The content landscape has changed; now it’s time to redefine your skills
The blogging platform has added a new dimension to journalism in the 21st century.
Writers and editors can stay up-to-date with their audience by producing content daily or multiple times each day. This is a much different approach from traditional journalism where content was only released weekly or monthly through printed materials.
Due to this availability in content publishing, writers and editors can develop targeted audiences quicker than ever before.
However, there are still challenges that writers face in the blogosphere. There is a need to understand why blogging is important and how to blog properly, or the writer’s credibility may be harmed and his or her full potential may never be reached.
Editorial changes for bloggers in 2011 and beyond
Blogging has come a long way over the last decade. As one of the older online activities, its origins positioned the medium as a web log for anyone to share their insights.
Nowadays, knowing how to blog correctly will help writers and editors build an audience, stand out among untrained writers and retain relevancy with their career for years to come.
Why we blog
As the Internet has evolved, the process of blogging has too. Editors utilizing the platform are blogging today for three main reasons:
-We are publishers: Our job is to spread content on the special interest topics we are passionate about. Blogging gives us a platform for this content that can be easily published to the Internet and our interested followers.
-We need search engines to find our content: One thing that sets trained bloggers apart from the hobbyists is search engine optimization.
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When creating blog content, we optimize posts for the most relevant keywords being searched for by our audience members. Not only do we need eye-catching content, but we must also include keywords or content will not be found and indexed by search engines.
If search engines cannot find your content, it basically does not exist in the digital landscape and it will not help build a bigger audience. Your time will be wasted.
Furthermore, blogs are frequently updated to appease search engines that want to index the freshest content available.
Editors who blog daily, or companies that publish multiple blogs daily, have an advantage in the process of search engine optimization, as their content will be highly regarded.
If you are not blogging consistently, any page rankings you currently hold in Google may be in jeopardy of losing rank.
-We need content to share on social networks: Blogs were one of the original sources for interaction on the web, matched in relevancy by email correspondence only. Today, social networks like Facebook and Twitter have become more popular for sharing content. Creating blog posts gives editors content to share via these social networks. If your content is engaging, audience members can share it more easily. This will lead to more website traffic and added email conversions.
As online editors, we thrive on inbound links. Blogging and sharing your articles will greatly help increase these numbers.
If you want to become a better blogger, join us on February 22nd for our Blogging for Editors webinar. We guarantee you will be blogging more effectively within 30 days of attending this webinar.
