh publication date.

This is ideal if your blog doesn’t include the date in the permalink structure. Otherwise you might need to change the permalinks to reflect the new publication date. That also means you need to set up 301 redirects, and you could potentially lose backlinks and traffic.

What is your ideal posting frequency on your blog? How did you come to that schedule? If you could make changes, would you post more or less often, and why? Do you have any other tips for creating new blog posts even when your schedule is tight? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post Picking the Perfect Posting Schedule for Your Blog appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

As a blogger, you’re probably well-versed in content writing. After all, that’s what you do every time you write a blog post for your readers.

Content is designed to inform, educate, or entertain. But it isn’t the only type of writing that you might pursue.

There is also copywriting. This is writing designed to sell, persuade, or otherwise influence readers. Is copywriting important for bloggers though? You bet it is.

Here are four things strong copywriting, in addition to content writing, skills can do for you as a blogger.

Sell Your Own Products

If you plan to sell products like e-books or software downloads through your blog, you have to be able to write solid sales copy.

You’ll not only have a sales page for each product you sell, but you might also have to write shorter product descriptions, sales-related blogs posts to announce new products or special offers, or email marketing copy to promote items to your blog’s email subscribers.

Promote Affiliate Products

Along those same lines you might monetize your blog by selling products for others. When you promote affiliate offers, again you need strong copywriting skills.

You’ll write reviews (which should be as objective as possible with affiliate relationships disclosed). You might have a direct sales page on your site. And at the very least you should be able to write short copy to promote affiliate products in various pages, posts, or email campaigns.

Get More subscribers

Speaking of email campaigns, you’ll have to build a subscriber list. To do that, you also would benefit from solid copywriting skills.

For example, you might have a sign-up page on your blog that promotes the email newsletter. At the very least you’ll need to craft a snappy sign-up form and pitch to display sitewide, such as below all of your posts.

Build Trust and Authority

In any blog niche, it’s important that you be able to build trust and authority. That’s why visitors keep coming back to you instead of your competition. To do that, you’ll also use copy on your website.

For example, the About page for your blog is an example of copywriting. That’s because it’s entire purpose is to subtly influence people to trust you or respect you or your blog. That’s why you give your credentials, the history of the site, and most importantly a list of benefits your blog offers to readers.

In what other ways does copywriting play a role in running a successful blog? Are you more or less comfortable writing this kind of copy over blog posts? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post Why Bloggers Should Care About Copywriting appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

As a blogger, it’s important that you continuously strive to improve your writing skills. While no one is expected to be perfect all the time, you’ll want to focus on a few key things including:

• decreasing spelling and grammatical errors;
• making sure your writing style and language choices are appropriate for your audience;
• keeping your blog posts clear and concise.

It’s true that some bloggers succeed without strong writing skills. But you shouldn’t assume you’ll be an exception to the rule. Here are some of the things improved writing skills will give your blog.

Readability

Blogging isn’t about reaching one-time visitors. You want people to keep coming back. To do that, you have to make your posts readable.

In the case of blogging that includes writing “scannable” content with lists and subheadings. If you’re an ESL blogger, your blog posts shouldn’t make that obvious. And you’ll break up longer sentences and paragraphs with shorter ones.

You don’t need a degree in English to write readable content. One of the best ways you can improve the readability of your blog is to read your posts aloud before publishing them. If it sounds awkward coming out of your mouth, it will probably sound even more awkward to your readers.

Trust and Authority

Your writing skills can also influence how much readers trust your blog. If you can barely string two sentences together, readers will notice. And if you don’t demonstrate competence in writing your posts, why should readers trust you put any more effort into the substance of that content?

You might not think it’s fair, but you will be judged based on your writing. If you want people to think of you as an authority source in your niche, you must be able to communicate effectively. Specialized knowledge isn’t always enough.

“Shareability”

One of the biggest keys to your blog’s success is its “shareability” factor. This is how worthy your content is of being shared by your readers, such as through social media.

