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The Fundamental Guide To Effective Blogging In 2024
Last updated Jan 9, 2024
Effective blogging

So, you’ve finally decided to start a blog. . . (Drum rolls!) Or maybe you’ve since begun and owned your own blog. . . (A round of applause and a thumbs up for you!) But then, there’s a but. . .more like a stumbling block and a headache. You have no idea how effective your blogging is. Given the platform and chance to, there are a million and one questions you’d love to ask.

Questions like. . . how do I generate traffic for my blog? How do I grow my audience and how long does it take to do so? What platform is best for my blogging site and my content type? What strategies do I need to put in place? How do I make my blog rank on Google? And how do I measure the effectiveness of my blog?

Does this in any way sound like questions you may have to ask? If yes, this blog post is dedicated to providing you with answers to your most pressing questions about blogging. While it is worth the stress to know how to blog, blogging doesn’t just end there. You have to put in strategies to help your blog and its content reach the right audience. You need to be able to know how to measure the effectiveness of your blog as well as know how well your blog ranks on Google. You also should find analytics for your blog.

If you do not know how to do these, you shouldn’t worry anymore. I brought you answers.

Knowing how to and what to blog about isn't enough, you need to put strategies for effective blogging in place to maximize the benefits that come with blogging Share on X

What is an Effective Blogging?

Now, the truth is, everybody can blog but not everybody has the ability to blog effectively. When created and used effectively and even positioned to be effective, blogs serve as tools for building brands, businesses, and companies. And this is one among many reasons why a blog should be effective and well-positioned.

So, does your blog nod its head and say it can relate (figuratively, lol) when effective blogging is being talked about? Tell me, what’s on your blog? Does your blog have the necessary blog elements that it should have? These blog elements make up effective blogging.

What then is effective blogging and what do effective blogs look like?

Effective Blog

Effective blogging takes place when you as a blogger, position your blog in such a way that your blog has a personality (you know your blog posts should sound human and not robotic, right?) that your audience can relate to, blog contents that are right for your audience and have an effect on them when your blog post had enough authority to generate likes, shares, and clicks as well as a blog post that your audience would love to read to the end.

An effective blog commands authority. Would have the necessary blog elements and employ effective strategies in positioning the blog such that it ranks amidst other blogs.

Knowing how to and what to blog about isn't enough, putting the strategy for effective blogging in place is the ultimate. Share on X

Characteristics of an Effective Blog

  1. Consistency

We often hear much about how consistency is one of the keys to success. We could as well as apply this to blogging. Consistency is key to the success of your blog. Do not starve your audience of the content. This is what your audience comes to you for and you should give it to them without holding back. Be sure to post new blog content on a regular basis (and not just when you feel like it, dear blogger.)

Now, imagine your favourite TV show was aired only when the producers felt like it. What would have happened? I can bet that the show would eventually become a bore to you and your interest in the TV show would be sure to drop. This is exactly how it is when it comes to blogging. If today you update your blog with an article and it takes a long while before you do so again, you would hardly be able to retain your audience. You should make your audience look forward to reading your content so that they visit your blog regularly and do not forget you.

  1. Simplicity

In terms of your blog content, always embrace simplicity. These days, it’s quite hard to retain a reader’s attention from the very beginning to the last dot. And this is why you should try as much as possible to keep your posts short, simple and interesting.

The length of your post doesn’t determine the rate at which your audience would love to read your posts. As a matter of fact, very few readers are attracted to long and complicated posts. Most readers now are on the lookout for short, simple, interesting and at the same time value-packed posts. (Putting yourself in the shoes of the reader, I’m sure this is what you’d also be on the lookout for). In summary, let the deciding factor of your post be the theme and topic of your content.

  1. Creative and traffic-drawing titles

When you want to grab the attention of your readers and target audience to your blog, the simplest thing to do is to be creative with your titles. If you also want to make your blog rank (Let’s drift to SEO a bit now), let your titles do the work for you. Titles attract traffic as well as potential readers.

Your title does one of two things. It either gets potential readers to click on your post or to ignore the entire existence of your post. To achieve the former, make sure your post titles are short, interesting, attention-grabbing and would get your readers to carry out the right action.

  1. Blog Personality

Sounds weird? No? That’s fine. Yes? Chill. When you meet someone for the first time, one of the things that attract you to that person is the person’s personality. (Right? Unless you’re an alien). The same is applicable to blogs. Your blog needs to have a personality that your audience can easily relate to.

