10 Blogging Tips

Have you thought about starting a blog, or are new to blogging? Here are a few tips to get you started in the right direction. This post will not cover the technical aspects of setting up a blog, host, templates, and such. It's more of blog writing tips.

1. Determine What to Blog About

Blog about what your customers or followers are interested in. This doesn't mean you can't write about something other than products, in our case. 

The Trendy Tree blog is written with our crafting and decorating customers in mind.

For instance, if you. have a recipe blog, readers may not want to know about your latest vacation adventure. But, they might enjoy reading out the fantastic food you found while on vacation.

Don't be afraid to share some personal posts with your readers. Especially if you are in the market of selling something. People buy from sellers they "know, like, and trust." 

2. Write The Same Way You Talk

You've probably heard the saying "walk the walk." It's the same with blogging, don't hide your personality. Write the way you talk. Let it show through your writing. Not saying to use bad grammar or too much slang))) Remember, what might be slang to you, might not be understandable by someone else in a different part of the country.

3. Length of Post Should Be around 2,000 Words

To me, this is a rather long blog post. But according to some resources, a blog post of 2,100 to 2,400 words has the best chance of ranking in SEO (search engine optimization).

All your posts will not be that long, and you could have some even longer. If you're ever in doubt of really how long your post is, you can check the word count. 

4. Use Great Images

I like to start a blog post off with an image of the finished project if it's a tutorial or something like that.  That way the reader knows right up front what they are getting. 

Now, I'm sure you've seen recipe posts that have a great image of delicious food, and then you have to scroll and scroll to find the recipe! Well, there is a reason for that.

The more you scroll the more advertising will be placed in front of you. That's just a fact of life nowadays. And we use advertising too on our blog. It does help support the time and effort it takes in maintaining the blog.

If you don't need images of a specific product or project, search out free images. Don't grab and image off the internet! You have to be careful of copyrighted images. Some free image resources are Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay just to name a few.

5. Write Posts that Solve Problems for your Readers

Readers are searching for information. They want to find an answer to a question or maybe looking to learn something new. Maybe they are just searching for new ideas. Blogging is a great way for you to help them out.

If you're unsure about topics for your blog, use the resource "Answer the Public." It's a great place to find out what people are searching for. Just put in your topic and review the questions that people are asking.

For example, I put in "how to make a bow with ribbon." This resulted in 80 responses. So from those responses I could choose any number of topics to blog about: how to make a bow for a wreath; how to make a bow for a package; how to make a bow for a Christmas tree and so on.

6. Narrow Your Topic

Stay focused and don't go off chasing rabbits! See.... some slang may not be understandable to someone else. Chasing rabbits around here means you are not staying on point or you're going off in all different directions. Keep focused on your topic and don't venture off blogging about other things.

If you have other posts that relate, list them toward the bottom of your post with links. Including links make it easier for the reader to go deeper into your blog if they are interested.

For instance, if you want to blog about social media, pick one and blog about it. If you list too many things, your reader will get bored and move on. Have you gone already? 

7. Keywords Keywords Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases people use to search for what they are looking for. 

Use keywords in your title, in the body of the post, in the alt tags of your images.

Note: Always name your images and never use the dsc00012345 or similar number that your phone or camera gives your images.

Rename them. Name them something relevant to your post. This will improve your SEO.

Be careful when coming up with "cute" names for projects or products. An example that comes to mind is a product we used to sell that had cute names. It was mesh, but the names were something like: Christmas Elf, Sugar & Spice, Frosted Snowflake. People are NOT going to search for mesh in that manner. They are going to search for red and green mesh, orange mesh, white and silver mesh, and so forth. 

8. Market Your Blog

Share your posts to social media. Put it on Facebook, pin your images to Pinterest and Instagram, and share on Twitter. There are more ways to share, but these are the most common. Send out an email with your new post. Oh wait, we need to talk about an email list.

Make your images easy to pin. I usually prepare all my images for the blog post before I write the first word. Most of the images will be 1000 x 1500 (long pin format) for Pinterest. Depending on the project, there may be some landscape or square views too.

This makes pinning your images to Pinterest so much easier when you're finished. Just pin them to Pinterest and make sure you have your blog post link in there along with a pin description and a couple of tags. 

9. Collect Email.

Having a blog is a great way to collect email addresses. Use a plugin or app that collects email when readers subscribe to your blog.

I'll have to say, right now, our blog isn't exactly how we want it. The Shopify blog platform needs some improvements, but we're working on that.

Collect addresses when you can and remind readers to subscribe and follow.

10. Respond to Comments

Respond to all comments in a timely manner. You want that person to know that you appreciate their reading your post and you want them to come back! By responding to comments, it reinforces to them that you are really a person and not a machine just cranking out content. Answer their questions and give suggestions. Be patient of those naysayers or negative comments. Just thank them for visiting and then move on. Not everyone will like what you have to say or think that your project was great. Develop a thick skin))) But I'm sure you will find, that the positive comments by far, outweigh the negative one. 

Set your settings where you can approve any comments before they are posted.

Thanks for visting our blog and if you have any questions or comments please reach out to us. Leave a Comment