With so many amazing arts, heritage and creative blogs out there, how do you make yours stand out? How do you keep people coming back for more, and how do you increase traffic and build a loyal following?
There are many tips and tricks to rock your own creative blog, and by extension yours To raise profile and help you to win more business. Here are my top 20 tips for a successful creative blog, but if you can think of any more, please comment below and help me make this list the best on the web.
Reading: How to create and maintain a successful blog
Get Started
Selecting a blogging platform is your first challenge. There are many free options including WordPress, Tumblr, TypePad, and Blogger. All of them offer free design themes so you can customize your own blog very easy to get started. And if you’re not sure how to use them? There are many online video tutorials on the web – for example, WordPress has its own lesson list to help you get started.
Consider integration
From an SEO perspective, Is it worth integrating your blog into your existing website to create content and make search engines love you even more. After all, SEO (search engine optimization) is all about content. But if you can’t or can’t afford to hire a web developer to do the sorting, start a free blog and make sure you include links to your main site or other links, like your artistic portfolio , insert.
Find a niche
When choosing a creative topic to blog about, try to find a niche. Make your blog extra special and you will please both the search engines and your readers. Try not to be too general and really focus on a technical topic and stick with it. Find your own niche and go into it – just remember to stay on topic.
Write about what you love
Write about something you love, otherwise you don’t show passion in your writing. And if there’s no passion, your content will suffer, so find a topic you’re comfortable with and only write about it. For example, if you’re a museum curator, talk about the industry, emerging trends, and other museums or exhibitions you love. And if you’re a theater director, you can write about industry people you admire or share your workday with your followers.
Provide value
It goes without saying, but if you Don’t If you don’t provide something the public wants, your creative blog will never be a success. Give people what they are looking for and add real value to their web browsing experience. What do I mean? Well, the value shows in the content you post. If your content isn’t valuable, people won’t read it or come back to read more. Really think about what you post and give people what they want.
Focus on marketing
You won’t get anywhere by just starting a blog and hoping that people will come without any marketing effort. You need to actively market your blog and you can do this in a number of ways. You can chat with other bloggers by leaving valuable comments on other people’s blog posts – this will help draw people back to your own site. Or you use the search engines and write about topics that are popular in the search, like this feature. Or you could even offer to contribute to influential ezines or blogs to raise your profile. Whatever you decide to do, just get out there and market yourself like crazy. There’s really no excuse not to.
Encourage interaction
See also: How Much Does it Cost to Develop an Android App?
Get people talking on your blog. Ask them to add their comments on different articles like I did on this post. Encourage interaction wherever possible. Solicit feedback, respond to people’s posts, build a community, and be nice. People love to interact, so be friendly and welcoming.
Make commenting easy
Just keep in mind that there are many reasons people might not comment on your blog posts. It can be anything from easy access to logging a comment to writing about negative things that people don’t want to be a part of. bottom line? Make commenting easily accessible and write about things that get people talking positively. If people can interact on your blog, they will keep coming back.
Don’t worry about negativity
Occasionally you may get the odd negative comment or two on your blog. Don’t let that put you off or put you off blogging. Any comments you are not satisfied with can be deleted or answered positively. Despite what people say, it’s very rare that you’ll be faced with negativity, so don’t worry about it too much.
Don’t be alarmed and believe in yourself
Once you start your blog, it’s only natural to lose confidence in yourself and your writing. Don’t get stage fright and stay tuned! There’s a reason you get so many visitors, so believe in yourself and keep writing amazing content.
Pictures, pictures and more pictures
People love pictures. Some of the most popular art and creative blogs in the world are image-heavy. This is partly because people like to quickly flip through web pages and like to see photos and images that help break up text and add visual interest. When writing a creative blog, images are essential, so provide as many images as possible and give your audience plenty of things to enjoy.
Enable easy readability
Research suggests that people browse the web and scan pages rather than reading every last bit of the copy. Therefore, try to keep your articles as easy and quick to read as possible. If possible, create lists and structure the text. From an SEO point of view, you should provide at least 250 words of text. But it’s also good to stick to that number for your readers – unless of course you’re writing an article like this – in which case add bullets or lists as it will increase people’s attention.
Give your posts meaningful titles
When you think about things to blog about, write articles with meaningful titles: ones that people will search for on search engines and titles that are appealing and are catchy. You want to attract people and pique their curiosity.
Keep it regular
A blog is almost like an online diary and suggests a “regular” focus. Try to keep your blog updated with at least two articles a week. Ideally, you need to be blogging every day, especially if SEO is one of your top priorities. Otherwise, just try to keep things going. And when you go on vacation, make the most of the scheduling tools on your blog so you can auto-publish articles while you’re away from your desk.
Keep Clutter
When Designing Your Blog Blog — either create it from scratch or use one of the free online blogging platforms — try to keep the layout clean, fresh, and uncluttered. Avoid adding lots of unnecessary features. Keep it easy on the eyes and you’ll delight your blog visitors and keep them coming back for more.
Get Social
Don’t neglect social media elsewhere like Twitter and Facebook. Make sure to link this to your blog’s RSS feed and update your followers and fans with your latest post. Twitterfeed is a great tool that automatically publishes your posts to your Twitter and Facebook accounts – great for Twitter but looks a bit spammy for Facebook at the moment. Test everything first and make sure you’re happy with the automatic updates and tweets you post.
Keep an eye on the analytics
Track how they do People landing on your blog and how they find you. You can then customize your blog posts to meet the needs of your readers and make the most of the external sources that really draw people in. If you invest in online advertising, your analytics will also help determine your ROI (return on investment). and whether it works or not. Keep an eye on your web analytics and make sure your blog is performing as well as it should be.
Enable easy following
Place “Following” badges on your blog , wherever possible. For example, on Blogger, you can add a free widget that encourages people to “follow your blog” in their own Google readers. Tumblr has something similar, but that’s already built in. Make sure you offer an easy follow option on your own blog, even if they’re just unique links to your RSS feed.
Get Personal
Reveal Find out more about who you are and who you are in your posts. Your audience will love you for it. People want to follow people, not brands. If possible, add an “About” section and a photo of yourself. By offering a personal touch, you encourage people to like you, and by tapping into their emotions, you encourage loyalty and thus satisfied, returning visitors.
A really great example is Ana Kinsella, a Fashion blogger from Ireland. Her Ripped Knees blog is mixed with a lot of fashion news, but the personal touch is when she posts pictures of her own outfits. Stylebubble is very similar and very popular. Add a personal touch to your own blog.
Spell Checking and Proofreading
Last but not least, before hitting the publish button, it’s important that you check your spelling and Proofread your article again and again. Poor spelling not only ruins your credibility, it also hurts your search engine optimization as the search engines don’t appreciate bad copies. Make sure you review everything before you go live.
This content was originally published by Creative Boom
Katy Cowan runs the Creative Boom website on a volunteer basis – she is a trained journalist , author and PR specialist. Follow her and Creative Boom on Twitter @Creative_Boom
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for free to become a Member of the Culture Professionals Network.
See also: How to create a family blog and family blogging safety tips
.
