So, you've gotten your new blog all set up using our GETTING STARTED GUIDE, but you're still looking for some blogging tips? Look no further!
Blog regularly. This is the most important piece to a successful blog. There isn't a magic frequency that works for everyone, but the important thing is to pick a frequency and then stick to it. It could be twice a week, once a week, or twice a month. We recommend no less than 2-3 posts/month, the more often the better. Choose a frequency that fits your business and your schedule. You may even want to hire an intern or an assistant to blog for you!
A great way to keep up with blogging regularly is to utilize BLOG POST SCHEDULING. This way, you can write a handful of posts all at once and have them post automatically throughout that week or month.
Use both text and images in your Blog posts, but not too much or too little of either. A good blog post will have a good balance of images and text. A blog post with a huge block of text feels overwhelming for someone to read, but at the same time, a blog post with one line of text then 50 images may be confusing or boring. Instead, use text and images to support each other and create an engaging post.
Incorporate videos when appropriate to add interest and engagement. See THIS ARTICLE for help with adding a video to a blog post.
Share on social media. It is a good idea to use your existing social media accounts to promote your Blog. For example, instead of posting a sneak peek of a session in a Facebook status, why not create a blog post about the session and post a link to the article on your Facebook page? This is a great way to drive views to your Blog and make your social media work for you. Its great to have lots of engagement on your social media accounts, but its even better if those viewers are accessing your website to engage.
There are many tools, free and paid, that can help you with posting your blog post links to your social media accounts. A few we recommend are DLVR.IT, TWITTERFEED, and HOOTSUITE.
Encourage interaction. This interaction could be through comments, an email list, or links to your social media accounts. A great way to have viewers comment is to ask a question at the end of your posts. For example, if the post is about a recent destination wedding, you could ask "What is your dream destination wedding location?". It can also be very helpful to have a canned "outro" on each of your Blog posts with links to your social media accounts. You could start it out with "to see more behind-the-scenes action, follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook".
Setting up a widget for an email list is easy. CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS.
Use tags appropriately. Tags are meant to categorize your blog posts. They are not necessarily used for SEO (but more on that later). For example, if you're a photographer that does wedding, engagement, and senior photography, you'll want to tag your wedding posts with "Weddings", your engagement posts with "Engagements" and your senior posts with "Seniors". In addition, you may want to tag the venue for your wedding posts, the season for your engagement posts, and the high school and class year for your Senior posts.
This makes it easy for your viewers to jump to a specific category of posts that interests them rather than scrolling through all your posts. For example, if a bride has her venue picked out and wants to see images of other weddings at the same venue, she could click on your tag for that venue to see all your posts of weddings from that venue.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE ASSISTANCE WITH TAGGING.
Keep SEO in mind. While you're writing a blog post, make sure to include keywords and phrases naturally in your text content. For example, if you're a wedding photographer in Greensboro, the beginning of one of your posts may be something like... "It was a beautiful day for a wedding in Greensboro, NC for Joe & Jane. I was so grateful for the opportunity to be their wedding photographer at such a beautiful venue, Such and Such Vineyards...." This incorporates the location and type of service you offer.
Another SEO tip is to add alt tags to your images. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ALT TAGS.
Of course, following all of the above recommendations will help with SEO as well, because they will attract viewers to your blog, which in turn shows Google that you are a reputable and up to date resource, which has the potential to impact your ranking.