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:

• Fellowship Fridays at Christian Mommy Blogger
• Cozy Book Hop and Cozy Reading Spot at Reading List
• Sunday Stillness hosted at Inscriber Janis Cox's blog
• Top 10 Tuesday at Many Little Blessings

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

~ © Bonnie Way