Learn to Write Blogs

• Different types for different purposes
• Manage your work
• Establish a readership

What Makes a Successful Blog?

A blog needs two things to succeed:

•  A Capable Blogger (author)
•  An Audience

Running a successful blog can require a lot of planning. Many successful bloggers spend a long time researching and reading prior to posting each piece.  This is a good thing, making sure you are prepared and ready, and the thing posted has optimum appeal and relevance. You must however also be careful to avoid procrastination. You can spend so much time planning that you never actually start the blog.

A blog without a blogger is a just a website. It is static. A blog without interaction or engagement is much like a print book – it can collect (virtual) dust, but it doesn’t truly exist without a reader. Thinking about the purpose of your blog will help ensure you have things to post about and that you engage an audience.

So, to succeed - learn, plan, know what you are doing, then create and post a blog that actually gets traction.

Lesson Structure

There are 10 lessons in this course:

1. DEFINING YOUR BLOG
   • Reasons people keep blogs
   • Developing a purpose for your blog
   • Monetising your blog
   • Develop a mission statement
   • Case study -vision statement. goal setting, concept mapping, research
   • SWOT Analysis
   • PESTLE Analysis
   • Setting up Your Blog
2. RESEARCH YOUR NICHE/BLOG
   • Naming your blog
   • Keywords
   • Categories
   • Competitor identification
   • Finding your competitors
   • Competitor analysis
   • Points of difference
   • Identify your audience
   • Intended audience
   • Example
3. LESSON 3 KEYWORDS
   • What are keywords
   • Strategic Planning with Keywords
   • Writing your own Keywords
   • Keywords as a Mapping Tool
   • Hashtags
4. DESIGNING YOUR IDEAL POST
   • Blog analysis
   • Anatomy of a Blog
   • Content analysis
   • Putting it all Together
5. PRESENTATION OF YOUR BLOG
   • Improving accessibility
   • Font Types and Size
   • Font Colour and Colour Scheme
   • Enabling Captions on Video Content
   • How Audiences Read
   • Using images
   • Relevance
   • Breaking up Text
   • Image Clarity
   • Legal Issues
   • Number of Images
6. BUSINESS BLOGS I
   • Business blog considerations
   • Common types of business blog Leadership, News, etc
   • Brand Development Blogs
   • SEO Improvement Blogs
   • Remembering Goals
7. BUSINESS BLOGS II
   • Keep Focussed
   • Expanding your Blog
   • Guest Posts
   • Building Credibility through Association
   • Multiple Content Streams
   • Audio Posts
   • Vlogs
   • Live Content
   • Hosted Chat
   • eBooks
   • Infographics
   • Multiple Content Info Stream
8. INTERMEDIATE BLOGS (FREELANCE BLOGS)
   • Benefits and Purpose of a Freelance Blog
   • Freelance Blog Anatomy
   • Proofread
   • Personal/Professional Balance
9. ESTABLISHING SOCIAL MEDIA, FEEDS & NEWSLETTERS
   • Keeping your audience informed
   • RSS Feed
   • Newsletter
   • Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media
   • Selecting Platforms
   • Social Media Influencers
   • Becoming an Influencer
10. MARKETING, BRANDING, AND COMMUNITY BUILDING
    • Assessing your blog niche
    • Reposting
    • Online communities
    • Sharing Experiences
    • Creating Experiences
    • Building an Online Community
    • Where to Build a Community
    • Branding
    • Personal versus Professional Branding
    • Final assessment

WHY DO YOU WANT TO BE A BLOGGER?

People keep blogs for many reasons, including:

• Building their writing skills through practice
• Marketing a service or product (individual, small business, or large company)
• Building a business brand/identity
• Building a personal brand/identity
• Sharing opinions and reviews
• Lifestyle commentary 
• To provide information
• Niche interest e.g. fan reviews, discussion of television/books, birdwatching, etc.
• To tell their story

Bloggers might share their cooking tips and recipes or write about their political views. They may share information about travel and adventure, about their holidays, or recommended places to go and visit. They might share parenting tips or their experiences of parenthood. Some bloggers may talk about politics or the news. Others might share information on new products, for example, cameras or computers.  There is no limit to what a blogger can write about, but a blog should really focus on one specific area.  If you are telling your life story by writing a diary in the form of a blog then it will change from day to day, but it is still basically your story. But if you are writing about other topics, it is important to maintain focus. For example, say you want to talk about cameras – what is good or not so good about different brands of camera - then you do not want to start talking about how to take a photograph of a bird in flight halfway through your blog.  This is outside your focus, and it is one of the main ways that bloggers can lose sight of what their focus should be.

When deciding on your blog, pick one idea that you want to write about and stick to it. If you have lots of ideas, then why not have different blogs, but one blog one idea is a good rule of thumb.