Blogging. Many people think that blogging is as simple as sitting down at the computer and typing up a quick little blurb and then moving on to the next one. And for those who do a personal blog or who are not interested in either promoting themselves or their business or making money- it is. But in order to create something substantial it is a whole lot more than that.
Research
To write an informative blog post is not as easy as it might seem to be. You have to strike the right combination and not only keep your readers interested but teach them something they did not previously know. Every writer has their own style that becomes more distinctive as time goes on but getting into that flow takes time.
Even before writing a blog post a lot of time can be invested in research. This research can include clarifications on the subject you are writing about such as date details, a review of a product, an overview of notes taken previously on the subject, or just an overall gathering of the thoughts in your head.
Once you have have a more concrete idea about your topic the research on the written part itself comes in. What keywords are you using and are there any longtail keywords that will work well with your topic? What type of post are you going to write and from what perspective? And what headline is going to garner the most interest?
These questions can sometimes generate confusion and lead to writers block. There are a ton of great tools and how to posts out there to assist you.
Interlinking and Proofreading
Now you have your post written one of the first things that you should do is proof read and spell check your post. There has been a lot of debate about whether articles should be grammatically correct and the spelling error free but a post reads more fluidly and is more easily understood if it reads the way that it should.
Interlinking helps your blog out in several different ways. It helps to get your older pages looked at more frequently and to decrease your bounce rate. It also assists in ranking (although not as much as an incoming link). Once you are done writing your post you can go back and pick out keywords and phrases that you can use to link to other posts on your blog. In the beginning this may seem tedious but once you get in the habit of doing this it will become second nature.
Outbound Links
Linking out to other blogs can be a time consuming activity- but one well worth the effort. Outbound links can assist you in that they show your readers that your knowledge of your post doesn’t stop with what you are writing but with the knowledge of what others are writing about the same topic. It can draw new readers to your blog as people you link to will generally come take a look at what you are writing. It can also help build you up as an authority in your field.
Make sure that you give correct credit when linking to someone else and don’t just put the link in the anchor text without mentioning them or their blog. And it needs to flow smoothly with your post and make sense- don’t just put a link to put a link.
A great example of someone who uses outbound links effectively is Jim Regan at The Net Fool. Every Sunday he writes Sunday Link Love and Announcements in which he writes about the week, gives five links to great posts he has read that week along with a little summary and finishes up with stock market and blogosphere updates and a look ahead. These articles are all high quality posts and really strengthen his credibility.
Promoting
Last but certainly not least- promoting. Promoting your blog can be the most time consuming part of of blogging itself if you are intent on steadily increasing your traffic. There are many different ways to promote your blog including article marketing, forums, social networking and bookmarking sites, and commenting on other blogs.
As you become more proficient in the ways that you want to promote your blog you will find that you are able to do way more in less time. For instance, if using article marketing as a tool you can use article submission sites which automatically submit your article to thousands of websites, blogs, and directories. Or if you choose to do it yourself you can have five different article submission sites open and copy and paste right down the line. (Much, much faster than doing it one at a time.)
Participating on forums and social networks which allow you to use a link to your blog in your signature is a great way to promote yourself and create traffic to your blog. Twitter is also a good source to promote but don’t get too tweet happy with announcing new posts- most of the people following you will also be subscribed to your site and you will be giving them a double whammy.
By using the concepts of attraction marketing and you will make your job that much easier. You can also submit your post to relevant bookmarking sites and directories.
One of the easiest ways to promote your blog is to comment on other blogs especially those that use the comment luv plugin developed by Andy Bailey. This is a perfect example of why headlines are so important. With comment luv there is a line under your comment that links to your last blog post. If your headline is intriguing you may be surprised by the number of clicks you get. (One tip here- if you are getting ready to publish a new post wait to make your comments until after you publish. This gives you a fresh link especially if you have made a lot of comments since your last post).
Conclusion
Overall, it is clear that blogging can be very time consuming to those who take it seriously. Bloggers that have learned how to take what started out as a fun past-time and turn it into a lucrative career have known this all along. While every post doesn’t have to be a candidate for the Nobel prize you do have to be sure that you are using most, if not all, of these techniques in each one to gain the blogging success you are looking for.
The next time someone makes a comment about why it takes you so much time to write a little blog post you can just smile and think to yourself, blogging is so much more than just writing.