Is blogging worth your time and efforts in 2023?
Top Blogging Tips for Beginners
With the digital journey for most businesses continuing in 2023, blogs remain an integral part of digital marketing plans. Despite the blogosphere being more crowded than ever, with 500 million blogs and more than 2 million posts published daily, the importance of blogging for businesses in 2021 cannot be overstated. To make sure you’re making the most of your blog in 2021, here are the best blogging tips.
1. Choose the Right Platform
When it comes to setting up your blog, you have two options: hosting your blog from your own website or using a third-party platform like Medium, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
Hosting Your Own Website
Hosting your blog from your own website gives you more domain authority and control over your blogging activities. It may take a little more time to get your website up and running before you can start blogging, however, the long-term payoffs are great. Studies show that businesses get 97% more links to their websites through blogging, and 68.5% of consumers feel that a blog lends credibility to a website.
Third-Party Platforms
Blogging through a third-party platform like Medium can instantly get your blogs out there in front of millions of readers. Medium alone has nearly 100 million monthly readers. The downside is that it leaves less ownership and control in your hands. However, you can set up a blog on your own domain and simultaneously cross-post your content on a third-party platform like Medium to take advantage of its huge audience.
2. Know Your Audience Well
Knowing your audience is essential for successful blogging in 2023. Content saturation is a real challenge, and it is hard for your content to stand out in the crowd. As such, it is important to understand who your ideal customer is, as well as where they hang out, what apps they use, what questions they are asking, and what interests them.
In order to stand a chance at attracting your audience’s attention, you need to write content that is interesting and unique. Explore topics that your customers are interested in, and create content that resonates with them. Additionally, you can use keyword research to determine the topics that your target audience is searching for and create content around those topics.
Have an Editorial Calendar
Creating an editorial calendar can help you stay organized and plan your content ahead of time. This will allow you to determine the topics you want to cover, the frequency of your posts, and the overall tone and style of your blog. An editorial calendar will also help you ensure that your content is consistent and that you are delivering valuable content to your readers.
Use Visuals and Videos
Incorporating visuals and videos into your blog posts can help draw your readers’ attention and make your blog posts more engaging. Additionally, visuals and videos can help convey the main points of your post and make them easier to understand.
Choose the Right Length and Formatting
Choosing the right length and formatting for your blog posts is essential for keeping your readers engaged. Try to keep your posts between 500-800 words, and use formatting techniques such as headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs to make your content easier to read. Additionally, embedding visuals and videos in your blog posts can help break up large blocks of text and make them more visually appealing.
The Best Blogging Tip Ever: Give it Time
Finally, the most important blogging tip is to give it time. Building a successful blog takes time and effort, and you may not see results overnight. It is important to be consistent with your posts, and to keep track of your progress and adjust your strategy accordingly. With patience and dedication, you will be well on your way to creating a successful blog in 2021.
3. Unique Topic Ideas
Don’t fall into the trap of writing about the same topics as everyone else. To really connect with your audience, it’s important to create content that is tailored to their needs and interests. Research niche communities and forums to discover what questions and topics your customers are talking about. Tap into platforms like Reddit, Quora, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups to uncover the latest conversations and trends that your audience is interested in.
Editorial Calendar
Creating an editorial calendar is a great way to plan out your content in advance and ensure that you’re consistently producing quality content. Keep track of the topics you plan to write about and the dates that you plan to publish them. This will help keep your content strategy organized and on track.
4. Creating an Editorial Calendar
Creating an editorial calendar is an essential step for successful blogging. It helps you plan and organize your content, and make sure that you are consistently publishing. An editorial calendar should include the topics of your posts, the date of publishing, and the type of content you’ll be creating (blog post, video, etc.). You can be as detailed or as minimal as you want—download a free content calendar template or get started with a barebones excel spreadsheet. Just remember to post at least once or twice a week.
Benefits of an Editorial Calendar
Having an editorial calendar helps you stay organized and consistent. It allows you to plan ahead, so you can stay ahead of deadlines and plan for upcoming events or holidays. It also helps you track your progress and see what topics have succeeded or failed in the past. Additionally, by maintaining a regular posting schedule, you can develop an audience that will return to your page to check out your content. Finally, regular posting improves your search engine rankings and helps you reach a wider audience.
5. Use Visuals and Videos
Choose the Right Length and Formatting
When it comes to blog post length, it’s important to keep it concise and easy to read. Blogs that are too long can cause readers to get bored or lose interest. Aim for a range of 300-500 words, depending on the subject. You can also break up the text by adding in headings and subheadings, which makes it easier to read. Additionally, use bullet points, tables, and other visuals to help break up the text and keep it interesting.
Include Visuals and Videos
Visuals can help enhance the appeal and engagement factor of your blogs. Images, videos, infographics, GIFs, and other visuals can help to better convey your message, as well as make your content more interesting and visually appealing. On average, blog posts with images get 94% more views than text-only posts, so it’s important to include visuals in your posts. Additionally, including videos in your blogs can help you to communicate your messages more effectively, and give readers their favorite type of content to consume.
6. Choose the Right Length and Formatting
Length:
Research shows that blog articles of 2,000+ words are far more likely to show better results. Writing a longer piece just for the sake of length is never a good idea, but if a topic calls for depth, give it depth.
Formatting:
- – 36% of readers prefer list-based headlines.
- – 43% of readers admit to just skimming the blogs.
- – Only 29% of readers take the time to carefully read through posts, so use bullet points and section headers to make it easier for them.
- – Headlines that are 6-13 words’ long fetch the maximum amount of traffic.