There are so many ways a blog can help you create awareness about your cause, service offering or product but it’s important to pay attention to the mechanics – the ins and outs of your blog – otherwise you won’t reach your target market and ultimately your time will be wasted. A blog is not a diary; it’s meant to be shared with someone other than yourself!

Yesterday was this blog’s best day ever with the “Ning.com” post. I already had in mind some great blogging tips I liked to follow, but yesterday’s stats reaction sparked a couple more. So here are some blogging tips you can use to increase visitors and rank.

1. Focus on the headline. Just like in a newspaper or magazine, the headline is the most important part of your post. Your headline needs to be a near certain match to the keywords your target audience is searching for. For this one, the keywords in the headline are blogging tips, visitors, and rank.
2. Pay attention to your advertising. Don’t let your advertising get out of control. If you use Google AdSense or LinkShare or something similar, strategically place it so that it’s NOT IN THE WAY; or hire a virtual assistant (hint) to create stealth image links that don’t look like ads. Try to stay away from placing context-sensitive ads in your post itself unless you believe the ROI is worth it.
3. Post early. I’m not talking about the rule of firsts, although that’s important, too. I’m actually talking about posting early in the morning. Seriously! You’ll notice that the earlier you post, the higher your daily traffic to that post will be. Try me out if you don’t believe it. If you’re not an early riser, schedule your post to be published in advance (you can do this with WordPress).
4. Choose tags wisely. You don’t need a huge number of tags. Choose a handful that are right on. And remember to use your tags in your post! If you don’t, they’ll go ignored. It’s like advertising something that isn’t for sale. You MUST use your tags. So, here’s a key: when choosing tags, scan the body of your post for keywords and pull out the ones that appear most often.
5. Include a subscribe option. Some people (like me) would rather be emailed your blog posts than to try and come back every day. Include a subscribe to RSS or Email option as a courtesy to your visitors. You can get one with a free FeedBurner subscription (if you don’t have FeedBurner, you should).

If you have additional, useful blogging tips, please include them here with a link to your blog! And feel free to ping this post and I’ll display your trackback.

–Tia

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