June 26, 2013

Content Is King: Tips for Better Blogging - Bonnie Way

I started my blog seven years ago as a way to encourage myself to write.  My blog gave me a place to put my writing and an audience (I hoped) to read my writing.  Since then, my blog has changed and grown as I've learned more about blogging and as blogging and social media have themselves changes.  Amid all the changes of the blogging world, however, one thing has stayed the same: Content is king.

As writers who are bloggers, we have the ability to offer quality, well-written content to our readers.  As writers who are Christians, we have a further call to excellence in our writing, whether that writing is a poem or a novel or a short blog post.  With that in mind, here are a few resources I've found that have helped me to be a better blogger.

10 Must-Have Blog Elements
Kelli Miller and Crystal van Tassel have created an excellent series of videos called #LearnToBlog.  You can find their videos on YouTube or on Crystal's blog.  I highly recommend taking the hour to watch "10 Must-Have Blog Elements," which are applicable for any blogger.



Use Keywords Effectively
Another video by Crystal and Kelli explains how to use keywords well on your blog.  This is important for any blogger who wants to drive more traffic to their blog, but especially for authors who are attempting to write in a certain niche.  Use these tips to research the keywords related to your book and then work at crafting blog posts around those keywords to improve your search engine ranking with Google for those keywords. 



Great Photos Help Great Content
Today's social media is increasingly becoming photo-driven, especially with the rise of Pinterest.  Great photos can help any blog post stand out more.  Check out my post on using photos with your blog for more tips.



Share Your Great Content
Writing great content is a great start, of course, but people also have to find your content.  One way to do this is by linking up with other bloggers.  Many bloggers host linkies where you can leave a link to your blog post and visit the other bloggers who've also linked up to leave comments on their posts.  A few linkies that I recommend include:

What is the best tip you've received about blogging?  Where you do you go to learn more about blogging?

~ © Bonnie Way 

12 comments:

  1. Bonnie... you've shown us that content is king by your excellent post. Great information and links.

    I'm taking notes!




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  2. Thank you so much Bonnie for sharing wth us this wealth of information on blogging.

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  3. Great information! I learn something new every single day. Who knew blogging was so complicated :)

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  4. Thanks, Bonnie. I have lots to learn about blogging, so I appreciate your pointing me in good directions. I will dig into this soon.

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  5. I'm such a newbite in the blogging world, So I really appreciate your tips. I'm currently on the search to learn as much as I can about SEO / keywords, so I will check out the youtube that you recommended.

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  6. Thanks for this practical info - I'd never heard of the photo tweaking thingy and the link is now resident in my browser bookmarks. Very helpful blog post!

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  7. Thanks for these blogging resources, Bonnie. Now to find time to watch the videos!

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  8. Great post. I am on my way to check out those links now!

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  9. Great tips!! I need to focus on keywords a little better and there's definitely still lots I'm learning along the way!! Thanks for sharing :)

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  10. Thanks for sharing this! I have already watched the keywords tutorial, I will have to check out the others as well.

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  11. This post is sensational Bonnie! I need these tutorials and frankly everyone can benefit.

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