Need A little help with your

Blog Writing

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed many people trying to get blog owners posting to their blogs a bit more frequently. In fact that is why I wrote my last blog post, to give the new bloggers a little nudge of encouragement.

Since then Steve King and Jacinta Dean and have thrown down the gauntlet and started the “100 Blog Comment Challenge” AKA #100comments. Basically those that take up the challenge have to write a blog post and try to generate 100 comments for that post.

Personally I think this is a fantastic opportunity for every blog owner to get in the mix and get to know each other. This is exactly how you build relationships, with like minded people, that can become beneficial to us all for the long term success. How many times have you heard the saying “I don’t, but I know a man (or woman) that does”?

For my contribution to the challenge I’ve decided to continue the subject of blogging from my last post and try to offer some advice on how to construct a blog post. Now I’m no master blogger, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have some experience and it is this experience that I want to pass on to those that are new to it and may be struggling to try and keep their momentum going.

Did you notice that I said construct a blog post rather than write one? Well the reason I said that is because I think it is true for the new blogger. You see once you have experience and some success you will be able to write about it, but until then you have to construct your posts and to do that you need to research the subject that you’re writing about.

Researching a subject isn’t very hard. You obviously have a computer and an internet connection so visit Google and enter the subject you wish to research and forums in quotation marks, for example “weight loss forums”. I’ve just searched for that term and found 78,100 results. From there you enter some of these forums and begin to absorb the information, obviously making notes as you go.

The easiest way of making notes is to start a swipe file. A swipe file is a folder containing the notes that you have copied from these forums. You simply open notepad and paste in the information that you are using for your research and save it to the swipe folder. Note: You must never copy the swipe file into your post as that is plagiarism and illegal. You simply use it for researching your chosen subject.

Once you have done the research and gathered the information for the blog post write a draft copy in your word processor. I use open office writer as it spell checks everything for me. Don’t keep going back and correcting your spelling, do that all at once when you’ve finished writing the complete draft.

Next is keyword research, which may sound daunting but it really isn’t anything to worry about. Visit Google Keyword Tools and you will see the following screen:

Please click the image to see full size.

The trick now is to find alternative keyword phrases with a high search rate but low results. To do this you want to check the term on google again, but be sure to put the term in quotation marks, this will instruct google to search for the exact term and they will show you the results accordingly.

For Example:
“quick weight loss” produced 968,000 results, which is to much competition.
“weight loss advice” produced 159,000 results, much less competition.

You want less competition to have a better chance of being found by the search engines.

Now that you have your keyword phrases go back to your draft blog post and enter the keywords into your post, so as to have a flow of words that make sense.

Spell check the post now, and also check the grammar. When you’re happy with it save your work and come away from it for a little while. If you can, get someone else to proof read it. I always ask my wife or daughter to read all of my writings as fresh eyes tend to read it all and will spot any mistakes. When I try to proof read them I tend to speed read as I know what is coming and I do tend to miss my errors. If possible leave it over night and have another read in the morning, prior to posting it on your blog.

Please Note: Different people have different opinions about how many words should be in a blog post. Some say it should be between 200 and 400 words, while others say it should be at least 700 words. Who am I to say who’s right and who’s wrong, after all its their work on their blogs. For my blog posts I aim for 400 words but I will keep typing until I have given my readers the full story and that can sometimes be close to a thousand words. If the post is interesting and has a flow to it people will read it to the end. If, however, it has no flow and is hard to read people will just close the page meaning your efforts are wasted. Please bear this in mind when writing.

Okay, you’ve completed the post and are eager to publish it, so you post it to your blog.

Now you need to let people know that it is online, but before you do that I recommend that you install a plugin called Comment luv. This plugin places the title of your blog visitors last post below their comments, which in turn encourages them to leave comments.

Once you have the plugin installed it’s time to start visiting other blogs and leaving comments for their blog posts. Most blog owners will return the gesture and visit your blog to leave you a comment, especially if they see that you have comment luv installed as they know that it will generate them traffic back to their blogs in the future.

New Bloggers: I hope that you have found this post helpful and that it encourages you to post to your blogs more often. If so please leave me a comment and let me know, I will reply to every comment left.

Established Bloggers: As I said earlier I’m no master blogger, I’m just trying to help others with my experience. If you can add your tips to this post and pass on a little help we would be very grateful.

As always I welcome your comments, especially for this post as it is my contribution to the “100 Blog Comment Challenge”. Will I succeed or fail in my quest to reach 100 comments?

That, my friends, is now in your hands.

Please use the tweet buttons as well to send a tweet of this post to your followers.

Until next time, take care.

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Filed under: Blogging • General • Getting Started

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