But then, my blog is inanimate! Isn’t my blog just a composition of the right posts and necessary blog elements? Oh, yes. But behind the posts and necessary blog elements is a human – you. And you’ve got to let that reflect. In creating your post, you should let your writing voice and style sound human and not robotic.

You should make your blog personality stand out from other blogs (Because, yes, you need the attention you’re seeking for). Attract and sustain your readers and audience with your blog personality.

  1. Encouraging audience’s engagement and interaction on posts

After reading your content, some of your readers might want to engage in the post through the comment section. Now, you should allow your readers to interact with you.

Getting comments from your readers is one way to make you know that people are reading your content. In fact, you should look out for comments from your readers because it would enable you to get to know more about your readers and who they are, it would enable you to know what contents would interest them and how you can dish out the contents they expect from you. Comments even help compliment the energy invested in SEO and help your blog posts go viral.

On the flip side, comments could take time to respond to and even be negative. As a matter of fact, when you allow comments, you should get ready to deal with negativity and comment spam. Though you don’t need to worry about getting Spam messages on your blog as there a cutting-edge tool called CLEANTALK that can keep your blog clean from spam messages. CleanTalk is the best, the most effective and affordable plugin to tackle any kind of Spam on your blog, here is an extensive review about CleanTalk AntiSpam protection

  1. Responsive Design

It is important to make your website responsive as not all of your readers are on your website with a desktop device. So, if your blog is not mobile-friendly, you’ve got to do something about it. Responsive design gives all your audience access to your content regardless of the device used and also help you rank well on search engines.

  1. Quality visuals

Having quality visuals and images can go a long way in making your blog effective. Not only do titles and quality contents appeal, attract and sustain readers, quality images and videos also do! So, to retain and sustain readers, make sure your visuals are appealing and worth watching or viewing.

  1. Relevancy

How relevant are your contents? How well does your content link to other valuable content on the web? Now, one mistake some bloggers make is not linking their content to other relevant content on the web. Your articles enjoy SEO benefits when they are well linked to other authority blogs online and also makes your readers view your content as authentic and worthy of their time.

Linking your content tends to give your readers in-depth knowledge about what your content is all about. It is not just enough to link content, make sure the content you are linking to each other are related and relevant.

  1. Quality Content

In everything you do and in all the content you create, be sure your readers would find value. This is one way to grow your audience and make them come to visit your blog again. Make sure your content is structured in such a way that it is easy to read and scan. More often than not, readers tend to scan posts for what they need. Hardly do they read all parts of the post. Therefore, it is imperative that you structure your content to be readable and scannable.

Those muddled up sentences could use some paragraphing and sentence breaks. Your just drafted content could use a grammar checker (You know?) How about a subheading too?

In summary, make sure you provide your readers with valuable and easy to read articles.

  1. Call to Action

If you want your blog to provide you with results, you could consider including a call to action in your blog post. Do not be scared to make a request from your readers. It might be to like or share your content. It could even be to drop a comment in the comment box or to subscribe to your blog’s newsletter. Whatever the case may be, be sure to include a call to action in your post.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Blog

Measuring the progress of your blog

So, you’ve put in certain measures to ensure the effectiveness of your blog. How then do you measure how effective your blog is becoming? How do you keep track?

  1. Set Goals

The very first thing you should do before even measuring the effectiveness of your blog is to set realistic goals. What do you want to achieve with your blog and what’s the time frame you’re considering? Do you want to increase the traffic of your blog? Are you looking forward to publishing a number of posts within a given time? Do you want to generate more leads? What exactly are you set out to achieve? Set your goals before measuring anything.

  1. Know your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

What are those things that you’re on the lookout for? What Indicators would you need to see to be sure of your effectiveness? If you’re looking to drive traffic to your blog, the KPI you should look out for should be an increased visit to your blog, etc.

  1. Track Your Blog Visits

If you’re consistently dishing out creative, valuable and quality content, one of the ways to know how effective your blog is, is by tracking your blog visits. If you have increased visits to your blog, then your contents are effective. If not, don’t stop dishing out quality content consistently.

  1. Track Your Social Media Shares

Your blog posts being shared to social media platforms could possibly mean that your content is loved by your readers so much that they want it to be seen by other people on other social media handles.

