Blogging is becoming an essential tool to get your brand out there. A brand can be a business, a group or even a single person. A blog is a great platform for people to display their passions, interests and talents. Writing good content is a great way to get noticed. I have myself been contacted by a company i have commented on. It is not bad to be in disagreement with a campaign or project by a third party as long as it is backed up with facts and accurate insights. So here are my Top 10 blogging tips:

1: Write in the Now
There is no point writing about something that people have no interest in like the Y2K bug. Nobody is looking for that information so try and make your posts current and something people will have interest in reading.

2: Well written content
If you have found a topic that is interesting, don’t blow it by talking crap. Don’t rush into writing, plan and research what you will write. People will bounce pretty quickly from a poorly written article with bad spelling.

3:Be patient
Don’t assume your well written current post will start gaining traffic after 5 min, sometimes it does for example when I wrote a post about the Hunky Dory Rugby Ad. It rocketed. Other posts take time. My post on Google TV Ireland is more of a slow burner but continues to gain readers.

4:Images
Images and also Alt Texts are important to include when possible in posts. They not only make your post easier on the eye, they also can be a good way of driving traffic if the images become ranked in Google images.

5:Use your social media contact web
Twitter for example is a good way of announcing a new post. The key is a catchy tag line that you use. It has to get people attention and stand out. I have circa 170 followers so instantly you are reaching them. If they retweet and then their followers retweet (if the post is that good), your reach becomes huge. Certain ping outlets can also work like pingout but I am not sure the traffic quality is great.

6:Have a theme
I think all bloggers should have a theme to their blog whether it be travel, marketing, cars etc. This will help you increase your return readers. It also increases the chances a visitor will read more than one article as they are of a similar theme.

7:Use Keywords
This is more of an SEO consideration but also very import for all bloggers to know of. For example this post is about blogging for bloggers. I use the term blog and variants of the word on purpose. The keyword density in a post should increase the chances of it ranking higher for that term. If I write a blog post about airplanes and never mention airplane once in the post the chances are Google when scanning the post will not realise what the post is about which is disastrous.

8:Links
Including links to external sources gives integrity to your posts and shouldn’t be excluded. If further information about your post can be found elsewhere, then post a link to it. Links are also a good way of bringing the user around your blog or site. If you can get each visitor to read two or even three posts you are doing a great job.

9: Track Visitors
This can be done via the plug ins suggested by wordpress or through a Google Analytics account. I am sure Blogger have something as well to track post views, referring sites etc.

10: Guest Posts
Try and get your friends and family to write guest posts for your blog. It is a great source of fresh content. They may be writing about something huge that you aren’t familiar with or just don’t like.

Putting it all together is tough but lets see how many I have included in this post.
√1: Write in the Now – Blogging have never been bigger, anyone can easily set up their own blog for free and you can be sure there is a good blog covering every subject.

√2: Well written content – That is for other people to decide

√3:Be patient – I am always patient with posts as I am a quite experienced blogger at this point.

√4:Images - I have included a blogging image to go with my post about blogging tips.

√5:Use your social media contact web – if you follow me on www.twitter/will_egan you will see I tweeted this post after publishing it.

√6:Have a theme – As you will see through all my posts, the theme of my blog is marketing and almost all posts will fall into that category.

√7:Use Keywords – You will find words like blog, bloggers, blogging littered throughout this post to ensure Google knows what my post is about and places it in the right place.

√8:Links – I have included links to some of my other posts to encourage people to traverse my blog.

√9: Track Visitors – I track visitors daily through wordpress and also analytics. It is important to know if a post has become so big it needs a follow up post.

10: Guest Posts – This is a post I wrote and so cannot be a guest post.