Uncover the art of successful storytelling and engagement with our comprehensive guide to blogging best practices.

IE 358: From Novice to Pro: Your Roadmap to Blogging Best Practices

Creating Captivating Content

What we really want to understand and be able to put into practice is being able to create captivating content.

Content where we can see a step by step, because we’re offering it for our readers to be able to understand how to create what it is that we’re trying to get them to be able to create.

So whether that is a recipe, a DIY, or you’re trying to give them homeschooling advice, you want to be able to have a way in which you are captivating them with that content so that you are structuring it so that people can read it and understand it.

That’s where the structure of your post comes into play, because your headlines, the way in which you may use bullets or the way in which you organize your questions is going to help them.

You also want to put into place the importance of your blog voice.

Your voice is very important so that you’re able to show the storytelling techniques that you offer.

Your voice is different than anyone else’s out there.

A lot of times when I have people ask me whether blogging is dead.

I always kind of giggle because blogging allows you to be able to give your own unique perspective, and people are always looking for that.

We’re looking for it to be factual.

In other words, for you to be able to back it up and to be able to teach us something in the process, but you have your own voice, the way in which you’re going to tell it, the way in which you’re going to walk us through getting to the complete solution that you offer so you want to make sure that you don’t ever lose your brand voice when you are creating your content.

Navigating SEO and Keywords

The next thing that you want to make sure that you are taking a look at with blogging best practices is navigating SEO and keywords.

I have talked about this on numerous episodes.

Mariah came onto the podcast in episode 351 and we talked about the three most common SEO mistakes that we see.

There’s a lot that goes into this, but when we are looking at SEO, or search engine and optimization, the most important thing that you need to understand is keyword research.

You have to understand how often something is being searched for when you create a post about it, and the only way you can do that is to use a tool that is going to give you that information.

So whether you are using SEMrush, KeySearch, UberSuggest or Keywords Everywhere you want to make sure that you understand how often people are actually searching for the title, the thing that you are going to be writing your content about.

If you call it something silly like love bug fruit cups, and that’s your keyword that you’re using throughout, no one’s searching for that.

It’s something that you made up, and I’m speaking from experience.

You can find love bug fruit cups probably still over on The Melrose Family, even with the new owners, but it didn’t rank well for SEO because there was no search volume for love bug fruit cups.

When I went back and switched it to non-candy Valentine’s Day ideas, now the search volume was there.

So it’s understanding how often people are searching for those keywords, and you have to use a tool in order to do that.

You have to be choosing relevant keywords that have higher visibility, that are going to allow you to get eyes onto your content.

Then when you are creating it, you have to make sure that you are optimizing your meta descriptions, your headers, and your images for search engines, so that as they crawl your site, they’re able to tell exactly what your content is about and who it is meant for.

Visual Appeal

The next piece of what you want to take along for your blogging best practices is to have some visual appeal.

We know that video has become very popular.

It is going to help you if you can create video content that is embedded within your post.

If you can show me rather than just tell me how to do something, it’s going to make it that much easier.

You’re going to have more time on page.

You’re going to have people coming back to you because they see you as the individual resource.

Whether you are using high quality images to do this, or you are using video content, you want to make sure that you have high visual appeal for them.

Engaging with Readers

You are also going to want to make sure with your blogging best practices, that you are engaging with your readers.

You have to give them a way in which they are going to interact with you.

Whether you are doing this, using social media platforms, telling them to “leave me a DM on Instagram, I’ll be able to answer your questions.”

You’ll notice I do that on just about every single one of my episodes because that’s an easy way for you to be able to have engagement and interaction with me.

You also want to be growing your email list.

That is one of the easiest ways that you can have good direct contact into their inboxes, to be able to ask them questions and to be able to provide them with more information.

So when you are creating a blog post, you want to make sure that you are incorporating a related lead magnet, opt-in or freebie in which they are going to want to get, and in exchange for getting it, they give you their email.

Making sure that you have a way in which you are doing that is going to help to engage your readers and keep them coming back.

Consistency and Frequency

Often the next blogger bests practice is going to be consistency and frequency by creating content as consistently as possible.

I’m not telling you, you have to create content five times a a week, but create content so that it’s consistent, so that if you can only get out one blog post in a week, do it.

If you can only get out once every two weeks, just keep it consistent so they know what to expect.

Also that Google starts to understand how often you’re going to be putting out content.

If you can get to a point where you don’t have a ton of content and you can post to your blog twice a week, I would recommend that. That’s going to make it as consistent as possible for your readers and for Google to understand.

I also would recommend that your email be as consistent as possible.

You heard me tell you when we were talking about email marketing statistics in two episodes ago where I talked about the fact that I email my readers Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. It is three times per week.

They know what days they’re coming and they know what to expect.

It helps to create that consistency, so finding ways in which you can do that.

Promoting Your Content

The next blogger best practice is going to be promoting your content.

Finding ways in which you can make sure that you are leveraging the audience that you have.

The first place you need to be doing this is your email marketing.

You need to be growing your email list and sending your readers to your blog posts.

Just because someone has been sent something six months ago does not mean that the new people on your list have read that.

So leverage that content that you have created.

If you are looking for the social media side of things, I would recommend you choose one platform and get really good at it, and then look to potentially bring in a second or third platform.

Once you’re comfortable with the platform then potentially look for someone to hire to be able to take over that platform for you so that you can fully leverage that content and be able to get in front of them.

Whether you’re going to be using Pinterest or you’re going to use Instagram or TikTok, or Threads, whatever it is that you have decided you’re going to want to use, you have a way to leverage it.

Monitoring and Analytics

A very important piece of blogging best practices is making sure that you’re monitoring and taking a look at your analytics because you want to fully understand what content is doing the best for your audience.

What are the emails that they are opening so that you are not just blindly creating content, but instead you are creating content that makes people take action, that engages with you, that correlates into money for your products, your services, the things that you offer.

So really taking a look at and monitoring everything that is going on within your business.

A lot of us are very creative. We don’t like to look at the data, but like we talked about two episodes ago in your email marketing statistics, it’s so important to understand your email stats.

You can’t just blindly decide what’s working if you’re not backing it up with data. So making sure that you understand that.

Evolving Your Blogging Strategy

The last thing that I want to make sure that I talk about is to evolve your blogging strategy with what is happening.

Things change, especially in the blogging world. We went from Google Analytics to GA4 and it was a tech thing, and it was something that a lot of bloggers were very overwhelmed with.

We also have seen new social media platforms pop up that have been something that we thought we needed to be on or may not need it to be on.

You have to be willing to evolve with what is going on.

This is the same thing with AI.

It is a reason that a lot of us are talking about it because it can speed up your process.

I know a lot of people kind of put the brakes on when they hear AI, especially bloggers, because we get the feeling of, oh my goodness, I’m gonna be replaced.

That’s not what I’m telling you to use AI for, and I don’t see that happening because you need a unique perspective.

Google is going to continue to want unique perspectives, and AI is not going to give that.

What AI can do is speed up your process as a blogger in order to create content, not writing the content for you, but giving you the opportunity to brainstorm, outline, and leverage the questions that.

There is a process for blog writing with AI that can save you tons of time.

So be willing to evolve.

Don’t get stuck in your ways of doing things a certain way.

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