How to blog right
Know your people, love them hard
IT MIGHT SEEM OBVIOUS BUT LET ME TELL YOU MOST PEOPLE MISS THE POINT
OK, FIRST UP YOUR BLOG IS NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT YOU.
Read that again. It’s not about you! No need to perform, or show off or get in to self indulgent navel gazing.
Sure, you want your people to get to know you and your cute little quirks (like how I think out loud and have a marshmallow addiction) but it’s always ALL about your clients/community. I know that sounds bonkers right, the blog is about me, I’m writing it, aren’t I? Well yes, but hear me out. You really need to stop and think, what do my people want help with? What are they asking for? What do they love and what stresses them out? Make them smile and say
“Oh I love that neurodiverse lunatic with all my heart, she’s like my real life Bridget Jones, she gets me!”
Sure, people are nosy and like to know where you get your coffee from but what value are you really giving them? Information? Life advice? A smile and a laugh so they get to know you better? Your blog should never be a self-indulgent diary entry (unless you’re a therapist and it helps people!) or a shameless plug of your services. If you can answer a pain point for your people then you’re half way to blogging success.
What about Google Keywords & SEO?
YES FOR SURE THAT’S ALL IMPORTANT STUFF, SO I’LL HELP YOU OUT!
Once they have a website my clients want to know ‘how to blog right’ like, what’s the magic formula? Well, be human first before you get stuck in stuffing keywords into titles but if you can weave keywords in then that’s going to help you in Google search listings. I always show clients how to use their analytics in Squarespace or Google Analytics to track how people are finding you. What keywords are they using? For me, it’s usually website design or branding but I find that I attract creatives, yogis, HSP’s & spiritual folks so you can bet that me blogging about these things will also help with my SEO and being seen by my ideal clients.
Make sure your blog URL is like a sausage dog, short and sweet.
So avoid /how-to-burn-sage-to-cleanse-your-space your URL should be www.mysite.com/smudge Short and sweet. You want to make sure all your SEO is set up so that your page descriptions are specific and that you choose an engaging image for social sharing purposes. It breaks me to see someone sharing a blog (which is great) and the image that shows up is a blurry logo and a generic sentence that Google bots have grabbed at short notice! Don’t let that be you. I don’t want that for you, you’re better than that, ok?
Once you’ve written your kick ass blog you make it live and pour yourself a scotch & high five your imaginary lockdown buddy? You’ve stuck it on Insta and Facebook so that’s it, job done right? Eleven people liked it and your Aunty shared it. It’s not quite the viral success you predicted. Cue slumped posture, heavy sighs and a spiral downward into a shouty internal rant “I’m doing everything, working night and day and nothing works! What a waste of time”.
Just stop and breathe yogi, have you shared it in the places where your ideal clients hang out? Your article on How Yoga helps kids with Autism, did you share it with schools, parent forums, your friend who’s nephew was just diagnosed, help groups, did you link to it in your monthly newsletter & ask a local mental health charity to feature it? There’s probably so many places you could share your blog, think laterally about your reach, then get posting.
Latte length
THE IDEAL LENGTH IS NOT A WORD COUNT, IT’S THE TIME IT TAKES TO READ WHILST SIPPING YOUR LATTE.
Like it or not we live in a very disposable culture…please don’t make me buy you a reusable coffee cup. I hate disposable coffee cups, eugh the plastic and waste packaging is vile! I digress. What I mean is people generally don’t have a long attention span. Trust me, the irony of someone with diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder writing that statement is not lost on me. But it is the truth. We are a distracted species! So for me (who rarely reads anything to the end, in fact who am I kidding, I never read anything to the end!) I would definitely say less is more, like 500-700 words…but obviously that’s not responsible brand expert advice. Google likes 2000 words of rich content to pick up plenty of key words and rank you highly for search. So befriend Google and then everybody is happy. So more is more in that case. I realise I’m contradicting myself here and I’m not just padding to get my keyword count up! Let’s just say some people love to write war and peace and find it super easy to churn out a cheeky dissertation on a Saturday morning but personally I don’t have time for that! I would say that 1000 words is great. So stick with that. Well, let’s be honest, any words are better than none, but if we’re going for best practices (which I kind of am in this blog post!) I’d say 1000 words has a nice ring to it. Oh and we all love plenty of pictures and paragraphs. Vary your headings and font sizes, pull out quotes and use loads of gorgeous images that are on-brand for you.
Obviously a sausage dog in a knit sweater is going to be gold dust in keeping your readers’s attention for longer, wouldn’t you say?
Any text that you bold, call out as a quote or make into a heading will say to Google this is important, pay attention. So apparently I’m going to rank highly for sausage dog knitting patterns. Geez, see what I do for you guys to illustrate a point?
Be niche & nice
THERE’S A FORMULA
Final point to mention is that you probably can’t think of what to blog about past the first 2 or 3 posts because you’re thinking too wide. So you’re a yoga teacher so best blog about yoga, right? But yoga is a pretty deep subject! What makes you unique? Niche down. The more specific you can be about your brand, the easier the blog posts will bubble up. Maybe you’re an online homewares store that specialises in sustainable, vegan products, that immediately makes it easy to know what interests your readers.
The final thing I’d like to add just from a good karma perspective is to be nice. Soulless selling is actually really easy but it doesn’t feel good. We can write blogs about things we know will be popular and will generate ‘success’ in terms of engagement…BUT…is what your sharing sustainable, is it leaving the world in a better place? Is a twenty three year old in a bikini blogging about how she made it rich really helping the world? Sorry if that makes me sound like a judgmental old cynic, but I do think that blogging is a great opportunity to do some good in the world. I’m a believer that we have a responsibility to tell important stories and spread positive information.
Let me know if anything I’ve said here resonates or helped you out? I’m a simple creature, I need praise and chocolate to function, so validation does help me keep writing.
Did you even read to the end?! Aww I love that you did. Thanks lovely, Becs x
