I was up bright and early to participate in a phone training with my social media publicist. The topic of the day was blogging. Perhaps you noticed the change in the photo at the head of my post? That was one of the things I learned. Laugh if you will, but I’ve been using the default image for the blog theme provided by WordPress. I didn’t know how to change it.
So what were the tips I received today?
1. Publish a blog at least once a week if you want to stay on people’s radar. It’s something I already try to do at some point during my weekends.
2. Use tags (keywords). These help promote your blog through search engine optimization (SEO). Someone was in the office this week to share that content management is more important than SEO, however, if you are using keywords in the body of your postings, they amount to the same thing. They are words that relate to your brand.
3. To keep your blog fresh, monitor the trends and incorporate them into your posts.
4. Include clear take away information in your posts. Ever notice how many people include numbered lists — like my title today? It’s a popular way of doing this while increasing credibility.
5. You can customize your site by changing the subtitle at the top of your posts or changing your picture – just as we did today.
6. Under the Appearance tab (at least on WordPress) is a tab called “widgets.” They provide ways to link your blog to other social media and to other sites. For example, we were able to link my blog to the place where anyone can purchase “Rainbows Over Ruins” and my website.
7. Do you see the hyperlinks in the above paragraph? That’s something else learned today. Instead of seeing ugly URL addresses, you can see relevant words, click on them and be taken directly to those locations.
8. You can also add additional pages in addition to the blog page. Information about me, about the site, about the book pages are all examples of what could be included by adding pages.
9. Want to add pictures to your blog? I tried to do it a few weeks ago and failed. But the secret has been revealed. There’s an add media tab at the top above each blog post.
Simple, but useful to know if you are in the dark as I way.
Have fun creating your blogs,
Susan
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