Blogging is probably one of the most exciting and fun ways to make money online, but it doesn’t come without its tips and tricks, which in most cases, make the process far more effective. Today, I will share with you, 29 top notch blogging tips of 29 blogging experts that I interviewed recently. Here we go.

Blogging Tip #1: Set Traps For Ideas

Eric Brantner, Founder of SleepZoo.com, said that bloggers should always try and extract ideas from their readers:

One of my favorite blogging tips is to set traps for capturing ideas. Here’s the thing, the average blog dies after just 100 days. A lot of times, it’s because the blogger has run out of things to talk about. I’ve written thousands of posts over the years and have never run out of ideas. That’s because I set these idea traps.

I’ll do things like conduct surveys on my site to get reader input, host and participate in Twitter chats with my followers, ask email subscribers to submit questions for a Q&A, the list goes on and on. This allows me to capture great ideas for new content for my sites, ensuring I always have something fresh to write about and that I’m discussing topics my readers are interested in since they participate in the idea generation process.

Blogging Tip #2: Don’t Forget About Graphics

Louise Hendon, Co-Founder of Paleo Flourish Magazine, reminded us not to forget about graphics as a type of content:

Create great graphics to illustrate your posts. These can really help get your content shared more. Use software like Canva to create these graphics easily without you having to learn design.

Blogging Tip #3: Devote Time To Your Posts & Be Authentic

Asaf Darash, CEO & Founder of Regpack, said that bloggers need to focus on creating spectacular posts in their own personal style:

My best blogging tip is to devote time to your posts. It’s better to post 1 great, long, well-researched post a week than 5 so-so posts. The most popular posts on our blog are the ones we invested a lot of time into. The next best tip is to be authentic.

When I switched over from writing my company’s blog as us to the reader, to me to the reader, it upped our shares and readership. Making it more personal and the content coming truly from me the CEO VS the company as a whole made a big difference.

Blogging Tip #4: Connect With Influencers

Zak Mustapha, Founder & CEO of Foolishness File, recommended bloggers to start reaching out to influencers in their field as soon as possible:

Connect with influencers. If I only knew this when I started I could have saved a year of my life. Everyone says you should publish great content, but that’s only half the equation. The other half is to get influencers in your niche to promote you and your content.

Blogging Tip #5: Get Ideas From Your Life Experience

Nick Brennan, Founder & CEO of Watch Social Media, said that bloggers out there should get inspired by real-life events:

Use examples and draw inspiration from what you go through on a daily or weekly basis. Real-world experiences are easier to write about because of the warmth they bring to writing. Readers can feel that. They relate to that. Connection is more important than technical proficiency.

Blogging Tip #6: Gather Those Emails

Sam McIntire, Founder of Deskbright, said that you pretty much need to capture as many of your readers’ emails as you can:

Collect email addresses from your readers. You’re providing valuable content to your audience, and if you’re not collecting e-mail addresses to continue the conversation down the line, you’re missing out on a huge amount of engagement for your users.

Offer a weekly newsletter and embed a signup form in your blog page, or put up a free resource that users can download if they input their e-mail. Use these addresses down the line to market additional products or keep people updated on your latest posts.

Blogging Tip #7: Write Content Which People Will Share

Troy Gnat, Owner of Type 2 Digest, recommended bloggers to also think in terms of social shareability of the post while they are writing it:

There is no better tip I can give than to write interesting, informative content that people will be willing to share! You can read everywhere that content is king. This has personally proven to be true. Without good content, you will not rank well in search engines, keep people coming back, or make any recurring sales.

Blogging Tip #8: Start Capturing Emails Right Away

Jim Wang from Wallet Hacks, similar to blogging tip #6, recommended capturing as many emails as you can, as soon as you can:

Start asking your visitors for emails asap – email is the only way you’ll be able to reliably reach out to those visitors ever again. You control that platform, unlike social media, and control is crucial. The earlier you start, the better off you’ll be.

Blogging Tip #9: Don’t Ignore Blog Comments & Social Media Activity

Zondra Wilson, CEO of Blu Skin Care, advises bloggers to look for ideas from their readers:

Get ideas from your audience. This can be a great way to gather ideas of what topics people would most like to read about, which will help your blog grow. One of the best ways I’ve seen this in action is through blog comments or tweets.

