With all the ways in which we can communicate with the modern world, blogging is still one of the most effective ways to gain exposure. Currently, there are over 600 million blogs on the world wide web so it’s fair to say that there is a lot of competition out there.
Blogging is a great tool for any new business or even just personal diaries but can have many benefits including monetization, an active CV/resume, or demonstrating skills.
However, in 2021, blogging alone isn’t enough. We live in a world of multiple devices, platforms, and engagement techniques, which can make it difficult to cover topics for everyone. Some people prefer to read blogs, some prefer podcasts and some will exclusively watch videos on YouTube.
Learning blogging via web builders such as WordPress is a great starting point but you will need to choose a web hosting service. Some are better than others with more benefits and fees so doing research on this is essential. Also, you might be using your blog for a business so consulting a cell tower database should be considered as mobile payments or remote access to your financial systems might be necessary.
Building a site isn’t too difficult, but as mentioned, there are now multiple methods of communication that should be applied to your blog. Multimedia assets need to be implemented in order for your blog to have the most reach.
WordPress and other web builders allow embedding of media such as images, videos and audio files among others from lots of sources such as YouTube, Vimeo and online photo albums, etc. These can all go a long way in making your blog more appealing to multiple types of web users and some of the best blogs such as those about video games will make a video for every piece of written content.
New updates to SEO also means that search engines like Google and Bing are now beginning to include media embeds when crawling a website to determine SERPs.
Learning to make videos can be tricky and the software is expensive. Corel Video Studio and Pinnacle Studio are good starting points before investing in industry-standard software such as Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas.
Adobe Photoshop is the best tool for image manipulation but it is expensive, so downloading GIMP might be a better option. Despite its silly name, GIMP is actually quite powerful and is absolutely free. While you are learning image editing, GIMP will teach you all you need to know before making the jump to more professional software.
Something that is often overlooked is the power of podcasts. Podcasts used to be a side note of a site and weren’t taken very seriously. However, over the past year or so podcasts have really started to take off. So much so that even serious organizations such as CNN now produce them regularly.
SEO expert Neil Patel suggests that all blogs should begin to implement podcasts as a way to boost user activity and help with SEO for a site since there are only roughly 700,000 podcasts currently being produced as opposed to hundreds of millions of blogs.
Finally, social media engagement is a must-have in the modern world. Without a social media policy to supplement your web presence, you will not do as well with your blog. While social media might not be a necessary tool for blogging, it is an extremely helpful one.
Not only will social media help drive website traffic but it can help you to actively engage with potential customers and gauge their real-time feelings about you or your brand.
No comments yet.