  1. Track Your Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is simply the measurement of how long viewers viewed your post before moving away from your site. If a reader stays for a considerable while on your post before finally taking his or her leave, this possibly means that your readers can relate to your post and find it valuable. If a huge percentage of your readers land on your site, take a brief glance through your post without interacting on your post either by reading or commenting before bouncing off, this simply means you need to do something about the quality of your posts.

Dos and Don’ts of Effective Blogging

It’s a good thing you’re hopping into the blogging ride. To enable your blogging to be effective and to boost your blog’s visibility and awareness, there are rules you have to follow strictly. Below are some dos and don’ts for effective blogging.

Dos of Effective blogging.

  • Consistency: As said earlier, you should post often so as not to starve your readers of valuable content. The more often you post, the more you tend to see results and the more effective your blog becomes. You should have a posting schedule that you follow so as to encourage consistency. The least number of times you should update your blog with content is once a week (You could even do better, you know?). just be consistent with your posting.
  • Use Catchy Headlines and Titles: Remember what we discussed earlier about attention-grabbing titles? Good. Always use headlines that are sure to grab the attention of your targeted reader or audience. As said earlier, the very first thing that draws the attention of your readers to your post (even before picture) is your headline. There are number of tools available on the internet that can assist in the generation of attention-grabbing headlines that are related to your topic.
  • Employ the Use of Good Visuals: Just as headlines go a long way in attracting readers, so do good graphics. Make sure the visuals in use for your blog posts are very much relevant to your content. (Tip: images with faces go a long way in boosting your SEO so don’t think of doing away with them.) 
  • Keyword Research and strategic use of keywords: so, you stuff your posts with keywords? Come on, you know better than that! That’s keyword spamming and it’s very bad for blog effectiveness. One or two keywords used strategically in your post would do just fine. Be sure to carry out keyword research so as to enable you know the right keywords for you to use as well as help you rank on Google.

Allow the keywords in use to flow naturally throughout your post. Do not make your keyword appear in every damn place in your post (That’s not how to go about it). Instead, include your keyword in the title or headlines, subheadings and in about every 150 words.

  • Have a Quality Writing Style and Create Quality Content:  nobody loves to read a boring piece (I mean, even you.). You should let your content breathe and do the talking. And make sure that whatever content you are creating holds enough information and value for your readers. Create valuable contents that also have considerable lengths. If you’re considering long blog content, you should aim at creating the least 2500 words. This would not only promote your expertise; it would also help your posts rank better in search results.

On the flip side, short blog posts (which usually ranges between 600 -700 words) can also hold value and provide readers with information. However, long blog posts rank better in search engine results than short blog posts. (Take that as a tip). Therefore, it is advisable that you create long blog posts more than you do short posts. One thing you should always remember is to write for your audience. Research on the type of content your audience or readers are likely to read. Make sure you understand the problems and needs of your audience and provide solutions to them in form of quality content.

  • Be Conversational: As you read earlier, be sure to write as though you’re conversing with a friend or someone next to you. Your content should always have a conversational and friendly tone as against a dull, flat and robotic tone. This way, your reader would be able to relate to your content and even engage on it.
  • Break Long Sentences into Short Ones: Reading long sentences can be stressful and can even bore your reader. A reader has the tendency not to read a sentence to the end when your sentence is long. In the process, your reader might unconsciously skip the important part of the content that you want him to read.

Instead, learn to write short and well-paragraphed sentences. The length of your sentence should fall between 20-22 words. This way, you’d be able to grab the attention of your reader. You should also structure your post in such a way that the reader would easily be able to skim and scan through if he wishes. In all, short sentences help your reader to have an easy read and better understanding of your post.

  • Quality Website Design: The design of your website should be simple, load fast and appealing to the sight. A quality website design would also help the reader to navigate easily through your site. Your readers should be able to easily find their way around your blog.
  • Proofreading and Editing: Before you finally publish your blog post, be sure to give it a thorough proofreading and editing. While you might be able to see one or two mistakes when self-editing, grammar checkers and employing the services of a professional editor and proofreader is advised. Just incase you’re just starting out and do not have the necessary funds for hiring a professional editor, you could just stick to grammar checkers.
  • Sharing of Blog Posts to Social Media Platforms: Doing this would bring traffic to your site and even increase the awareness of your blog. It would also help your blog content reach the right audiences as well as attract new readers to your blog.

Don’ts of Effective Blogging

Since you now know the dos for effective blogging, shall we now get to the don’ts of effective blogging? 

  • Inconsistency: As you read earlier, inconsistent posting schedule is likened to starving your audience of the content they deserve. Do not fail to have a schedule for posting your blog content as this can greatly affect the effectiveness of your blog.
  • Keyword Stuffing: Be sure not to stuff your blog posts with too much keywords. One or two keywords per post is just fine.
  • Lack of Quality Website Design and Complicated Navigation: As trivial as this might sound, you should avoid making your blog to have complicated navigations. This could make your readers get pissed off.
  • Plagiarism: Creating content for your blogs can be mentally stressful, yes. But that is not enough reason to copy intellectual contents of others on your blogs. The best you can do, is study the trends and style of other blogs to get motivations. Do not plagiarize other blog’s contents.
  • Writing Outside what your Audience and Readers would want to Read: This is one reason you should always carry out audience research. Know the pains and needs of your audience and provide them with solutions in form of contents. Always write for your audience.

Frequently Asked Questions on Blogging

Which is better between a paid blog site and a free blog site?

This is dependent on your budget and intentions.

 If you do not have enough funding for a self-hosted blog site or you want to test your ability to blog, you could opt for WordPress.com a free hosting blogging service. But this comes with a string attached. Although you can own a free site on WordPress.com, you do not have total ownership of the content produced on the site. That is, WordPress can at any time shut down your site if they wish to. (Scary right?) Also, you might not be able to monetize your blog if you opt for a free site.  

On the flip side, you could opt-in for a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress.org. I’d recommend BlueHost for your hosting service. With BlueHost shared hosting plan you can bring your website to life for as low as $3.95/mo. Nothing can be cheaper than that.

How do I optimize my blog for SEO?

You could make use of SEO tools to check how SEO ready your blog content is. Also, carry out keyword research and be sure to include keywords in your blog post. And make sure you’re writing in a conversational tone for humans and not a robotic tone.

What factors should I consider in choosing a domain name for my blog site?

One important factor to consider when choosing a domain name is your blog niche. You would want to make sure your domain name is related to what your blog stands for. For example, if the type of content created on your blog is related to tips and hacks for living, you might want to consider a domain name such as www.lifehacks.com (This is just an example)

How do I drive traffic to my blog?

One of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog is to optimize your blog for SEO. You could also drive traffic to your blog by sharing your blog posts to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. You can also develop an email list where you can send links to your latest posts on your blogs as part of a newsletter to leads on your email list.

Should I get worried if I’m not getting enough traffic on my blog within three months of my blogging journey?

No, you shouldn’t. As a blogger, you have to be patient with yourself and the growth of your blog. You should start seeing results between the sixth and ninth months of your blogging journey. Just focus on creating consistent and quality posts. The traffic would come.

How often do I update content on my blog?

You should update create new content on your blogs at least once or twice a week. But bear in mind that the more often you post, the more you create awareness for your blog. Always have in mind that consistency is key.

How do I monetize my blog?

Venturing into Affiliate Marketing is one way to monetize your blogs. You can join an Affiliate network and include your affiliate link in your blog posts. So, when a reader clicks on your affiliate link, it takes them to where they can make a purchase of the affiliate product or service you’re selling. Apart from that, you can also decide to make ads for companies or brands.

Finals Thoughts On Fundamental Guide To Effective Blogging

Blogging plays one of the major roles in marketing. It’s a great way to build a brand or a company as well as earn money. Blogging brings maximum results when done effectively. Be sure to make use of effective blogging strategies to push your blog forward.

Once again, write for your audience, perform the necessary keyword researches and optimize your blog for SEO. Most importantly, do not forget to measure the effectiveness of your blog so as to know the areas you need to adjust. You might also want to use Google Analytics for measuring your blog’s effectiveness.

Use this guide for your blog and patiently anticipate results.

In this light, cheers to efficient blogging! (Clink!) I will love to hear from you in the comment sections, how you are doing with your blog.

Got any thoughts on this topic? We’d love to hear it on X by Tweeting @scribeage

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<a href="https://scribeage.com/author/adenedebbie/" target="_self">Adene Deborah</a>

Adene Deborah

Digital Entrepreneur

Deborah Adene is a creative writer, freelancer and digital marketer based in Nigeria. She has a keen interest in helping brands and businesses grow.

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