Image by Little Cottage, Big Life
In my opinion, blogging is the #1 way to establish yourself as an expert on a subject. Why? Because a Facebook post and Twitter update are only so long. There is only so much you can really say in that short # of characters and your personality only shows through a teeny, weeny bit. Blogging, on the other hand, allows you to share your thoughts and insights in a larger way. If your readers like what you have to say, they will quickly get to know who you are. It’s a great thing.
For those of you who are new to the blogging world, I wanted to share today the things that I think are the most basic for you to know. Eventually you’ll want to learn about metatags, trackbacks and sharing links, but there are some really important things you need to know first.
Keep it short
Our tendency when first writing is to focus on a topic and cover it from A to Z. “The 100 Steps Involved in Starting a Business” or “50 Things To Do To Enhance Your SEO” are both great topics, but way too much information for people to soak in. Keep your posts short – 250-500 words. Make sure that you’re giving 1-3 great points and then finish up your post. For some people, it’s easier to write one long post and then divide it into several smaller ones. That’s great too, but please don’t post your 2,000 word article.
Organize your posts
You will notice that whenever I blog, I organize the post with subheadings or bullets. This is because if you’re lucky, people will spend 10 seconds on your post. You need to make sure that you capture people and give them the info they’re looking for quickly and easily. You can still share stories and go into more detail, but you want to organize it into takeaways for your readers.
You Do The Writing
I’ve run into a ton of entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to add a blog to their social strategy. Their first thought is often that they want to hire a ghostwriter to write the articles so that all they have to do is edit. It makes sense. We’re busy people. But I would STRONGLY discourage you from doing this. The whole point of a blog is to show your knowledge as a business. If we’re learning about what a ghostwriter knows, you’re kind of defeating the purpose. I will be the first person to tell you that a blog is a lot of work, but aren’t all good things? Eventually, you can work in guest bloggers and create post series, but in the beginning, you need to make sure that it’s solely your voice that people are getting to know.
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