For those who are new to blogging, the following guidelines will introduce you to the fundamental principles of this field.

Interacting with readers

Many bloggers are yearning to interact with their readers, and some newbies are even pondering on adding an interactive comment section in their blogs. While the number of visitors largely determines how much comments or feedbacks you’ll get, there are other ways to elicit more comments. When it comes to interactive blogging, my main advice is to start with your existing readership. Work on what you have first rather than complain about what you don’t yet have.

Copyright

Copyright issues warrant serious attention of bloggers. To prevent legal troubles, always acknowledge your sources and use quotation marks when citing excerpts and statements made by others. The use of quotation mark is particularly important when you are citing paragraph-long texts. Also, don’t forget to ask permissions for original sources when posting excerpts.

Titles, domain names and search engine optimization

Names (i.e. product names, company names, etc.) constitute more than 40% of search engine queries. So if you want to draw more traffic from search engine queries, you better use keywords in titles and domain name.

Quality and quantity of content

Good content is one of the major determinants of a blog’s success, and it is apparent that the quantity of posts also plays a role in attracting traffic. I’m not suggesting that you load your blog with tons of meaningless and unhelpful posts, but if you want to take your blog to the next level, consider increasing the content of your blog.

Relevancy

I know a blogger who regularly updates his news-related blog by allocating one day for writing the posts to be uploaded throughout the week. The problem with this practice is that by the time the posts are loaded, they are no longer relevant. Frequent posting is one thing; relevancy and freshness of content is another. If you will be writing your posts in advance, choose a blog theme or topic that is non time specific. Non time specific posts are those that are still relevant even though they are written long before the posting.

Setting boundaries

Establishing boundaries is important not only for your own sake but for your readers as well.  Boundaries can cover the do’s and don’ts of participating in blogs and the things readers should expect from your blog in terms of topic.

Sources and backlinks

A common mistake among bloggers is to link to the same blog or news source in most if not all of their posts. These bloggers (perhaps they are tired or in a rush) cite the same external sources of information without considering the implications of such practice for their own readership. Though the bloggers they are linking to may not mind the frequent citations, readers will notice this trend and may end up reading the other blogs rather than yours.

The emotional side of marketing

Connect with your readers by capitalizing on sensuality, mystery and emotions. As the book “Lovemarks” shows, many marketers are becoming more “emotional” in exploring ways to connect with consumers. I think this approach to marketing can be effective in blogging.

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