Basics of Blogging - A to Z Challenge

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When the competition is about blog, I thought why not write about blog & see if we share a common understanding. For me, blogging was to share - the information that I gather over my normal day, my opinion about a particular story (like the employee issue at Goldman Sachs) or do some plain talking. Over the years that I have been blogging (not so consistently!!!), I have learnt the finer nuances & to succeed, these basics have to be mastered.

Sharing some of them:

Rule 1: Have an Aim

Now that the Blogging bug has bitten you, find a purpose for the blog. Determine if you want to write an an individual or represent your company because that will shape up your following. Also determine your niche.

Rule 2: Content Strategy (That's going to be the next post :-) ) 

In a nutshell, your content strategy should help you define the content that will be suited to the 'Aim'. You cannot be writing a food recipe on a technology blog. Defining a content strategy will also help you to source references that are of relevance, remember its a sea of information out there.

Rule 3: Editorial Calendar (My post on how to do it)

As a rule of thumb, to make yourself heard, the noise you create has to be persistent & consistent (look ma!! I rhymed it). Post regularly, but to do that effectively, make sure you have an editorial calendar in place. It helps you in planning of the post well in advance & also ensures focus

Rule 4: Promoting

Once you have posted it, let people know about it. Use the various social channels to share your post. Twitter can be leveraged by using tweet chat or personal interactions, similarly you can use Triberr (to ensure more coverage) or dlvr.it (to share at multiple social channels) . Make your post SEO friendly, it gets the search engines interested.

Rule 5: Engaging

Last but the most important aspect is engagement. Best engagements can happen over a blog post & your views has the ability to get more moolah too. Ensure you respond to comments, tweets & any sharing that happens for your post, it shows people that you care.

I do care about engaging too and the guys at Disqus have done an amazing job to have me setup their comment platform. Do drop in your comments below & lets tell them they have done an amazing job. Also, tell me if you like my blog and share yours for me to comment.

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