Blogging Tip #10: Don’t Always Wait For Inspiration

Paula Kiger, a Social Media Specialist at Weaving Influence, advised bloggers to sometimes force it if an inspiration has not struck yet:

The best advice I’ve been given is “make a date with the page”. Don’t wait until a bolt of inspiration strikes. If you’ve decided to blog once a week, blog once a week. The choice to write really does start the flow of inspiration – it’s not the other way around.

Blogging Tip #11: Write Useful Content

Justin Lavelle, the Communications Director at BeenVerified, said that bloggers need to focus on creating useful content to their target audience instead of being just another greedy website:

Ensure that your blog is a source of useful information for your customers and potential customers, not another advertising channel. It’s useful to use an editorial calendar, but the danger with that is that your content can become too static and too focused on what you want to talk about, rather than what your customer is paying attention to.

Stay focused on up-to-date and relevant topics in the news that affect your customers’ lives and don’t be afraid to keep things nimble to address hot topics as they come up.

Blogging Tip #12: Use Your Blog Posts To Sell Your Products/Services

Joel Schwarz, Founder of Parlor.me, said that blog posts are the perfect way to tell your current and future customers about your products/services and why they would want to buy them:

One surefire marketing strategy is using your blog to give your brand a voice and pique your current and potential customers’ further interest in your products and services. For example, we use our blog to share insight on the different forms of personal communication and the benefits of verbal conversations versus nonverbal ones, which in turn helps to promote the Parlor voice-based social networking app.

Our blog posts cover why it is important to not just rely on texting and other nonverbal methods of communication, as so much of what is said is lost from not hearing voice inflections or emphasis on certain words. We hope to inspire people to see how verbal communication is more effective and more efficient both in terms of enhancing relationships and increasing productivity. This helps grow our business, as our blog posts inspire people to download our app and connect with others on a deeper, more personal level.

Blogging Tip #13: Know The Purpose Of Each Of Your Blog Posts

Sergey Alakov from Cooksville Hyundai said that every blogger must know the purpose of each of their writings:

The best blogging tip from me would be – know why you create each of your blog posts. What are you trying to achieve with it? Who is your audience? What are the KPIs? Why do you write what you write? Too many people/businesses seem to be missing this.

Blogging Tip #14: Don’t Play By The Trolls

Richard Keller, Founder of Wooden Pants Publishing, recommended that bloggers never play the troll game – with trolls:

Don’t post to the trolls. There’s no need to go controversial to generate comments and traffic. Doing so is only going to draw in the trolls. In the end, all they will do is drag your blog into the gutter. You can certainly express your opinion, but do so with balance.

Blogging Tip #15: Create Content That Reaches Beyond Your Target Market

Jeremy Knauff, CEO of Spartan Media, basically said that you need to go the extra mile when blogging:

Creating content that appeals to your target market is essential, but creating content that appeals to a wider demographic is equally as important. Think about it like this – a potential customer may see a blog post you’ve shared on social media, but imagine how much more impact it would have if people within their circle from outside the industry were also sharing your blog posts?

It would create a dramatic increase in exposure, trust, and brand recognition! It’s as simple as identifying who might be within the network of your ideal customer, then writing content that enables you to reach them through that network.

Blogging Tip #16: Stick With It

Frank Strong, Founder & President of Sword and the Script Media, said that bloggers must learn to be consistent:

Consistency is the single most valuable attribute of blogging and content marketing. Too many organizations start blogs with a lot of fanfare but give up after a few posts. The web is littered with dormant corporate blogs that never had a chance. Blogging is a long, honest game, you’ve got to stick with it.

Blogging Tip #17: Differentiate Quality From Quantity

Jamal Asskoumi, Owner of leagueoftrading.com, said that you must not confuse quantity with quality:

Some bloggers now assume that by churning out 1000+ word blog posts they’re automatically quality content, which just isn’t true. What makes a blog post quality is answering a question, engaging writing and actionable statements.

Blogging Tip #18: Don’t Forget About Keyword Research

Aqib Nazir, Owner of aqibnazir.com, reminded us of keyword research:

Writing without proper keyword research is just like selling raincoats in the summer. You are writing what no one is searching for. There are a lot of tools that have made keyword research easy now. You can easily find profitable keywords and get some eyeballs on your content.

Blogging Tip #19: Promote Your Blog Posts On Facebook

Jason Parks, President of The Media Captain, made a really good analogy about great blog posts that receive no traffic at all:

Too often I see great articles written but no traffic driven to the blog. This is the equivalent to John Grisham writing a great novel but nobody reading his book because he didn’t market it.

