With everyone blogging these days, you may have realized that you can’t get by much longer without at least some sort of blogging effort. Whether you are starting your blog from scratch or you have a few posts under your belt, the following advice will help you keep a robust, fresh and entertaining blog that appeals to your audience and helps you achieve your marketing goals. We will start with the most important aspect of creating a blog; identifying and appealing to the needs and wants of your target audience.
Market Research
Before you start blogging in 2014, you should have a list of subjects that you intend to talk about. The wrong way to start blogging is just to wing it. You should know what your competitors are blogging about, which blogs are most popular with your readers and which subjects your readers are dying to read about. To gather this information, you only have to do a few online searches.
First conduct a search for all blogs that are written by your direct competitors. Make a list of the most recent titles, the categories that were used and any keywords that you can identify within each post. Next look for blogs with lots of comments and social media shares. This lets you know which blog posts struck a chord and which ones you will want to emulate if you want to experience the same levels of success.
Titles Are Key
Now that you have a list of hot topics, research your subject matter online and start coming up with a series of titles that you will use to entice your audience to choose your blog over the competition. Some bloggers prefer to come up with blog titles as they write them day-to-day and month-to-month. Yet it is far better to create your titles far in advance so that you’re never stuck coming up with what to write about somewhere down the line. Of course you can always improvise your list later, such as to blog about breaking news; but still, it’s better to plan ahead than to wish you’d planned later on.
Your titles should be eye-catching, concise and should use your primary keywords. Once you have a list of titles, it is recommended that you write the first few blogs before you publish. This allows you to establish a writing style and plan a controlled launch before you actually start blogging in 2014.
How to Blog Effectively in the New Year
Your blog readers are going to be reading your words from their computer screens, but they will also be perusing blogs on smartphones and tablets with increasing regularity. While computer users may like to veg out and read long drawn out posts, mobile readers will prefer a much simpler format.
Use as few words as possible to convey your ideas, use standout images that drive your points home and do your best to be memorable and entertaining. With social media and especially blogs driving more traffic year after year, your blog will need to be something special if you hope to exceed the expectations of your valued readers.
Comments and Social Sharing
While you are encouraged to advertise your blog via any means possible, it’s far better and easier to let your audience do your advertising for you. If you can create titles that instantly draw your readers in, provide content matter that consistently intrigues and you can manage to make your audiences ponder and think, your blog will not only receive a slew of comments, but you’ll also be shared around on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and on many other social networks.
You have an immense amount of channels to explore if you hope to find new readers for your blogging efforts. When you start blogging in 2014, let everyone know it by sharing your posts on social media and by including social buttons next to every post to make sharing simple.
Now you are ready to start blogging in 2014. Start researching your competitors and start developing a list of titles that draw your readers in from every direction. Then inform, educate and entertain your audience with every post. With enough comments and if your posts are shared around on various forms of social media, you could end up being one of the most popular bloggers in 2014. It all starts with an idea, a hard-hitting title and a post that stands out among all the others. Your new – or new and improved – blog awaits.
