While each blogger has his or her list of priorities and norms to popularize the posts, there are a few basics things that one cannot simply ignore. The five critical elements that hold a blog together are proper planning, catchy content, attractive design, efficient marketing and proactive engagement with readers. We shall know about each of these aspects in greater depth so that your blogging exercise is successful.

As we have grasped in the previous post, a site owner should be clear about the goal behind serving a blog. Are you trying to attract more clicks? Are you looking to develop a relationship with prospects? Are you keen to push sales or are simply looking to inform customers about your company? Having a specific and well defined goal for your blog will help in defining the rest of your strategy. Here are a few more tips for effective blogging:

1. The copy should be simple and well presented. It should be entertaining, informative and interesting. Break it up in smaller paragraphs, with bullets and catchy headings. Keyword-rich titles are useful from optimization perspective. Add images, wherever required. Audio-visual tools can make a post more appealing.
2. Ensure that the intensity and quality of a post is maintained right through so that your genuine reader will want to read it till the end and revisit the site for more updates in future. Stay away from jargon. Importantly, the topics should be relevant to your domain. The key is no to be stuffy or dull.
3. A blog is not merely a self-promotional communication. Ideally, it should inform people about the broader industry trends, so that they see it as a reliable resource for more insights. Keep the following four E’s in mind while writing a blog: Educate, Engage, Enrich and Entertain. For this, it is vital to know your target audience.
4. Your blog design should be attractive. Customize the templates and menus so that readers find it easy to explore different topics of their choice. Categories and tags help them in picking a post. Ensure that the navigation is simple and the pages are easy to locate.
5. Readers like to identify with a blog writer. It also enhances credibility of the whole exercise. Proper contact details as well as an option for questions and feedback help readers interact with you.
6. Make it a point to blog on your own domain. Owning a domain name will help you get more traffic. A blog should be run under ‘yourdomain.com/blog’ subdirectory instead of ‘blog.yourdomain.com’ to be ranked higher by search engines. People tend to remember the former better than blog.yourdomain.com
7. An optimal posting schedule works well since users know when to expect a new post. An editorial calendar will help you plan better. The more regularly and frequently you post, the more sustained traffic your blog will attract. Of course, quality content on consistent basis is more important than frequency.