Blogging will help your business grow. Plus blogging and social media go hand in hand.

Even if you don’t consider yourself much of a writer, you can still share helpful tips related to your industry in a blog. By doing so, you provide information of value to your current and potential customers.

Read the blogs and newsletters of other business owners. Doing so will give you ideas for how to best approach blogging for you, your company and your industry.

After blogging regularly for nearly a year, here are some things I have learned along the way.

Joyce’s Blogging Tips:

1. Stick to one topic. Avoid the temptation to blog about a variety of topics, or you risk losing your readership.
2. Find your blogging voice and use it consistently. Some bloggers have a very professional style. Others are more relaxed and even humorous at times. Find a voice that fits you.
3. Blog regularly. Even once a week is better than not at all or just blogging sporadically. People will start looking forward to your blog, so don’t disappoint them.
4. Add visuals. Create your own visuals, find them for free on the Internet, and/or purchase them from companies like http://www.istockphoto.com/
5. Find a blogging platform that works for you. There is a lot to be said for having a blog that is incorporated into your company website. My personal preference is having both my website and blog through WordPress.com.
6. Keep your sentences short and your paragraphs short. People skim blog posts, so you need to adjust your writing style to account for that.
7. Put in at least one heading within your text. Doing so helps to guide the reader through your blog.
8. Use a bulleted or numbered list (like this one). These kinds of lists help with readability.
9. Make the blog post title attention catching, as well as the first sentence of your blog.
10. Include keywords relevant to your industry in your blog. For example, being I am a social media tutor, I should include those three words at least once in every blog post.
11. Share your blog post to the social media sites you use, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and whatever other ones you may be on.

 Don’t Give Up

Sometimes a blogger gets discouraged because there aren’t comments on their blog posts. Or they notice that people don’t read the Facebook posts that include the link to their blog posts.

I have read that it can take up to six months of regular blogging before you get some serious traction with your blog.

Remember that each blog post has its own URL. All that fresh information you are sending out into cyberspace will help to raise your visibility in the search engines.

Time to Hear From You

What have been your experiences with blogging? What are your frustrations? What have you changed? What works for you?

Joyce Feustel, Founder of Boomers’ Social Media Tutor, helps people relatively new to social media to become more effective and comfortable in their use of this medium.  Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com