100 Lessons Learned from

10 Years of Blogging

_____________________________

quicksprout.com
100 lessons learned from blogging for 10 years. Here are the lessons you can also learn about
blogging.

Headlines
1. Headlines with facts and data tend to get shared well within the B2B community.

2. Keep them short and sweet, or else your click-through rate will decrease.

3. The headline is the most important part of a blog post.

4. If your headlines are too long, they will get cut off within Google’s search results. Try
to keep them to ​fewer than 65 characters​ .

5. Don’t assume you know what your readers want. Make sure you A/B test your
blogging headlines.

6. Try to think what people would search for to find your blog post on Google. If
possible, incorporate those words and phrases within your headlines.

7. Using negative words within headlines is a great way to increase your click-through
rates.

8. If you use numbers within your headlines, use odd numbers — they tend to get more
clicks.

9. People scan headlines and tend to look only at the first 3 and last 3 words within the
headline.

10. Try to address the readers within the headline.

11. Make sure your headline is clear. If people don’t know what they are reading, they will
bounce off.

12. If you aren’t sure how to write great headlines, start by using t​
hese formulas​
.

13. Don’t try to click-bait your readers. If you deceive them, you will lose their trust.

14. Evoke curiosity when possible. This also tends to help with Facebook shares.

15. Leveraging emotions within headlines is a great way to get more people to read your
blog post.

16. Use magazines for inspiration. Their writers tend to know how to write popular
headlines.
 17. When you’re stuck, you can always use a h ​eadline generator​
. It’s not the be-all and
end-all tool, but it will help you get started.

18. Make sure your headline is short enough to fit within a tweet.

Writing
19. Be sure to check all posts for grammar and spelling errors. This affects your readers
and your search engine rankings.

20. Try to start off your introduction with a question. It’s a quick way to hook your
readers.

21. Use the words “you” and “I” within your post as it will help create a conversation.

22. Wrap up your post with a conclusion. It’s a great way to summarize your message and
provide key takeaways.

23. Use subheadings within your body. They make your posts easier to read.

24. Stylize your posts by bolding and italicizing words and phrases.

25. Using bullets and numbers is a simple way to make your content more digestible.

26. Always outline before you start writing. It helps speed up the process.

27. Telling a story is a great way to make your content stand out from the crowd.

28. Opening up to your readers is a great way to build an emotional connection with
them. You can easily do this with your words.

29. Only write about things you are passionate about. Those are the posts that will do
well. Your readers can tell when you blog on stuff you love.

30. Experiment with different writing styles. It’s the best way for you to figure out your
voice.

31. The best time to write is when an idea hits you. If you can drop everything and focus
on writing, you’ll be able to blog efficiently.

32. Don’t rush your writing. Creating high quality content takes time and practice.

33. Don’t publish everything you write. Some of your posts will suck, and you shouldn’t
release them. It’s okay… it happens to all of us.

34. Make sure you get to the point as quickly as possible. Fluff doesn’t help.
 35. If you are struggling with writing, you can always hire an editor to help you out.

Idea generation

36. Your best ideas typically aren’t generated from sitting in front of a computer.
Experience the world, interact with others, and let your creative juices flow.

37. Use tools like ​

Buzzsumo​
to come up with ideas. What’s worked before still works now
in most cases.

38. Follow your competition. Knowing what works for them will help you come up with
topic ideas.

39. Use Google Analytics to analyze your posts. Stop writing about topics that receive
very little traffic.

40. Pick up a magazine or a book to spur ideas.

41. Don’t force ideas — let them come to you naturally. Forced ideas tend to turn into
crappy blog posts.

42. If you are stuck, ask others for help. From peers to people within your industry, others
can give you ideas.

43. You can use tools like ​

Qualaroo​
to generate ideas from your website visitors.

44. Start subscribing to the popular forums within your community. The most asked
questions tend to be great blog post ideas.

45. Google Trends​

is a great place to find up-and-coming topics to blog about.

Commenting
46. Always ask your readers a question at the end of your post. It helps increase the
number of comments you receive.

47. Remove trackbacks from your blog. They just get in the way of people seeing and
reading the comments.

48. Make sure you use threaded comments to help with responses.

49. Don’t use Facebook comments. The text within them isn’t crawlable, which hurts
overall rankings.

50. Don’t expect people to comment if you aren’t willing to respond to each commenter.
 51. When responding to comments, make sure you give thorough responses. It shows
that you care.

