As an author who writes for children, are you also a blogger with questions about what strategies you should incorporate into your blog? If so, in this post I gathered information from Celebration Web Design’s website to help answer some of those questions.

Celebration Web Design is a website development company committed to providing the best business, ministry and non-profit website development and marketing services available. Several years ago, while serving on the faculty of the Write His Answer conference, I attended a workshop given by Jonathan Shank, CEO Graphic Design Programing. In the workshop, Jonathan discussed effective strategies for websites and blogs. The following helpful information about writers and their blogs comes from Celebration’s webpage.

Relationship First in Blogs

In general, the posts that work best are not overly polished or carefully branded. They are honest. They sound like the author. They share a story, a lesson learned, or something the writer is still thinking through. Readers do not connect with perfection. They connect with clarity and sincerity. If a blog sounds like it could have been written by anyone, it usually does not work. If it sounds like you, it usually does.

Have you found that to be true in the blog posts you read? Do you prefer sincerity over polish? Do you look for individual voice in the blogs you follow?

If you took a post either from my personal blog, or from my monthly Write2Ignite blog posts, and compared them to any of the other blogs you read, I hope you could tell which posts are mine because of my individual style. I imagine you hope the same for your blog posts.

Five Tips for Blog Posts

Joan at Celebration says:

• Write the way you talk, not the way you think a blog is supposed to sound.
• Share something you have learned, not something you are trying to prove.
• Keep posts focused on one idea, not everything you know.
• Post consistently, even if that means once a month instead of once a week.
• Let your posts point outward to readers, not inward to yourself.

Joan continued with why bloggers should put the above five tips into practice.

There is also a practical, technical side to this. Search engines reward consistency and relevance over time. Posting regularly gives your website fresh content, more pages to index, and more ways for readers to find you. Links from other sites matter for the same reason conversations matter in real life. They are signals of trust. When your work is shared, referenced, or linked to by others, it tells search engines your content is worth paying attention to. When this happens naturally through relationships, it works far better than trying to force it.

I believe consistency in posting is important. On my personal blog, I post twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday. When I first began blogging, I posted three times a week. That became too much, since I also blogged monthly for Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference and Inspire a Fire, then later, added blogging for W2I.

Five Ways to Link to Your Blog

Joan also gave bloggers the following suggestions for linking back to your blog.

• Guest articles where you teach or encourage, not promote.
• Podcast or interview appearances that link back to your site.
• Conference involvement that leads to speaker or contributor pages.
• Resources you create that others naturally reference.
• Being consistently present in communities you already care about.

On an additional post from Celebration Web Design, Jonathan Shank gave the following three strategies to make your content easier to find, help build lasting trust, and give readers a reason to come back again and again.

That’s what we all want, right?

Write posts that directly answer the questions your audience is already asking.

• Choose one real question someone might actually ask, and build the post around answering it.
• State the answer near the top so readers immediately know they are in the right place.
• Use clear headings, short paragraphs, and thoughtful structure that helps both people and technology understand your message.

Support your ideas with credible, trusted sources so readers know they can rely on you.

• Credible sources reassure readers that you’ve done your homework and that your words are built on more than opinion alone.

Revisit content that’s already working to keep it accurate, relevant, and valuable.

• You don’t need to publish nonstop to grow your audience. Sometimes the fastest growth comes from improving content you already have. Content that once performed well can fall behind if facts, trends, or examples become outdated.
• Update dates, data, and examples.
• Improve the headline.

I like this last point. I’ve blogged for multiple years, and some of my current subscribers haven’t seen my earlier posts. Revisiting and refreshing those older posts makes sense to me.

Your Turn

If you are a blogger, which of these strategies do you already incorporate in your blog? Which strategies would you like to add?

I wish you well,

Sandy

Here’s what you can expect from me. In my posts, you’ll find words of encouragement for writers, book reviews, and discussions on the craft of writing. I am a former elementary school teacher, regular contributor to Guideposts devotional books, and a conference speaker. I write articles, devotions, and stories for adult and children’s publications. You can find me every Tuesday and Thursday at www.sandykirbyquandt.com. Please stop by.

Photo courtesy Pixabay.