How to Blog
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If you’re a freelance writer, an author, or any other type of solopreneur, you’ll probably want to start a blog and learn how to blog.
But it can be difficult to continue blogging, week after week, year after year.
Yet to develop a readership for your blog you need to post at least 2 to 5 times a week.
People won’t want to come back to your blog regularly if they can’t expect to find new content there all the time.
Here are six tips to help you keep up with your blog and post on a regular basis:
1. Decide from the start who you want to attract to your blog.
That is, decide who you want your readers to be. This will be your target market. For example, the target market for writebythesea is freelance writers and authors.
The reason this will help you post regularly to your blog is because you’ll always have it clear in your mind who you are writing for.
And that will make it easier to focus on the content you need for your blog.
2. Decide from the start how you will serve your intended readers.
Many beginning bloggers set up a blog with no real purpose or intended readership in mind.
It’s no wonder they find blogging difficult or they just don’t keep up with it.
Their blog posts tend to be rambles, or daily accounts of their business activities, which don’t serve readers in any way (unless these accounts are particularly humorous, or also offer something for the reader to consider regarding his or her own life).
Develop a purpose for your blog.
What will you post each day that will be of use to your intended readers?
For example, the purpose of writebythesea is to provide freelance writers and authors with writing and marketing tips, a variety of helpful resources, and information about various coaching programs for writers.
3. Develop a regular weekly schedule for posting.
It’s much easier to keep up with your blog if you decide right away that you will post only 3 days a week, for example, and those 3 days will be Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
You won’t have to feel guilty the other 4 days of the week when you aren’t blogging either.
4. Develop categories for your regular blog posts.
If you know you’re going to post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, set up categories for each of those days.
For example, you might blog about new products or special offers on Mondays.
On Wednesdays you could post tips that would be of interest to the people who use your types of products and/or services.
On Fridays you could post answers to questions you receive from customers or clients.
Categories can also help you organize your blog.
Take a look at the categories in the top menu bar here at writebythesea, which show how this site is organized.
Every post comes under one or more of the categories in the menu bar.
5. Plan ahead whenever possible.
Once you have established a regular blogging schedule and developed categories for your posts, you’ll find it easier to plan ahead and set up your editorial calendar.
You can even enter your articles ahead of time and have them scheduled to post on the days you want.
When you do this it makes it much easier to keep up with your blog as well as your other business activities.
You can post your articles to your blog over the weekend, then not have to worry about blogging again until the next weekend.
6. You don’t have to write every single post for your blog yourself.
Your blog should be a resource to serve your readers.
However, that doesn’t mean you need to write every bit of the material posted at your blog yourself.
As long as you provide helpful information, your readers won’t care who wrote that information.
So check out some of the article directories that offer free articles, and once a week or so select an article that would be helpful to your readers.
You might also have guest bloggers periodically.
Invite another business professional who writes about your topic of interest to supply a post for your blog.
If this person can post a link to his/her site within the post, he/she will probably be more than happy to provide you with content for a day.
Try these tips and see if they don’t help you keep up with your blog on a regular basis!
