3 Essential Blogging Tips For Your Author Website

Written by Writer's Relief staff:

Blogging is a great way to update your author website with fresh content: an incentive for visitors to keep visiting regularly. Some writers have even started successful writing careers because of their blogs.

To make sure you’re writing a strong and effective blog, use the following tips:

Identify the value in your own writing.

You may have trouble finding your target audience if you, the author, are not even sure what value your blog holds. Whether you offer great tips on a specific subject, make people laugh, or pair great writing with striking photographs, you need to know what it is that you’re offering to potential fans. Once you know that element, you can brand your blog and write stronger SEO to attract people who would be interested in what you’re offering. Until you’ve done that, you might have people exiting your site too quickly because they can’t immediately see that they’ve come to the right place. Internet readers are usually skimmers, so make sure new visitors can quickly recognize what your blog offers.

Short and sweet beats rambling.

Most people perusing the Internet are browsers. They’ll read a novel another time. If you keep each blog post to a short, digestible length—and break up each separate thought in easy-to-skim paragraphs—you’ll go a long way toward attracting repeat visitors. Lump all of your varied thoughts into one long, unbroken post, and people will feel overwhelmed and stop reading, no matter how well-crafted or brilliant your writing.

We’re not saying that your blog posts must be short or condensed, but long posts should be formatted to make them easier to read and understand. One way to ensure this happens is to save new posts as drafts before making them live. Rather than posting your new entries immediately, go back later and reread. You might find it easier at that point to identify things you’ve repeated or that are unnecessary.

Choose a consistent theme.

Most visitors will appreciate a unified, coherent vision. On the visual side, choose just one font, format, and color scheme. You’ll throw readers for a loop if you’re writing in size 12 Calibri one day, and size 10 Lucida Handwriting the next, and jumping between pink, green, and yellow backgrounds.

You’ll also have a better shot at increasing the number of repeat visitors if first-time visitors know what to expect on their next visit. And if you can’t stick to one general topic, at least keep your writing style consistent. If your first post is a pleasant, lyrical post about what you observed during a trip to the grocery store, your next post shouldn’t be a fiery political rant chock-full of vitriol and swearing. Some people want to read lyrical observances, and some people want to read political pieces, but probably not on the same blog.

With these three tips, you’ll improve your chance of accumulating repeat visitors. By helping people identify your website with their specific interests, offering them aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-read posts, and keeping your rambling in check, you’ll turn many more first-time visitors into long-time fans.

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via Books on HuffingtonPost.com