When people trust your content, consider you an authority in your niche, and they find your content easy to digest, they’re more likely to pass it along. That’s what you want. You want readers to tweet your posts, Like you on Facebook, or otherwise spread the word. Your writing skills play a role in that.

In an upcoming post we’ll look at some of the things you can do to improve your writing skills as a blogger. In the meantime, how do your writing skills measure up? What are you doing to improve them? And why do you feel that’s important? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post Why Writing Skills Matter in Blogging appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

As a blogger, you’re already used to creating content on a regular basis. That makes content marketing an ideal option for promoting your blog, increasing traffic, and growing your readership.

Today let’s talk about the two different kinds of content marketing — inbound content marketing and outbound content marketing — and which makes more sense for blog promotion.

Outbound vs Inbound Content Marketing

Outbound content marketing is a form of “push” or “broadcast” marketing. This is when you create content or have a message that you push out into your audience’s awareness, sometimes without their explicit consent.

Inbound content marketing, on the other hand, relies on earning your audience’s attention. It’s the content they want to see. Inbound content marketing also allows for greater two-way communication between you and members of your market.

Here are some specific examples of outbound and inbound content marketing tools to give you a better idea of the difference:

Outbound Content Marketing Tools

• News releases
• Email marketing blasts (especially if you purchased a list)
• Direct mail
• Purchased advertising (in any medium)

Inbound Content Marketing Tools

• Blog posts and comments (yes, your blog is one of its own marketing tools)
• White papers and reports
• Articles (print or digital — like guest posts)
• Email newsletters (with readers choosing to subscribe)
• Social media marketing (engaging your readers in conversations)

As you can see, inbound content marketing tools are things your readers might actually seek out. It’s all about convincing them to come to you, trust you, and keep coming back. Better yet, it’s about building an ongoing relationship with those readers.

When it comes to promoting your blog, do you rely more heavily on outbound content marketing or inbound content marketing? What tools or strategies do you prefer, and why? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

The post Inbound vs Outbound Content Marketing for Your Blog appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

Previously we’ve talked about what blog content audits are and how you can create a simple blog content audit spreadsheet to make the process easier. But why would you want to take on this potentially huge project in the first place?

Let’s look at three good reasons you might choose to conduct your own blog content audit. A content audit lets you:

1. Fix problems that turn readers away.

One of the biggest perks of a blog content audit is that it requires you to physically look at every post on your site in some way. That means you’ll see what your readers are seeing, and you can fix problems that might drive them away from your site. For example, you might find and fix:

• Serious spelling and grammatical errors from your earlier blogging days;
• Formatting problems that resulted from previous design changes;
• Broken links that leave readers lost.

2. Plan future content.

There is no better way to plan your future content strategy than to know what you already have. Once you have your blog content inventory, you can identify holes and fill them.

Do some keyword research to see what your readers are looking for, and use your blog content audit to figure out if you’re filling those needs. If you aren’t yet, then you immediately know what content you should focus on creating.

3. Increase traffic and engagement.

A blog content audit also gives you an opportunity to grow your blog readership. For example, you might use it as an opportunity to better optimize your old posts for search engines, so you can drive more targeted traffic to your blog.

Another option is to focus on reader engagement (how often people share and comment on your content). A blog content audit also lets you review this type of success or failure of older posts.

What do your most shared or most commented posts have in common? An audit helps you figure that out so you can do the same with posts you write in the future.

Why else might you or other bloggers choose to conduct a blog content audit? If you made that decision for other reasons, tell us about them in the comments.

The post 3 Reasons to Conduct a Blog Content Audit appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

Social media marketing is a great way to promote your blog. And when you think about social media, you might think of networking and community as the most important aspects. If so, you would be right.

That said, good writers will always have an edge in professional social networking and social media marketing. That’s because so much of social media these days still involves the written word.

Let’s look at a few ways your writing can directly impact your blog’s social media success, so you can better understand the importance of improving your writing to promote your blog.

Microblogging

If you use microblogging services like Twitter to build your network, interact with readers, and promote your blog, your writing skills can be vital. That’s because your space is limited.

You’re forced to be concise. You only have 140 characters, in the case of Twitter, to get your points across. Improve your writing skills, and you’ll have an easier time doing that.

Social Networks

If you use larger social networks like Google +, Facebook, and LinkedIn, again much of your networking will be done through writing. You might share updates about your blog or business. You’ll share, and potentially comment on, the writing of others. You might answer questions from your fellow bloggers.

The more competent you appear in front of your network on a regular basis, the more likely they are to want to check out your blog. And you have a better chance of gaining their trust.

Your Blog Itself

The best social media tool for promoting your blog is your blog itself. Blogging is a part of social media. Not only do you write posts, but you’ll interact with your readers in the comments on a regular basis.

More importantly, the quality of your blog posts will impact every other element of your social media marketing strategy. If your content doesn’t measure up to what readers expect, they have no reason to share it in the first place.

These are just a few examples of where your writing comes into play in social media marketing. As you can see, writing plays an important role. How else might your writing skills impact your social media efforts? Tell me about your experiences in the comments.

The post How Writing is Central to Your Blog’s Social Media Success appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

While every blogger can improve their blog through better writing, “better writing” doesn’t mean the same thing for every blogger. There are some common things we can all improve — our spelling, grammar, and paragraph length for example.

Beyond those basics, “better writing” largely revolves around your chosen writing style. And it’s important that you choose your blog’s writing style based on your audience rather than just your personal preferences. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Formal Writing Styles

Formal blog posts will often be on the longer side — I’d say the 500 – 2000 word range. They’re more like feature articles than what we think of as traditional blog posts. They’re highly structured and carry a formal tone.

Who might use this blog writing style: You might use a formal writing style if you’re a blogger sharing a lot of research and commentary (science and medical blogs for example) or if you’re writing a highly specialized industry blog for executives or others who are used to a more formal approach.

Journalistic Writing Styles

Journalistic blog posts can vary a great deal in length — from short news blurbs to long investigative-style features. You’ll probably want to follow AP style guidelines (or whatever news writing guidelines are appropriate for your location and audience).

Who might use this blog writing style: You might choose a journalistic approach for your blog if you’re adding a blog to a magazine or newspaper’s website, you’re a journalist managing a personal blog, you’re looking to get into journalism and you want to use your blog as an ongoing portfolio piece, or you run a local or niche blog with a heavy emphasis on news.

Conversational Writing Styles

When we think of blogs, we often think of this writing style. That’s because blogs are frequently less formal than other types of publications. They involve a back-and-forth conversation between a blogger and readers in the blog’s comments. This is a “write the way you talk” blogging style (which is not an excuse for routinely poor spelling and grammar).

Who might use this blog writing style: If you’re like most bloggers, you’ll probably choose a conversational approach to blogging. It works best in personal blogs, but it’s also highly effective in niche blogging because it makes readers feel more connected to you and your content.

Educational Writing Styles

Many blogs have an educational element to them and would perform well with an educational writing style. For example, your posts might be structured tutorials with solely “how to” content.

Who might use this blog writing style: Anyone running a tutorial-based blog could benefit from a structured educational writing style. That would likely involve a combination of background, introductions to projects, and lists of step-by-step instructions. Food bloggers who share recipes frequently are another example.

Entertaining Writing Styles

This is probably the least formal of all of the blogging styles mentioned here. It can vary greatly, from fiction blog posts (like short stories) to celebrity gossip. Like the conversational style, choosing this type of blog writing isn’t an excuse for poor spelling and grammar. But the overall tone is likely to be very relaxed.

Who might use this blog writing style: Celebrity, gossip, and entertainment blogs would be obvious choices for this writing style. But so are blogs written for children, character blogs from authors, and satirical blogs.

As you can see, there isn’t a single “right” way to blog. You have to choose a blogging style that works for you. But you also have to choose a style that’s appropriate for the target readers you want to reach. You don’t have to limit yourself to just one of these. You might alternate between posts (like conversational updates combined with weekly tutorials) or you might combine two or more styles in each post you write.

