While most people often think of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube when the words social media marketing are mentioned, unknown to them is that blogging forms part of social marketing.
Over the years, blogs have proved to be effective marketing tools for people looking to increase their presence online.
When implemented properly, blogs have the capacity to increase the ranking of your site in various search engines such as Bing, Ask and Google.
High ranking in search engines means more web traffic to your site, which means more sales.
This is something that every online business owner dreams of.
However, only a handful of people have succeeded at making effective blogs.
What do well-liked blogs have in common?
Most visited blogs have a distinct voice.
A voice is an important aspect that every blog ought to have.
A distinct voice not only functions in gaining devout readers, but also in keeping them.
This article discusses into detail how to develop a voice for your blog.
1. Show Your Personality
The first thing that you need to do is build a personality for your blog.
Don’t be afraid to express yourself.
Avoid formulating posts for your blog. Instead, allow your voice to stand out.
By doing so, you will be giving your blog some personality.
It’s difficult to be different when you write about “blogging” niche (million of blogs are created every year with this subject), but telling what you think about a specific topic is a way to stand out from the crowd.
You should read : How To Increase Your Online Visibility
2. Keep Your Blog Fresh
One of the things that you will find written in most articles about marketing your blog is keeping it fresh at all times.
Fresh and new content means that your readers have something to come back to.
The moment you allow the content in your blog to decay, readers will not have a reason to continue coming to your blog.
One strategy that you can use to keep the content of your blog fresh is posting articles at least three times a week.
Tip : if it happens someday that you do not have time to write, be sure to prepare some articles to be published automatically via your WordPress dashboard in this case of emergency.
3. Keep Your Posts Simple
Did you know that online readers detest complicated blog posts?
If you have difficult to understand content, chances are that they are not actually being read.
The key to increasing readership on your blog is keeping your posts simple.
This will make your readers yearn for more content, thus keep coming back to your blog.
Use a proper language, and be sure to avoid spelling and grammar mistakes.
4. Write Interesting Content
One of the secrets to make your blog popular is writing interesting to read content.
Solve your readers problems, write “how to” guide, link to useful resources outside your blog.
You’ve heard about “Content is King” several times, right?
Then you should take a look to this recent post written by Sylviane Nuccio :
If Content Is King Do You Need To Worry About Anything Else?
5. Enable and Answer Comments
Comments enable you to know what your readers are thinking.
The more comments you get, the more will help your blog to rank high.
Moreover, comments are ways through which you can interact with your readers.
So be sure to answer to them and engage conversation.
Remember to ask questions!
Also, you need to make a habit of commenting on other people’s blogs.
The more your comment on other blogs, the more you are likely to get comments on your blog.
This is an effective method not only to market your site, but also to create connections with other bloggers within your niche.
See in this post at FirstSiteGuide how to deal with negative comments: Blogging: Dealing with Negative Comments, Haters and Trolls.
6. Optimize Your Blog Title
Your title is the first thing that draws readers to your blog.
Therefore, you need to be creative when creating titles.
Not only do titles draw the mind of prospective readers, but also attract the attention of search engines.
Be sure to create also a catchy tagline!
Conclusion
I am sure there are many more ways to improve your site and create an effective blog.
Can you add something else other than what listed above?
Please let me have your thoughts in the comments below, thanks! 🙂
Hey Erik,
Keeping your blog flesh is IMPORTANT! I know I’m bad at doing that but trying to get back soon.
Top notch writing as usual mate. *p/s How on Earth do you find time writing so many article? Haha!
Thanks man for sharing.
Marvelous article!
All 6 of these tips look as if they can help anyone’s blog improve. Not only my blog (in the future), but if other bloggers came and saw this it can also help improve their blogs too.
All tips were helpful and related to helping improve an effective blog. People may get more visitors to their blogs if they follow these tips.
Keep up the good work and thanks for the article!
– Cracers
Hello Erik !!
Sometimes, It is quite difficult to always keep your blog updated and fresh as always. But I guess the bottom line to this problem is doing more research and always being online….
Talking about the post title, it is just like the outside look or appearance of a building, it could rather attract people into the build or probably repulse them not to enter the building…. It is very important To make your title attractive… Thank for the share Erik..
Regards,
DOK Simon.
Hi Erik,
I vibe with each one of these tips. I’m so appreciating the scheduling tip these days as I’m busier and busier being on the road, and sometimes, with internet issues and other curve balls it helps to have posts scheduled and ready to go a few days beforehand.
On my old blog I published whenever I felt like it, or after I completed the post. Now I know better; I set my new posts to go out at 8:05 AM, EST, and I usually do this a day or so beforehand.
It makes sense to set things up so you don’t feel pressured to publish under some strict deadlines. Setting and forgetting helps you review your posts for grammatical errors, and also helps you find tune your titles so you’ll get more clicks and draw in more readers.
When you think about it, this blogging thing becomes easier and easier when you do things ahead of time from a calm, confident and relaxed space. Schedule those posts folks to see the greatest returns.
Titles! Gotta nail them down to see a strong return with your post. I may take 10 minutes or so to let titles marinate before I schedule my posts. I try to make an impact with my titles, to emotionally move my audience into action.
