It has been almost a year since I have began the world of writing a blog. Two years ago I wasn’t real sure what a blog was, let alone writing them on a weekly basis. But now that I’m writing “Blog 47” I wanted to share some of the things I have learned and continue to learn along my journey.

The first hard lesson I learned is that writing the blog for me is easy. Thinking of a subject, now there is the hard part. One thing I have found to be helpful is to keep a list handy. I write down subject ideas as they come to me throughout my day. I found that once I have a subject, the ideas come fairly easy about how to write about it. I also use “Google” to search for “hot blog topics” for my ideas. Also, search “Twitter” for what’s “trending” for ideas. At least this gives me an idea of what people are currently searching for on the web. Chances are if I write about a popular subject, it will increase my web traffic, which is one main point about blogging.

The next thing I learned was the blog needs to be helpful. It can’t be about me or my products and services. Frankly, nobody cares what I need, it’s all about how can I help them. I try to live my life daily by H.O.P.E. Helping Other People Everyday, so I try to blog about things I believe will help small business owners and salespeople with what I have learned in my last 25 years in business. Not to say I don’t sneak a product in from time to time but the vast majority of my blogs are about self help. I like to inspire people with motivational blogs and quotes. I truly believe by doing that, it will come back to me in ways I can’t even imagine, which it does.

The last thing I learned is the technical issues of blogging. I learned that “Word Press” is an easy to use format for blogging. I had to learn to read my “Google Analytics”, now that’s exciting. But it is very important to whether you are on track or lost in the weeds. I learned to use “social media connectors” so people could share my blog. Before doing this my blog bounce rate, say that 3 times fast, was over 90%. It was like “well I read it, now what?” By adding the share buttons it dropped my bounce rate to 55%. I also learned the importance of allowing comments on your blog page. Don’t just rely on the comments from LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. You want those on your blog as well. Reading comments can be as informative as the blog itself. One can pick up great ideas from the comment conversation generated. The last thing I added was a little bio about me. This didn’t even occur to me that readers might want to know who the heck this guy is writing all of these blogs. I am told it also helps with search engine optimization, or SEO. I won’t even go there yet since it’s still my first year.  Just adding these few little things made a positive difference in my results.

I truly hope this helps the “newbie blogger” overcome a few hurdles I had to learn the hard way. Please share ideas that you have learned about blogging as well. I’ll take all of the help I can get and be grateful for it.

“The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.”–Oliver Wendell Holmes

yourfriend4life.com

Tim Wilhoit is owner/principal of Your Friend 4 Life Insurance Agency in Nashville, TN. He is a family man, father of 3, entrepreneur, insurance agent, life insurance broker, salesman, sales trainer, recruiter, public speaker, blogger and team leader with over 25 years of experience in sales and marketing in the insurance and beverage industries.