Antonia Chitty

Blogging requires persistence: the most successful bloggers provide fresh content for their readers several times a week, every week. It is easier to stick at blogging if you have great motivation, and the motivation for anyone wanting to make money online for blogging should be strong. Your blog is the place where you can connect with your readers. By sharing your thoughts, tips and advice you can position yourself as an expert. What you write is entirely within your control and so you can write for maximum effectiveness.

Beginning your blog

Before you start writing your blog, do some research on the keywords you should be using. Think about how people will phrase their searches and how this could relate to what you write. If you are writing a self help blog, for example, do people search more on ‘I hate my life’, or ‘I’m feeling depressed’, or any number of similar terms?

By working out which phrases will bring in the focussed audience that you need, remember to include your key phrases in the title or early on in your blog posts. ‘7 tips to help you if you hate your life’, or an article entitled, ‘Beating the Black Dog’ that starts, ‘Do you find yourself saying, “I’m feeling depressed” day after day?’ Both use the key terms that you want to be found for high up the page. This makes it easier for people to know that they are on a site that relates to what they are searching for, and works well for search engines too.

How to keep on blogging

Keeping up a blog can seem hard: so many of us start with good intentions but struggle to write every week. To help you keep blogging, why not create a regular series of expert tips that keep your readers coming back for more. Jot down 10 questions you are always answering, the 15 most common issues in your niche area or something along those lines.

Readers love list posts and you could simply create one post, but why not get your readers coming back for more by making a series of posts, one a week, followed by a round up. If you pre-schedule your posts, then you have created blog content for a good few weeks in one afternoon. Just remember to book into your diary when you next need a content creation session. This sort of tips could even then feed into an eBook or eCourse: all building your authority.

Blogging needs passion

Beyond the technical side of creating your blog, you also need to write with passion. As Dale Carnegie said, “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”

Write about your own emotions if you are creating the short of blog that details your own learning journey or how you are working through a particular problem. One of the key differentiators between a blog and other online magazine sites is the personal element: a blog is where you can really let your ‘self’ shine through. It is this that will bring people to subscribe to your feed or newsletter: they like you and what you write. Even the most business-y business blog benefits from a face behind the posts, a known character who writes with a known voice.

Blogging to prove you walk the talk

One of the greatest benefits of blogging is that readers can get to know you and to trust you. To build this trust, every business blogger needs to look carefully at their own comfort levels about sharing. Exposing elements of yourself online builds trust: look at influential blogger Yaro Starek of http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/ who posts regular updates on his online earnings. As someone who is offering courses to help you earn online, it is important that he offers proof that he ‘walks the talk’ and is growing his own earnings using the techniques he is teaching.

How would this apply to your area of expertise? What proof could you offer your readers that you practice what you teach? Once you can build trusting relationships with your readers, they will start to buy from your business.

About the author

Antonia Chitty is an award winning entrepreneur and author of a number of business books. She specialises in helping women business owners succeed.

About the company

ACE Inspire helps business owners learn more about social media and creating strategies to drive sales.

Want to get started blogging for your business? Join the ACEBlogger eCourse. It cost you nothing and takes you from blogging beginner to brilliant blogger with easy eLessons every week.

www.aceinspire.com