All these tips rock dude.
Thanks so much for the share.
I’ll be tweeting through Triberr shortly.
Ryan
Hey Erik,
I completely agree with your points 😉
As a matter of fact, from the blog owner’s stand point, Installing commentLuv is a great way to promote once blog. This adds to point five above
I know you know this plugin Erik. That’s why it’s right here on this blog.
As a blogger, one big advantage is that this will help pull traffic from this blog to my blog. Just below this comment is a link back to my blog. This is source of direct traffic isn’t it?
Anyone reading this comment may want to know how Don will help them earn more customers. Without commentLuv here, this won’t be possible.
So this plugin is a great addition to the list 😉
Blog increases the visits to the website and thus there are greater possibilities of sales. One more trick used by many, is to disclose the coupons and discounts for limited time with a blog post, so many searching for freebies land over there.
The key to effective blogging is to frequent it, as many are eager to read the blogs, and they will go away if they don’t see any new content.
Being simple is the most effective way to connect to the readers.
There shouldn’t be much jargon’s, but not grammar mistakes too. Blogging keeps the customers connected, and they come more often to a blog of products than the website itself. So, one needs to start it right, before that start now, if you don’t have one.
Brilliant post, I found it on Kingged.
We are different but we act in unison to solve common problem. Effective blogs online do have “distinct voice”. This voice often standout and is built around branding. More so,the most effective blogs are those that readily solve problems for readers.
The tips shared here are on track to turn an average blogger into a professional that solves problems for readers. Showing personality, writing quality content, and optimizing a blog effectively help to highlight the distinctive voice of a blog!
I upvoted this post in kingged where it was shared for Internet marketers.
Fantastic post Erik. I get through from kingged. You mentioned all needy points.
Hello Erik,
This is a awesome post! I follow some tips you posted here. I try to write articles and just schedule it. It really works perfectly..
I am not good in writing but i try to write something interesting which is useful to my visitors.
Thanks for this valuable post. .
Hey Erik,
Great tips you provided how on creating an effective blog!
Out of all of them, numbers 4 and 5 stick out. For number 4, you have to figure out what your audience are interested in and go from there. From my experiences, my target audience are the bloggers that are within the same niche that I am. At least most of them. If you’re topics are similar to the topics they’re interested, then it makes it a win/win.
Also I like the fact that you mentioned how vital commenting is to your blog. This by far has helped me a lot with my blog. This gives you a lot of social proof, getting referral traffic from both search engines and social media sites.
Thanks for sharing and I hope you have a great weekend!
Hi Erik,
Really great post here. One thing that I want to say though, even though I agree with the majority of your points here, I slightly disagree with the “Keep Your Blog POsts Simple” section.
I think there’s a difference between complicated blog posts and trying to be creative. I agree that writing blog posts that are very technical is a mistake but if you’re very detailed in your posts, it may be ok.
Regarding keeping your blog fresh, while I agree that writing blog posts 3 times a week is a good idea, I think a person can survive with one blog post a week. As long as they put absolutely everything they have into making that blog post the bets it could be.
Great post once again Erik.
– Andrew
Hi Erik,
So sorry to jump into the wagon so late here, but I’ve just got your message that must have gone through the cracks.
Thank you so much for mentioning me and linking to my post.
Talking about blog title, before this one blog of mine was renamed simply my name, it use to be called differently, but the title didn’t really fit what I wanted to do with the blog anymore and I though that branding my rather unique name was the way to go.
At the moment having 3 blogs I can’t possibly write more than once a week on each of one them.
Thanks for those great tips here. And I’ll be back 🙂
I needed this article. I have been blogging for 2.5 months and getting good results by posting to my Facebook, Google +, and Twitter, but I had no idea the importance of these steps. Some I have done intuitively, but others I had no idea. Thanks!
Nice Tips! I liked mostly “Write Interesting Content” & “Optimize Your Blog Title”. This 2 tips are more important than other tips. You have to focus on this two things first and then others. It is necessary to optimize your Title. Title should be different than other blogs. It carries some Keywords. So, Make sure that your title is keyword optimized.
Thanks for sharing this 🙂
Hello Erik,
This is a fantastic post! I follow some methods you posted here. I try to write articles and just schedule it. It works perfectly as i am busy with my studies.
I am not a great writer but i try to write something interesting which is useful to my readers. I just bookmarked this blog Erik.
Thanks for writing this for me.
Well, i found this post on http://www.kingged.com and commented on it.
Hey Erik,
Love your tips in this post. I like the idea of keeping a post simple. There are times when some bloggers get caught up with the idea of writing longer content but we shouldn’t do that for every post. Most days, no one has time to read it all!
Thanks for the post Erik.
Hey Erik,,
All of these 6 points are helpful to improve blog.
I noticed, you describe every step in ascending order. How? tell you.
your first point about keep updating. If you update your blog regularly then your visitor come to your blog to learn something new.
I you enable blog comment. then they can share their though to you. and when they share their problem to you. you will solve their problem with new update.
It’s mean every point connect to each other. and that why I say to you, Your writing style is very good.
any way thanks for sharing such nice information with us.
Areesha Noor!