Tips on writing a blog

What should I blog about?
When you set up your site you need to consider what your goals are for the site. Are you writing for your family and friends or do you want to make a profit? Is it a niche site or are you just blogging about anything that comes into your head?
When [...]

What should I blog about?

When you set up your site you need to consider what your goals are for the site. Are you writing for your family and friends or do you want to make a profit? Is it a niche site or are you just blogging about anything that comes into your head?

When blogging, the most important thing is that the blog is interesting to read and you keep the blog updated regularly. I have set up a number of sites which were going great in the first few months when I was updating regularly and I thought these users would keep coming back, but when I stopped posting on a regular basis my users dried up and I went from a few hundred a day to about 20 a day. Your content must also be well written (or at least not so bad that users are turned off).

1. Be useful
Writing something which is of use for others is extremely important. This is why ‘How to’ posts and ‘How to’ E-books are so popular.  If you are good at something which you take for granted, try writing about it in a step by step way to explain how to do it. You’ll be surprised how many people don’t know how to do certain things and how difficult it can be to find easy to understand explanations.

2. Write for humans
What I mean by this is that many people write about what they think people will read and end up writing in an unnatural way in order to try and drive traffic to their site. You are better off writing in a natural way for your human audience.

3.  Be passionate and unique
Being passionate means you are saying what you really want to say without holding back. Users appreciate honesty and passion so don’t be scared to write what is on your mind and in your own way. If you copy what others are saying without saying anything unique, users wont come back. Google also recognizes uniqueness which can really help your site ranking in the long run.

4. Be controversial
Being controversial is a great way to grab attention. By being controversial, people will often link to your site because they have something to say in response to what you are saying. People are also more likely to comment on your site which also helps drive more traffic.

5. Be Funny
Being funny is a great way to bring back readers on a regular basis and also helps your readers put a more human face to your blogs. Funny posts are probably more often linked to bland, boring posts.

6. Give credit where credit is due
If you use information from another site (e.g. photo or text), you should give credit and a link to that site. Giving credit like this will not damage your site ranking if you are linking to sites which are relevant to the topic you are writing about. In fact, I have heard that google actually rewards you if you are responsible and link to sources which are relevant to what you are writing about.