Another Year, Not Just Another Blog

Everybody, it seems, has advice about how to make your blog better than ever in 2016. John Egan, writing in the Huffington Post, sort of sums it up in two words: “Aim high”, by which he means never sacrificing quality merely to achieve quantity.

BlogTyrant makes some predictions about blogging SEO in 2016 centered around speed, because “even a second or two of lag can cost your business thousands of dollars”. Learning “how to shrink stuff” – photos, images, graphics, etc. can save loading time. Blogtyrant predicts that guest posting will still be one of the “absolute best ways to get your name out there and grow traffic.”

As a checklist for themselves, blog content writers might wish to use the judging criteria for the UK Blog Awards 2016, which include the following five aspects of a blog:

• Design
• Style
• Content
• Marketing
• Usability

“Determine why you are blogging,” advises Maisha Walker of Inc.com. Walker outlines the four reasons a website exists to aid a business, and suggests ways to measure success for each goal:

• build a brand (what awareness studies will you do?)
• generate leads (How many phone calls or emails to you want to get from your blog?)
• generate direct sales (How many readers and page views will it take?)
• generate advertising revenue (How much do you hope to make? How many readers and page views do you need to do that?)

“Your previous years’ outreach can clue you into what balance will work best. Take stock of what you did the past year: What was a home run? What was moderately successful? What underperformed? And what were the reasons for your content’s success or failure?” Amanda Hicken of prnewswire.com advises.

Then, looking towards the coming year, Hicken says, go through the holidays, seasonal events, and conferences that impact not just your industry, but also the industries related to your target audience. Uncover other newsworthy topics and trends by using a monitoring tool. But, she cautions, “don’t fall into the trap of operating on autopilot”.

How will you approach blogging in the new year?