Regardless of the blog type you choose, be it personal or corporate, the following pieces of advice are meant to guide your steps in your future blogging activity. These are the most important blog tips you’ll need to follow when starting a new blogging adventure!
1. Look for ideas at any time and in any place
A conversation in the subway, a debate or piece of news heard on the car radio, anything can turn into a new topic for your blog. Keep your mind open and tune your hearing, combine them with good analysis skills and you will have some killer weapons in your arsenal.
2. Raise and maintain interest
An attractive first paragraph is not enough to maintain the reader’s interest throughout your blog post. “Start big, finish bigger”. Provide new hooks in small doses to keep your readers interest throughout the article.
3. Generate the conversation and take part in it
Often times, bloggers are compared to journalists, and their blogs to newspapers (usually tabloids, not broadsheets). Yet blogs and online newspapers differ exactly where they are also alike – the comments section. Newspapers use the comments section to allow users to express their frustrations and almost never moderate them. The classic journalistic style rarely requires an answer or any feedback, usually being limited to presenting the facts or expressing an opinion.
The main ace bloggers play is their power to start conversations and to keep them going by being part of them.
4. Make sure you provide quality information
If your new blog post is based on personal opinions, make sure they have the required features to become points of reference. If you’ve used other sources for it, make sure you check their credibility and quality first.
5. Never promise more than you can give
Failing to deliver everything you have promised will lead to a significant decrease in a blog’s credibility and popularity. Teasers do work, but only if what you were teasing readers with becomes reality.
6. Offer help
Nothing pleases blog followers more than getting help from a field expert. Whenever you have a spare moment, help those in need of your professional help. Make sure to reply their comments and their emails.
7. Links are sacred
Are you quoting a source? Then link to it! Are you publishing survey results or statistics? Link to those who have created them. Are you expressing your opinion regarding something that has been published on another blog or online outlet? Link to the initial article. Why?
- Because it helps prove the quality of the provided information and places them in a broader context;
- Because it is a nice way to thank those who have inspired you to find a new topic for your blog.
If you have already discussed a certain topic in previous posts, link to them at the end of the current article. This helps those interested in the topic to get more details on it.
Additionally, a solid inbound and outbound linking policy will help your blog rank better in search engines.
8. Never, ever…
Do any of the following:
- Attack someone else’s stand on an issue if you are not 100% sure of your own. Make sure to provide arguments to sustain it;
- Publish someone else’s content without having their permission to do so.
- Start open conflicts with your blog commentators. Keep your cool!
- Allow the needs vs. solutions balance incline towards the former in your posts. Provide more solutions than debates over what’s needed.
- Shy away from commenting on similar or competing blogs. As long as you don’t do it to shamelessly plug your blog or attach the author, your contributions will be valued and will direct more readers towards your own posts.
- Take all blogging advice as laws. They are only pieces of advice. Experiment with them and see which work better in your case.
- Fill your blog up with plugins, widgets and other useless elements. We are ultimately talking about a corporate blog. You really do not want to compete in MTV’s “Pimp my blog” competition!
- Postpone for too long your blogging platform and plugins update. Don’t be the first to do it either, to make sure bugs are found and solved, but don’t be the last one either!
9. And the most important piece of advice…
….I’m going to ever give you is to never be afraid of EXPERIMENTING. Experiment with different tones, new post types, new topic approaches.
Stay fresh!
Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide
Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started (current)
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools