How to write a blog.

We encourage all our clients to write a blog. However it’s not always obvious where to start paricularly if you have no experience of journalism or indeed you haven’t had to express a coherent series of thoughts or an argument since your “A” levels.

Here are a few pointers to get you going to write a successful blog.

1) Stay on top of what’s going on in your industry – Try not to be a lone blogger, make an effort to network with others in your field and to become known for your own ideas offline as well as online.  This will help build the authority of your own blog.

2) Find out how others are behaving online and what makes them respond and comment.  Maybe it’s as simple as inviting people to comment or leaving open ended questions on the blog.

3) Individualise yoru content and give it authority.  Do your research and craft your thoughts as much as possible so that your opinions are clear, well argued and ideally original.  With the level of “noise” on the blogosphere it’s imperative to be a beacon of quality in order to stand out.

4) Choose a topic and stick to it and become all knowing about it.  You can run many topics of course, but consider where the topic will be in a year’s time.  Set realistic goals as to the amount of time you can dedicate to the blog and keep to the timetable.

5) Attempt to retain visitors.  If your opinions are original, well argued and authoritative users should return of their own accord.  Obviously always answer comments and make contributors feel welcome.

6) Leverage the power of social media networks by becoming an active member with sites such as digg.com and stumbleupon.  This exercise can be daunting at first but seek advice if need be.  The online marketing team at Datadial can help you with this.

7) Provide linkbait – other than or the serious stuff, take time out to make your blog fun.  Create helpful tools, flash games, funny pictures even.  This will help to create a viral marketing buzz and to increase traffic and ultimately inbound links.

8)  Most importantly, do not copy content from other blogs.  Make sure everything you write is original.Â

9) Don’t feel you have to write 10 points just because that’s what convention dictates.  Stop at 9 if you want!