52. Try to respond to comments right when they come in. Your prompt replies help
increase responses.

53. Use email notifications to let previous commenters know when new comments have
been left. You can use the S
​ubscribe to Comments​ plugin for this.

54. Moderate your comments. You don’t want a lot of spammy comments, or they will kill
the vibe.

55. Encourage people to use their names instead of their website names when leaving a
comment. Commenting should be a personal thing.

56. Avoid self-promotion. Your goal should be to help readers and not convince them to
pay you for anything. In the long run, this will help build goodwill and increase sales.

57. Personal stories and experiences tend to receive the highest number of comments.

58. People tend to prefer commenting at 9 a.m. versus other times.

Email marketing
59. Email marketing is the number one way to get people back to your blog.

60. Readers who come to your blog from email are more likely to share your content on
the social web and to comment.

61. Pop-ups on the entry and exit are the best places to collect emails.

62. Even though you may hate pop-ups, very few of your visitors will complain about
them.

63. Sidebar opt-ins and opt-ins beneath blog posts (above the comments) are also
effective areas to collect emails.

64. The best way to collect email addresses is to offer each reader an incentive such as a
free e-book.

65. When testing the call-to-action button for your e-book offer, start with the “get
instant access” call to action as it tends to convert well.

66. Every time you publish a blog post, send out an email to all your subscribers, letting
them know you published a post. Make sure you limit the email frequency to two or
three times a week.
 67. When emailing your readers, limit the number of links in your emails. Using more than
three tends to cause more emails to go into the spam folder.

68. Don’t keep emailing those readers who don’t open your emails. It causes spam issues.
Your email provider should help you filter out these emails.

69. If your email offer is related to a specific blog post, your opt-in rate will go up.

70. Make sure your offer is very valuable, or else it will ruin your reputation and cause a
lot of unsubscribes.

71. Don’t sign up with an email provider that puts you on a shared IP. If you manage your
list right, a dedicated IP will help with deliverability.

72. Getting ​
Return Path​
certified will help you get more emails into people’s inboxes.

73. Keep your email subject lines short — it will help with open rates.

74. When possible, keep your subject lines casual as it also helps with open rates.

75. Do not put your whole blog post within the email. Make sure you put only the first
paragraph or two to help drive more traffic back to your site.

Scheduling blog posts

76. Publish blog posts on a consistent basis, or it will be hard to grow your traffic.

77. Come up with a regular posting schedule, and stick with it. Whether it is once a week
or once a month… stick with the schedule.

78. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays tend to be the best days to blog.

79. You’ll get the least amount of traffic on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

80. Most people read blogs in the morning. Afternoon is the second popular time.

81. The best time to schedule a blog post is on M

​onday at 11 a.m.

82. People who blog twice a day generate m

​ore than twice as many inbound links​
as
people who blog once a day.

83. Women are less likely to read blogs posts during the evening than men.
SEO
84. If you are using a WordPress blog, use the Y​
oast SEO plugin​
.

85. Interlink your blog posts when it makes sense as this will help with crawling and
indexing.

86. Avoid writing content for search engines. Write content for humans as eventually
search algorithms will adapt.

87. Posts that are ​

2,000 words or longer​
are more likely to rank on page one of Google.

88. Creating infographics​is a great way to gain new readers and backlinks. In the long
​
run, these backlinks will help boost your rankings.

89. Avoid keyword stuffing in your blog posts — it will just hurt you.

90. Blogging is a long tail strategy, so don’t focus on optimizing your blog posts for any
particular keyword. Just focus on writing high quality content.

91. Having subheadings and headings within your blog posts will help you rank for more
keywords.

Social media
92. Make sure you use scrolling social buttons like ​
Flare​
as it will help generate more
social shares.

93. Only place two or three social sharing options on each blog post. Fewer options will
help you generate more social shares than five or six will.

94. Place social sharing buttons at the bottom of your post as well as on the side.

95. Most people are on Twitter during 5 p.m. EST. That is when you should share your
content.

96. Share the same post on Twitter multiple times in order to get maximum visibility.

97. People prefer sharing content on Facebook at 12 p.m. EST during Saturday.

98. Asking people to share content at the end of each blog post is a great way to get more
social shares.

99. If you want more social traffic, make sure you are using s​
ocial meta tags.​

100. If you have co-workers, ask them to share your posts. Every share helps.