6 Tips for Successful Blogging

We all know how difficult it is to trap yourself into writing a weekly blog, but businesses who blog 20 times per month see as much as five times more traffic. As an agency owner, you are constantly being pulled in a million directions, and blogging always seems to fall last on the to-do list. We want you to be successful, so we have compiled six tips to help you become successful at blogging.

1. Put it on the Calendar: Blogging can seem like a monstrous task, but trapping yourself into the timeslot is one way that it will happen on a regular basis. Pick a time each week to blog. Some people find themselves more creative in the morning and others at the end of the day. Whatever the time, schedule your blogging weekly into your calendar. This will make it part of your routine and schedule.
2. Always Be Thinking (ABT): One of the hardest parts about blogging is determining what to write about or suffering from “I had this idea, and it escaped me” syndrome. Find a spot in your notebook, if you like taking paper notes,  or create a list on your computer or mobile device (Evernote, Wunderlist, and Google Docs are a few great apps for this). Regardless of your method of choice, when the idea strikes, write it down. This will help you compose a stockpile of ideas. Still stuck on what to write about? Here is an idea to get you started: insurance risk spotting out in the real world (i.e. identifying real life risks, like a house that would be difficult to insure or staying safe around the pool).
3. Create Monthly Themes: Creating content is difficult. Define a theme for an entire month and write only about that topic. This will not only showcase your expertise, but it will keep your writing focused and precise. It will allow you to dig deeper on topics that you are knowledgeable about within your agency. During the summer months, you could focus on water safety and driving education, since we tend to drive more during the summer. For the winter months, a good theme could be winterizing your house. This works great if you are leveraging social media marketing as well. You can tie the content right into what you are posting on your social profiles.
4. Guest Bloggers: If you are blogging weekly or aspire to blog even more than that in your agency, then inviting guest bloggers is a great way to give yourself a break. Have a guest blogger once a month to speak on a particular topic, or have another employee of your agency write from their perspective. It not only keeps your blog fresh, it gives you a bit of a break from writing every week.
5. Content Calendar: This is a tough one, but if you can pull it off, you WILL be successful at blogging. Create a content calendar. A content calendar is a monthly schedule of what will be going out on your blog in terms of content, planning out in chunks what you will be writing each week. Quarterly planning seems to work best for most businesses and agencies. This keeps what you are discussing relevant and if you need to push something back or move it forward, you simply adjust the calendar.
6. Be Yourself: When it comes to blogging, this is probably one of the most important things to emphasize, especially online. Readers want to buy from you because of YOU. Buyers and potential buyers choose you and your agency because they like you. Blogging gives you the opportunity to do just that, define who your agency is. Let your identity shine through your posts, have fun, and enjoy it! The blogs with the most followers are the ones who aren’t afraid to be themselves.

These six blogging tips should help you in your quest to become even more successful at blogging. What helps you in your creative process?