Some Tips on Successful Blogging by Jacqueline Seewald

To develop a successful blog you need to blog regularly. An article I read not long ago suggested that posts should be provided on Mondays, Wednesdays or Thursdays with Thursdays getting the most hits or views. If you can manage, it’s good to post once a week, even more often if that’s possible.

You will probably notice that I don’t do as I suggest. I don’t follow a regular time schedule. I am a writer with limited time allotted for blogging, but I try to make each of my posts meaningful.

Appearance Matters. You want your blog to be attractive and accessible. Use an easy to read font like Verdana. Second, there should be graphics not just print words. Third, readers like white space between paragraphs, again for easy reading. Last, don’t make your blog too long. You’re not writing WAR AND PEACE. Readers today want writing conversational in tone and right to the point.

Keep in mind that drawing readers to your blog is your goal. There’s nothing more disheartening than writing an article and discovering that no one bothers to read it. So how do you manage to build a readership with so many other blogs competing for reader recognition and attention? There are a number of ways that seem to work:

1. Join groups of people of similar interests and advertise to them when you have a post.

I belong to several writer’s groups sponsored by Yahoo for the most part. Some of these are publishers’ groups, others are simply subject oriented like mystery, romance or short story writers’ groups.

2. Have interesting titles that are attention-grabbing and provocative.

Ask a question.

Begin with: How To _______

or create a list:

Ten Tips on ________

Keep focused. Topics should be those that would most interest your perspective reader audience.

For instance, I’m a writer and so my blog is concerned with topics related to writing.

3. Use social media to publicize your blogs. I post on Facebook and Twitter. I am not progressive enough to use Instagram or Snapchat, but you might consider them.

4. Do guest blogging for others who share your interests or your field. This widens your audience and brings new people to your blog.

5. Respond with comments to other similar blogs. These bloggers may do you the same courtesy.

6. I don’t put out newsletters but I know a number of bloggers who have had great success with them.

7. Offer giveaways of some kind.

We writers tend to give away advance review copies of our books when they’re published in order to stir interest of readers. There are many items that would interest readers and they don’t have to be expensive.

Do you have any comments or suggestions regarding blogging that you would like to add? What do you think draws to readers to a blog?