I’d consider this blog a mix — more on the formal side than most of my blogs, but still conversational in nature. And we’ll feature a variety of structured tutorials along the way. What writing style does your blog use? Do you wish you had chosen something different? Do you use a blogging style not mentioned here? Tell me about it in the comments.

The post Rock Your Blog With the Right Writing Style appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

Do you enjoy blogging? Do you enjoy it enough that you’d want to make a career of it? If so, professional blogging might be in your future. But do you have what it takes?

Let’s look at what professional blogging means and some of the attributes that you might need if you want to successfully launch a career as a professional blogger.

What is Professional Blogging?

Let’s look at the money issue before we get into the types of professional blogging you can pursue. Some people would say you’re a professional blogger the moment you get paid to blog. I disagree with that, strongly.

Many hobbyists are paid for what they do. That’s why being paid alone doesn’t legally differentiate a hobby from a business (in the U.S. at least). While getting a payment for your blogging is nice, I don’t think it’s enough to start calling yourself a professional blogger.

Instead I’d consider someone a professional blogger if they’re truly treating their blogging as a business and if that’s where a significant portion of their income comes from. At the very least, they should actively be trying to make blogging that significant income source. There’s no simple line in the sand here.

Types of Professional Blogging

If you still think professional blogging is the right move for you, you can approach that career in a few different ways. For example, you could:

• blog for clients;
• run your own blogs as income sources;
• pursue some combination of the two.

I fall squarely into that third group — blogging for clients as well as running dozens of my own blogs through my company. That said, I’m gradually moving away from the freelance blogging side of things to focus entirely on my own publishing efforts.

There are benefits and drawbacks to each of these options. For example, you can start your own blog right away and in any niche that appeals to you. But your own blog might take months, or even years, to bring in significant income.

On the other side, you could blog for clients. The benefit there is that you can start earning good money right away (professional bloggers are often paid hundreds of dollars per post and the work can be ongoing).

The downsides include the fact that most of the good professional blogging gigs are never publicly advertised and you might need specialized credentials to land the most lucrative.

That’s why I like having a balance of both options. While I’ve had blogs bring in thousands of dollars per month, that’s never as reliable as client blogging payments. That’s why I now diversify my own blogs so much. It’s a safer bet and offers a lot of growth opportunity.

You should choose whatever professional blogging path suits you. It’s won’t necessarily look like mine. And it won’t necessarily look like that of your favorite professional blogger.

What it Takes to be a Professional Blogger

Do you have what it takes to make one of those professional blogging strategies work for you? Here are some of the skills and qualities that might improve your chances.

• You should have a solid understanding of marketing (an emphasis on social media tools can help). This is most important when you manage your own blogs. It doesn’t matter how good your blog is if you can’t attract readers. Clients may also expect you to promote posts written for them.
• You have to able to work well with others, whether that’s interacting with your readers on your own blog or interacting with clients.
• If you plan to rely solely on your own blogs for income, you have to have a good balance between patience and perseverance. It isn’t always easy, and you don’t want to quit too early out of frustration.
• You should be a solid writer. Sure, some professional bloggers skate by with dreadful writing. But they also lose some readers and respect in the process. Be prepared to offer readers your best at all times. If you don’t write well, hire an editor.
• You’ll have to be reasonably well organized. Whether you have to juggle client deadlines or manage your own content and marketing strategies, planning and organization can go a long way.
• You should be open and honest. It’s one thing to blog under a pen name. It’s something else entirely to pretend to be something you aren’t. Your readers want to get to know you. Don’t betray their trust.

Would you consider yourself to be a professional blogger right now? Do you want to be one in the future? Tell us why professional blogging appeals to you, and what approach you prefer, in the comments below.

The post Do You Have What it Takes to be a Professional Blogger? appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

If you’re getting started as a blogger, chances are good you’ll hear about something known as search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is everything you do to make your blog rank well in search engine results. Ranking well in search engines can bring more targeted traffic, meaning new readers, to your blog.

There are countless “SEO experts” out there who will try to teach you methods for overcoming or exploiting new algorithm updates. Search engine algorithms are what automatically rank websites in search results based on a large number of ever-changing factors (such as how many links point to a page).

