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.
But, did you know that as of early September 2015, there are 1 BILLION websites online. That's a lot of noise . . . and competition. So, blogging smart is even more important than ever.
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.
How do you do this?
Simple. Show them.
For example:
A blog post at Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing (site has since been deleted) on email marketing and spam got over 3700 views in just a couple of days.
This is blogging smart.
The image below is a screen-shot of that particular post's views in less than 24 hours - a couple of days later it was over 3700. A little after that it was at 3841. I haven't checked since then to see how far it has gone.
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
• Audio
• Images
• 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 blogging smart. And, this strategy will motivate the reader to model your processes. This is one of the best compliments.
Even more important, it will motivate the visitor/reader to say YES to your CTA and SHARE your content.
Note: Images and CTAs should be included in everyone of your blog posts. And, in regard to images, at least one image should be at the top of the content. It's this image sites like Pinterest will pick up when you share the post.
Another part of blogging smart is to optimize your blog posts. Part of this includes using:
- Grabbing titles
- Keywords
- Tags
- Categories
- Descriptions
- Sharing your posts to your social media networks
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