As I was trying to be organised and think through a plan for blog posts for the next month I realised how haphazard I’d been of late, for various reasons and have vowed to try to do better. I’m sure if I were more disciplined I would follow the following:
- Write regularly so that your readers get to know you and look forward to your posts. Personally I admit that I’ve been distracted from writing my blogs, from Twitter and from Facebook in the past couple of years. Firstly real life got in the way as we settled into our move to Fife. Then I was spooked by talk of problems of security with Social Media. (could do better)
- Be consistent ~ if your readers want to read about the background to writing, or wish to follow a travel journal, browse comments about health or even the best wines, then they search for it. A blogger needs to find what interests them and share it in the best possible way ~ prose, poetry, photos, diagrams, lists …. (I’m afraid I’ve failed on this one too. My posts are, at present, spasmodic to say the least and flit from subject to subject as the mood takes me.)
- Make your themes within your topic clear ~ Using tabs carefully, which helps you to be found on a search engine too incidentally, you can cover a few themes -categories – within your umbrella topic, but your readers should be able to find them easily. (Oh dear ~ I rather like my cloud of many themes to the right hand side of the screen, but with hindsight it would have been best to plan my posts better and restrict the number of categories.)
- Use Tabs and Categories ~ always remember to set up these pesky little details. They appear at the bottom of your post and help the reader to find your posts when searching within WordPress but also on Google. (Hooray ~ Yes, I nearly always remember to do this now.)
- Always proof read carefully before clicking the final ‘publish’ button. (I hold my hand up here as I sometimes look back on posts and, though I’ve read it through a couple of times, pesky errors have crept in unbidden.) It also helps to schedule the post in a couple of days in advance, giving you time to revisit meanwhile and scrutinise it with fresh eyes.
- Not too long ~( I think I’m OK with this one.)
- Do your research carefully ~ (yes I’m fairly good at that too)
I’m sure there are many more, but now I’ve remembered that planning and being organised is the key I will attempt to get back on track.
My next post will be to complete a=the long awaited end to a series I began a few months ago ~ A Virtual Walk Along the Fife Coastal Path ~ I will finally write about the last walk (for me) to St Andrews. After that I’ll let you know.
Happy blogging!
Diana Jackson 