4.6 Embrace the Online Presence

Blogging falls within the world of social media, which means it works best as a two-way street. Successful blogs thrive as part of a community and this requires conversations with readers and relationships with other bloggers. Thanking readers for comments, answering questions and commenting on other blogs, especially those on similar topics or in the same geographic area.

Cross-marketing a blog with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or other social media profiles drives readership. Dekker’s @breakfastwithnick Instagram account highlights food images for his more than 12,000 followers and Powers posts fashion and travel photos for the 17,000+ followers on her @anexplorersheart Instagram, which drives additional readers to their blogs. Powers also considers other strategic ways to share her content, giving the example that a post about a small town in Ohio might benefit from a tweet that tags the visitor’s bureau and gets them to share the post.

Powers also recommends thinking strategically about the keywords used in a posts (the words and phrases that will make your post pop up when potential readers are searching online). She suggests looking at where those potential keywords rank on Google and whether there is strong competition for this topic.

“You need to find the sweet spot – a topic that is popular enough that people will want to read what you wrote, but also a topic that isn’t too popular, so you can get on the first page or two of Google,” she explains. Powers notes that Google is looking for the best content out there, so you need to position yourself as an “expert” on the topic you’re sharing.

For more details on keyword research and how to use keywords to optimize blog content for better search engine results, take a look at this VEIO design blog post: How to do Keyword Research for your Next Blog Post.