Ultimately though, your blog can rank well in search engine results without you having to obsess over SEO. It’s actually better this way, because you build long-term relevance and results instead of constantly overhauling your strategy with each search engine algorithm change.

You can start out by focusing on these three simple SEO tips.

1. Conduct Basic Keyword Research

While you should never stuff your blog posts with keywords, you should still research them. You want to know what phrases your readers are searching for so you know what topics interest them the most.

For this I generally use the Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool. Enter a general keyword or phrase related to your blog and it gives you other related terms and search statistics to help you see what people are searching for the most.

2. Write for Readers, Not Search Engines

The most important thing you should do as a blogger is write for your readers first. If your content is written more for search engines, your blog probably won’t be around in the long run. Search engine traffic can help you grow a blog. But to keep your blog going strong, you need to build a solid readership.

You do that by giving readers content they not only want to read, but content they also want to share. As they share your content by linking to it or sharing via social networking sites, you also build natural backlinks and authority which can ultimately improve your search engine rankings.

3. Use an SEO Plugin

SEO plugins can offer a wide range of features. One of the most important is the ability to manually add and optimize a meta title and meta description to your blog’s posts and pages. Personally I use Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. Another popular option is the All-in-One SEO Pack.

By following these three simple good blogging practices from the start, your new blog will rank well in search results in no time. If you’ve been blogging for a while, what SEO tips do you wish you knew when you started blogging? Are there any other SEO basics you think new bloggers must know early on? Share them in the comments.

The post 3 SEO Basics for Beginner Bloggers appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.

Have you ever visited a blog that didn’t give you any background information in the form of an About page? I have. And I always find that frustrating as a new visitor. I want to know what I should expect if I invest more time in browsing that blog.

Today let’s talk about how you can avoid being one of these mysterious bloggers who publishes no background on their blog. Namely, let’s talk about how you can write a better About page, so you don’t leave readers guessing.

Is it About the Blogger or the Blog?

I’ve seen some bloggers and copywriters insist that your About page shouldn’t be about you as the blogger. I disagree, strongly.

Blogs are a highly personal medium that revolve around relationship-building. And if you want people to be interested in building a relationship with you as a reader, it makes sense to share some personal background.

That said, you need to keep two things in mind:

1. The personal background you share should be relevant to the blog in question. Rather than talk about your family life or hobbies, for example, you should talk about what makes you qualified to write about that blog’s subject matter.
2. While people will be interested in you, they’re more interested in what your blog can do for them. So go ahead and include a blogger bio on your About page. But do it after you offer background on the blog.

The people who say you shouldn’t focus on yourself on your About page have one good point, and it’s what I mentioned in the second point above.

Readers want to know what your blog is going to do for them and they want to know what they can find there. But that doesn’t mean you should neglect a more personal element. You just don’t throw that at them first.

What Information Should You Include?

Now let’s focus more on the first part of your About page — where you tell readers about the blog itself. What kind of information should you include here? Here are some ideas:

• Make the general focus of your blog clear. Some bloggers bounce around between so many topics that readers might not immediately recognize the main blog topic.
• Mention some specific topics you’ve talked about (either based on blog categories or a few particular articles). This is what I did for a client’s blog About page at Social Implications.
• Tell readers exactly how you hope to help them (like I do on this blog’s About page). Benefits always outweigh features in copywriting. And yes, writing an About page is an example of copywriting.
• Let readers know how they can contact you. You can either publish your contact information directly on this page, or have a separate Contact page. If you have a separate contact page, link to it on your About page.

Do you have to include all of these things before (or instead of) a blogger bio? No. They’re just ideas to choose from. Do what works for your particular blog and the audience you hope to reach.

Then keep an eye on reader questions that you might receive privately. If you get the same questions repeatedly, that’s a good sign that you should update your About page with the information people want to know.

Have you seen any particularly outstanding About pages on your favorite blogs? If so, share a link to them here in the comments and tell us why you think they’re effective.

The post Write a Better About Page for Your Blog appeared first on Writing for Bloggers.