Regardless of the blog type you choose, be it personal or corporate, the following pieces of advice are meant to guide your steps in your future blogging activity. These are the most important blog tips you’ll need to follow when starting a new blogging adventure!

1. Look for ideas at any time and in any place

A conversation in the subway, a debate or piece of news heard on the car radio, anything can turn into a new topic for your blog. Keep your mind open and tune your hearing, combine them with good analysis skills and you will have some killer weapons in your arsenal.

2. Raise and maintain interest

An attractive first paragraph is not enough to maintain the reader’s interest throughout your blog post. “Start big, finish bigger”. Provide new hooks in small doses to keep your readers interest throughout the article.

3. Generate the conversation and take part in it

Often times, bloggers are compared to journalists, and their blogs to newspapers (usually tabloids, not broadsheets). Yet blogs and online newspapers differ exactly where they are also alike – the comments section. Newspapers use the comments section to allow users to express their frustrations and almost never moderate them. The classic journalistic style rarely requires an answer or any feedback, usually being limited to presenting the facts or expressing an opinion.

The main ace bloggers play is their power to start conversations and to keep them going by being part of them.

4. Make sure you provide quality information

If your new blog post is based on personal opinions, make sure they have the required features to become points of reference. If you’ve used other sources for it, make sure you check their credibility and quality first.

5. Never promise more than you can give

Failing to deliver everything you have promised will lead to a significant decrease in a blog’s credibility and popularity. Teasers do work, but only if what you were teasing readers with becomes reality.

6. Offer help

Nothing pleases blog followers more than getting help from a field expert. Whenever you have a spare moment, help those in need of your professional help. Make sure to reply their comments and their emails.

7. Links are sacred

Are you quoting a source? Then link to it! Are you publishing survey results or statistics? Link to those who have created them. Are you expressing your opinion regarding something that has been published on another blog or online outlet? Link to the initial article. Why?

1. Because it helps prove the quality of the provided information and places them in a broader context;
2. Because it is a nice way to thank those who have inspired you to find a new topic for your blog.

If you have already discussed a certain topic in previous posts, link to them at the end of the current article. This helps those interested in the topic to get more details on it.

Additionally, a solid inbound and outbound linking policy will help your blog rank better in search engines.

8. Never, ever…

Do any of the following:

1. Attack someone else’s stand on an issue if you are not 100% sure of your own. Make sure to provide arguments to sustain it;
2. Publish someone else’s content without having their permission to do so.
3. Start open conflicts with your blog commentators. Keep your cool!
4. Allow the needs vs. solutions balance incline towards the former in your posts. Provide more solutions than debates over what’s needed.
5. Shy away from commenting on similar or competing blogs. As long as you don’t do it to shamelessly plug your blog or attach the author, your contributions will be valued and will direct more readers towards your own posts.
6. Take all blogging advice as laws. They are only pieces of advice. Experiment with them and see which work better in your case.
7. Fill your blog up with plugins, widgets and other useless elements. We are ultimately talking about a corporate blog. You really do not want to compete in MTV’s “Pimp my blog” competition!
8. Postpone for too long your blogging platform and plugins update. Don’t be the first to do it either, to make sure bugs are found and solved, but don’t be the last one either!

9. And the most important piece of advice…

….I’m going to ever give you is to never be afraid of EXPERIMENTING. Experiment with different tones, new post types, new topic approaches.

Stay fresh!

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started (current)
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Take every pro-blogger out there and all will say the same thing: “Write link posts!” What are the reasons behind such an advice? Why would you send people away from your blog? Stop. I truly hope you did not just ask yourself that!

Writing link posts is definitely not about sending people away, but rather about guiding your users to even more wonderful content and letting other bloggers know you appreciate their work, just as you would like yours to be appreciated.

But just like with almost any other type of blog posts, there are some things you could do to make it GREAT instead on a simple or even a good link post.

1. Find new content

If the article or information you’re linking to has already been linked to by the most important/influential bloggers in your niche, there’s a good chance yours will only add noise and not value. The “new” factor will be lost, and with it, your readers’ attention.

2. Find relevant content

It’s always best to keep the links close to your blog’s main topics if you’re blogging in a niche. General blogs or news blogs could make exceptions, but most times your readers will need and look for more information in the same area of interest.

3. Find useful content

The best content is the content that satisfies the reader’s needs. May it be the need to engage in a conversation on a controversial topic or the basic need for help/advice, the posts you link to have to have the quality of being useful to your readers, and who knows them better than you?

4. Offer content previews

Whenever possible, offer a short excerpt from the article you link to, just enough to give users an idea of what to expect from the link they’re about to click. Keep your excerpt short though, to avoid unnecessary conflicts or duplicate content issues.

5. Add your own comments

Your followers respect and read you for your views and opinions. Give them the chance to find out what you think and feel about the link you provide in a small, descriptive paragraph. This way, you’ll gain both a new link for your post, and also make it “readable”, instead of “clickable”. Together with point 4, this easy-to-do thing keeps readers on your page for a little while, which is always good for statistics, user engagement and why not, ad exposure.

2 Bonus tips:

a. The bigger, the better

The more links you provide the better, BUT, always respect the five tips above. It doesn’t matter if you link to 5 or 500 articles, quality of links should be top notch. Collection posts have a good success rate on social media as users look for a place where they can find all the info they need on a certain topic.

b. Use contextual links

Whenever possible, try not to use “Read the article here” or “Read more” link. Use contextual links, like “Check out these (start link)10 amazing free WordPress themes(end link)”. Helps readers identify the information easier and also, the bloggers you link to will appreciate it even more.

Writing a great link post is not that hard as long as you follow these easy tips. It’s finding the right content to link to that’s harder, and that’s what you need to go and look for yourself!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive