Blogging Smart

by Karen Cioffi

It’s a give-in that you need to blog to make connections, to gain readers, to increase visibility, to increase your authority, to increase ranking, and to become the go-to person in your niche.

Whether you’re an author, a writer, or a business, you have to blog smart.

But, how do you blog effectively and smart? What does that mean?

To blog smart, you want to "prove" to your visitors and subscribers that what you’re writing about or doing actually works, and you want to make it easily digestible.

You also need content that grabs and engages the reader. And, it must be search engine friendly. This means the post must have keywords and be valuable to your reader so the search engines will find it and decide to categorize and index it.

The benefit of search engines categorizing and indexing your content is visibility.

When a searcher (a person) puts a keyword search query into Google’s search box, Google instantly scours its database to find content that will be a ‘good fit’ for that query. If you’re blogging smart, Google will have found your content valuable enough to save and possibly use it for the results of a relevant search.

How do you blog smart?

Simple. Show them.

For example:

A recent blog post of mine on ‘"email marketing and spam" got over 3700 views in just a couple of days. This is blogging smart.

Okay, I’ll admit that sometimes it’s the luck of the draw or the "right content at the right time," but if you’re not blogging smart to start it’s unlikely you’ll get that far.

So, some things you should be including in your posts are:

• Screenshots to aid in comprehension and ‘prove’ what you’re saying

• Links to relevant content bringing the reader deeper into your web pages, further demonstrating your knowledge in the niche

• Links to other useful information that will further benefit the reader

• Tips on what you should and shouldn’t do and why 

• Strategies that work for you and proof

• Problems you’ve overcome and how

• Doable step-by-step guides

• Personality (a bit of personal tidbits)

• Videos

• Animation

• Audio

• Images

• Graphic quotes (people love them)

• Call-to-action (CTA)*

These are the elements you should be including in your blog posts, obviously not all at the same time, mix it up. This is blogging effectively, and smart. And, this strategy will motivate the reader to model your process. This is one of the best compliments.

And, even more important, it will motivate the visitor/reader to say YES to your CTA and SHARE your content.

Dictionary

*Call-to-action (CTA) – the CTA is any actionable step you want the reader to take. It may be to sign up to your mailing list, it may be to buy your book, or it may be some other step.

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Karen Cioffi is a former accountant who is now a multi-award-winning author, ghostwriter, freelance writer, editor, and author-writer online platform marketing instructor. She founded and manages Writers on the Move (a marketing group), and presents online writing and marketing workshops and webinars.

Karen has published 12 writing and marketing eBooks, the most recent, Article Marketing: Increase Website Traffic with Properly Formatted and Search Engine Optimized Content.

In addition to this, Karen’s website, Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing, was named Writer’s Digest Website of the Week, June 25, 2012.

Join Karen Cioffi's upcoming online class!  

 BUILD YOUR AUTHOR-WRITER ONLINE PLATFORM: 

Website Creation to Beyond Book/Product Sales 

starts on Monday, November 3, 2014.

 Click here for details and enrollment.