If you just boost your blog post for $5 to your target demographic through your Facebook page, this can get more eyeballs on your blog content and raise more awareness for your blog and your company.

Blogging Tip #20: Create Phenomenal Headlines

Justin Herring, Head of Digital Marketing at YEAH! Local, said that bloggers really need to take their time with the headlines of their posts:

The best blogging tip is to create a unique and shareable title/headline. Your blog post could be amazing, but if you don’t have a good title no one will share it. You could also have a mediocre blog post, but it will get shared with an awesome title.

Blogging Tip #21: Write Blog Posts With Optimal Length

Emily Sidley, Senior Director of Publicity at Three Girls Media, said that blog posts should be in the optimal length range – which varies of course:

Write blog posts that fall within the 1,500 – 2,000 word range. Recent research shows this is better for SEO plus it gives you plenty of room to get into specifics your readers will be interested in. So really, it’s the best of both worlds, appealing to the people reading your posts as well as search engines.

Blogging Tip #22: Engage Your Blog Commenters

Han Chang, Co-Founder of InvestmentZen, urged bloggers to not forget about the comments below the posts:

Check frequently and reply quickly to strike up a conversation and learn more about your audience while leveraging their feedback as additional content. Make sure to approve comments manually to prevent negative or snarky comments as those can damage you or your blog’s brand.

Blogging Tip #23: Keep It Short & Simple

Max Robinson from RSS, said that bloggers need to keep it short in 2016:

2015 was the year of long content. This year, short and concise content is what works. Your readers are getting impatient of your essays, and the best way to retain their attention is to keep your writing short and sweet.

Blogging Tip #24: Educate, Entertain & Engage

Amanda Collins, Chief of Staff at The Grammar Doctors, recommended following the three e’s:

Educate, entertain, and engage. All writing should do this, but blogging especially should. Notice I didn’t say sell anywhere. If you offer information and provide a little humor or something worth learning, your followers will be engaged – and then they will buy.

Blogging Tip #25: Go The Opposite Way

Yev Marusenko, Growth Marketing Manager at OnTheGrid, said that bloggers need to test some unconventional ideas from time to time:

80% of your blog should be consistent with what works. This tip focuses on the 20% to test unconventional ideas. We are all used to following influencers and news in our own industry. Take a moment to look at a top blog from a discipline opposite of yours.

Explore their best content – emulate successful strategies. If it doesn’t work, it’s just 20% of your total efforts. Your audience may appreciate the unique perspective you’ll bring.

Blogging Tip #26: Don’t Overlook SEO

Martin Luenendonk from Cleverism, said that bloggers must not forget about SEO:

For sustainable traffic your content needs to be search engine optimized. For this write in-depth articles that deliver positive user signals to Google (e.g. time on site, social shares, backlinks) while optimizing your blog titles and meta tags for improving the search click-through rate.

Blogging Tip #27: Answer Your Customers’ Questions

Natalie Edwards, Marketing Director at sFBI, said that bloggers need to focus on responding their customers’ questions:

Write the answers to questions that your customers have. Even better, forget slaving over attention-grabbing headlines and just make your customers’ questions the titles of the blog posts. Google’s last algorithm update in January, 2016 favors titles that match the inquiries customers ask Google directly. Make it easy on yourself.

Blogging Tip #28: Be Creative & Be Yourself

Hilary Young, Founder of Hilary Young Creative, recommended bloggers to be creative and not fake it:

You might not be able to blog about a totally original concept, but you can put your own unique spin to an old topic. Let your voice and personality shine through and you can’t go wrong.

Blogging Tip #29: Give Answers Right Away

Audrey Wright, Webmaster and Digital Marketer at Factoring Solutions, said that bloggers need to give answers to their readers right away, not wait for the end of the article:

If you have an informational/tutorial blog, remember that users want to get answers fast. Don’t just throw them into a vast page with overwhelming information on the topic. Give them a clear answer first, then allow them to decide if they want to continue reading into the details of the topic.

Summary

So there you have it guys. The top blogging tips of these 29 blogging experts. I’m sure that you’ve noticed how a few of the tips contradict one another but that’s completely normal. Every niche is different and has its own unique tricks that bloggers use.

That’s why, if there’s a blogging tip that I would give you, it would be to pick a niche that you love because that will basically allow you to really delve into the depths of your topics and willingly (not forcefully) find the best strategies possible.