Long-Term Blogging, Part I

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

My first post on this blog (which started out at Blogger) was on August 9, 2008.  Tomorrow marks 8 years of blogging.

When I first started blogging, I don’t think I really had in mind how long I would be blogging.  Mostly, blogging was something that my publisher had indicated that I should be doing.

At the beginning, I was blogging with my readers in mind.  That almost immediately shifted since I felt more comfortable writing to writers.  Also, I was trying to work out my writing process as I worked on book three, and talking it out was helpful to me.

In the last eight years, I’ve seen a lot of blogs come and go.  I’ve missed bloggers who have passed away and I’ve missed the ones who stopped blogging.

I’ve picked up  tips along the way…practices that were helpful to me, mistakes I made that I needed to correct, and tips from other bloggers.  Today I’ll share tips for setting up a blog or making a blog serve its purpose better, and tips for maintaining a blogging schedule.  On Friday, I’m covering tips for content and engagement and benefits to blogging.

Tips for setting up your blog:

Host the blog on your website as a page.  This was something I didn’t completely understand the importance of eight years ago.  When we write strong content, we’re bringing in readers.  Why send those readers somewhere other than our website?  I’m pretty sure cost probably played a role in my original decision (I can be frugal), but the yearly cost of this website isn’t cost-prohibitive.

Use your own name in the blog/site domain name.  It builds SEO (helps search engines like Google locate us and our content and books).

Similarly, make it obvious whose blog it is.  I visit many blogs that list only the author’s first name.  I understand wanting to be private, but if  we need to promote the name we plan on writing under.

Share your posts on social media (automation can assist in this).  You can set up your blog so that it posts automatically on your Facebook page or sends a tweet on Twitter.

Think hard about blog post titles.  Using titles that accurately reflect the content of the post pull in readers who are searching for posts on that topic.  It’s a great way to find new blog readers.

Make it easy for readers to share your posts.  There are many plug-ins that can help blog readers to share our posts easily on social media. Click to Tweet is one of the ones that I use.

Don’t obsess over the design.  I’ve noticed an odd phenomenan over the years where bloggers who overhaul their blogs, implementing sophisticated design elements sometimes stop blogging altogether soon after.  I’ve often wondered if that’s a result of their feeling as if their content needs to be as good as their design. The most important thing is the writing on the blog.

Tips for maintaining a blogging schedule:

Editorial calendars can really help with keeping up with our blogs.  If we know what we plan to write about, that’s half the battle.

Having an emergency post in our drafts section is also a good idea.  Life always throws curve balls.

It’s a good idea to have some quick, go-to sources for blog images.  Finding an image to accompany the blog post can be time-consuming. It’s nice to have a bunch of copyright-free stock images in our media library that we can quickly access. Kirsten Oliphant recently listed good sources for images in her post on Jane Friedman’s blog.

Blogging breaks are fine. I usually take two breaks a year and the occasional odd day off when my schedule gets hectic near deadlines.  But I think it’s good if we can say exactly when we plan on returning.  Consistency is important in blogging…probably even more than our frequency.

What have you learned about successfully setting up a blog or maintaining a blogging practice?

Tips for long-term blogging:
Click To Tweet

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