Quantcast
Channel: Angela Booth's Fab Freelance Writing Blog » business blogging
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

Never-Ending Blogging: A Method to Make Blogging Easy

0
0

Blogging for Dollars

I love blogging. I’ve been blogging for over 12 years, so it obviously suits the way I write. In addition to blogging for myself, I’ve blogged for many clients.

This is easy; interview a couple of people at the company, and you’ve got enough blog post ideas to keep you hopping for a month.

Over the weekend, I received an SOS from a writing student who’s been blogging for a client, and says she’s run out of ideas. This isn’t possible; you’ve just got to think tangentially, and you’ll never run out of ideas.

I gave her a blogging method to follow, and I thought it might be useful for you, too.

Here it is…

1. Fill the Well of Blog Post Ideas

Once you’ve committed to a blog, whether it’s your own blog, or someone else’s, you need to “fill the well” of blog post ideas. Filling the well is a term that Julia Cameron uses, and it’s apt for bloggers.

For my own blogs, I come up with ideas from my clients, my writing students (this post comes from the student’s SOS), my reading, and from talking to people.

As you go through your day, keep your radar spinning. Make notes. I love Evernote, because it’s available to me everywhere. In the supermarket this morning, for example, I recorded a voice note for a blog post in Evernote on my phone while I was wandering through the vegetable and fruit section.

2. Draft Posts: First Thoughts — Change Them Later

Collecting ideas is all very well, but this can become a pointless activity if it’s aimless. You need to sort through those ideas once a day — or once a week, if you’re a part-time blogger. Toss the ones which no longer work for you.

Do a brief first-thoughts outline for the ones you keep. On any day, I’ll have anywhere from 10 to 20 blog posts in various stages of outline and draft form.

WordPress blogs make creating outlines and drafts easy. Just save your outlines as draft posts. I use the Editorial Calendar on all my WordPress blogs.

3. Polish, SEO and Post (SEO Matters)

Each day, write and polish the posts you’ll publish that day.

Remember to “SEO” (search engine optimize) your blog posts, so that your readers will be able to find them. No need to go overboard with this. The days when you could trick the search engines are long gone.

Make sure that each post has meta data: a page title (this can be different from the post title), a description (170 characters), and relevant keywords.

I use the All-In-One SEO plugin on all my WordPress blogs to create the meta data.

4. Results?

You’re blogging for a reason — results.

Before you start blogging for a client, ask the client what results he wants. Don’t settle for a comment like “traffic.” Traffic on its own is useless. Who cares if a blog post has 10,000 page views if your client has zero sales?

If you’re blogging for clients, the more specific the results required, the better.

When you’re blogging for yourself, keep platform in mind. No matter what you’re doing, platform is always important, and “platform” — building your readership — is the most important result.

The post Never-Ending Blogging: A Method to Make Blogging Easy appeared first on Angela Booth's Fab Freelance Writing Blog.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images