Mastering the Art of Blogging: Strategies for Success

Yeah.

So the cadence really depends on what you can do or feel comfortable with.

It's not that you have to blog every day or every other day.

If it's once a week, if it's once every other week, whatever that cadence is that you can do, and you can do it in a sustainable way, make that your cadence.

That's good.

A new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host, Brett Dyster.

And if you could please subscribe to this podcast, leave a five star review, it really would help.

But this week we're talking about blogging in written content.

The OG of content is, I usually say, because everybody's on to audio, podcast and video now.

But anyways, with me is John and he's a professional proofreader, editor, writer, and also runs a editing and writing agenc and helps businesses improve their written content to attract more people to their websites and convert them into new clients.

So welcome to the show, John.

Thanks, Brett.

Thanks for having me.

Yes.

And the first question is all my guest is, are you a coffee or a tea drinker?

Coffee.

100%.

Do you have any specific favorites or you just.

Just give me the coffee.

I don't care what it is.

Oh, man.

So I live in the Seattle area, so any kind of corner coffee shop, man, I'm there.

Yeah.

Seattle is known for their coffee scene.

California is too, a little bit.

But Seattle is the OG of the coffee scene.

Yeah, for good reason.

Like in February, you have to have it.

True.

And I gave a brief summary of your expertise.

Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

Yeah.

So like you said, I'm an editor.

I'm a writer.

I run an editing and writing agency as well.

Basically, I have a knack for grammar and writing.

And I've just read too many blog posts, I've visited too many websites.

I get too many emails that have spelling errors, bad grammar, poor formatting, poor flow, and, you know, it just turns me off as a customer.

So what I do is I try to help other companies say, hey, let me improve your content.

Let me either edit it for you, write it for you, and let's, instead of turning people off, let's turn people on.

So that's what we do.

What is the state of blogging?

Because blogging has been around since basically the creation of the Internet because it was the only way you could actually write content on the Internet because there was no other way to do it.

There was not enough bandwidth and it would take probably years to upload video if it was if you could ever do it.

Yeah, I still think that blogging is alive and well and if you do any Google searching, you're going to find a blog and written content in the results.

And honestly, I think like I was thinking about this the other day, so there's a place for video content and there's a place for written content.

So when I was a kid, I tried to learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube and there was no YouTube because I'm older than that.

So my brother got a book that explained in writing how to solve a Rubik's Cube.

Yeah, that doesn't work at all.

And now as an adult, I went and found a YouTube video and I was able to learn it.

So if you want to solve a Rubik's Cube, go watch a YouTube video, but there's other subjects where you don't want to watch a video.

If I need to find the answer to a problem or I need to understand how something works and I need to do it quickly, I don't want to watch a 20 minute YouTube video.

I want to go to a blog post and I want to be able to read that information and get on with my day.

So I really think it depends on the subject, what it is you're trying to accomplish, who you're trying to reach.

But I think the written word has been here for thousands of years.

I don't think it's going anywhere.

So yeah, I still think there's a massive audience for blogs.

It just depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

Do you think it's a generational thing now?

Because each generation has a unique thing that they like or prefer to do.

So, like the older generations, even me included, I was there when the creation of the Internet happened.

I understand the awful noises that the Internet made before you actually logged on.

Yes, and there was that part.

And now the newer generations, they've grown up with YouTube, they've grown up with.

Now tick tock.

They've grown up with all this stuff.

Is there like a divide between that or do everybody still love to read?

To a certain extent.

So I have two kids, I have a 15 year old son and an almost 12 year old daughter and my son wants to watch everything on YouTube.

My daughter likes to read.

So is there a generational gap?

I don't know.

That's a good question.

My, my younger generation in my house, it depends.

So I.

Yeah, it depends.

That's what I would say.

Got you.

And then how can a business start to do a Blog because it's easy just to.

Just like podcasting, it's easy to set up a podcast.

But it's the other portion that I think a lot of them don't understand.

So how do they get started with that process?

Maybe they can't afford someone like you.

Maybe they just want to do on their own for whatever reason.

Yeah, this is actually one area where AI can be helpful.

So AI is still pretty new.

It can do some things really well, other things it can't.

One of the things AI is great at is brainstorming.

So if, and I actually did this when I started a blog recently.

So I have my subject to know, my audience, who I'm trying to reach.

And so I basically put all that into ChatGPT and said, okay, give me like 25 topics that I could blog about that and include like a blog title and maybe a high level outline.

And you know what?

It spat out 25 ideas and 5 were great, 10 were pretty decent I could work with and the rest, I just, I let those go and that's fine.

But as far as getting started, I would definitely make use of AI as a brainstorming assistant.

I wouldn't just rely on anything it said, but man, that can take you pretty far.

Again, there's all kinds of resources online just to.

There's all kinds of blog posts about how to blog, there's all kinds of videos about how to blog.

But I think the most important thing is know your subject, know who you're trying to reach and what you're trying to get them to do, and then go from there and you can start brainstorming subjects and outlines and things.

But if you don't have the audience down and you don't know what you're trying to get them to do, then I wouldn't even start yet.

I get those things nailed down first.

And within.

I just recently saw that ChatGPT has a new one coming out called ChatGPT4.0 or something like that is some weird name.

And then Google I.O.

just had their.

Well, Google just had their I.O.

conference and basically the whole conference was about Gemini.

So is it getting smarter enough where you could, with supervision, make it, write it and then change it, or should you just leave it as an ideation for now?

For now, leave it as an ideation tool.

The only thing that I've ever had luck with AI is it can write a really good job description because those are cold on lifeless anyway.

But the minute you're trying to put some kind of personality or, or human interest into it.

Like, AI is not a human.

It's not going to be.

And I think that's where it falls short.

Not to mention the fact that trust but verify is key here.

Actually, don't even trust, just verify, because AI doesn't.

The concept of true and false, that's not a thing that AI even knows exists.

It's just what's the most likely word to come after this current word?

So, again, super useful tool.

Wonderful for brainstorming, for assistance.

I don't.

They're not.

They're definitely.

It's definitely not at the point where you can just let it write you an article and have it be good.

Gotcha.

So we got the ideation part down.

Like, how do you build out the calendar?

Because the next part is building it out.

So at least you're not scrambling to write something.

Because as we all know, we get writer's block sometimes, and that's pretty awful at the same time.

But you don't want to have writer's block and trying to scramble to create your blog.

And there's a cadence to it, I'm pretty sure as well.

Yeah.

So the cadence really depends on what you can do or feel comfortable with.

It's not that you have to blog every day or every other day, if it's once a week, if it's once every other week, whatever that cadence is that you can do, and you can do it in a sustainable way, make that your cadence.

So that's where you say, okay, writer's block.

How do I get around that?

So you've got your cadence.

Okay, I'm gonna write one blog post a week, one every other week, whatever it happens to be that initial brainstorming, whether it's with ChatGPT or another person in your field or whatever it might be, those are where those topics start to slot.

So build that content calendar out.

I'm gonna write an article about subject A, and then next week it's gonna be about subject B, and then and C.

Because the worst thing about writer's block is right when you're sitting there with a blank page.

So sometimes the hardest thing is to go from a blank page to something or anything.

And again, that's where like that brainstorming that pre planning you've done can really help you out.

Another good thing is if you.

You research some tools, maybe you can figure out some good keywords you think you want to rank for, and you can go out and write articles about those.

So there's all kinds of ways to go get ideas.

And I Think that's the most important part is get that schedule together, plotted out, get those ideas on paper, maybe a rough outline if you got it.

And that goes a long way to curing writer's block.

And the other thing that as a writer I found out is if you just sit down and start writing.

In fact, sometimes I'll even label my draft blog post.

I'll even put in big red letters at the top.

It'll say crappy first draft.

And what that does is it takes the pressure off of me.

I don't have to write a perfect draft.

I just have to write.

And it usually ends up being better than I thought it was going to be.

But I can always go back and edit it later.

Yeah, writer's block is real, but there are definitely tools you can use to, to help.

And I think that organization, the scheduling, the brainstorming, just the mental reminders, all that stuff is going to help you get started.

And could you have AI write like a short description?

Because like you said, we.

As long as AI is writing short things, it's actually pretty good.

So maybe you don't want to write your crappy one.

Or maybe if you la.

Some people can't still do it.

Would AI help you with that to start the ball rolling?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, I've had it.

Tell me.

I've had it.

Give me pretty detailed outlines before.

And usually what happens is I say, okay, here's a subject, here's what I want to blog about.

Give me a detailed outline and it'll give me again, like five bullet points.

And three of them will be great.

One will be okay.

And one.

I'm not doing that one.

Yeah, absolutely.

Or if I get stuck on, oh, I want to write this sentence, but I don't know how to.

How to word it quite right.

Like at the sentence level.

Yeah, AI can help.

You can at least get you down the road.

So yeah, for sure.

Gotcha.

And then have you seen businesses want to write more blogs or have they turned into the other content of like podcasts, like we're doing, or videos, because those are the new darling content because it's not writing.

I don't know that I've seen any businesses jettison their written content.

But what I do see is actually an opportunity, and a good one is if I've written a blog post and it's a really good blog post, I can take that and I can make a video or two out of it.

I can make a short or reel out of it.

I can do some other things with it, and then it can link back to my web page or my call to action or whatever.

So I think the real trick is maximizing the value of that.

Use your stuff to make different kinds of media.

Totally do that.

Why wouldn't you do that?

And could the reverse happen?

You have a video, you create the blog post through your video as well.

Could the reverse happen with what you just said?

Yeah, absolutely.

As long as you have.

So if I think about what makes for good content, solid introduction, you have second to get someone's attention, to keep it.

So do you have a solid introduction?

Does it hook the reader?

Does the content flow?

Is it logical?

Does it answer the question the reader has?

And then does it guide them toward your call to action, toward what you want them to do next?

You can do that.

That'll make a good video.

That'll make a good blog post.

So yes, absolutely.

If you've got some videos and you want to turn them into blog posts and try to rank in Google for those.

Absolutely.

And we're talking about, like, blogging.

Have you seen businesses use, like, the LinkedIn features?

Because LinkedIn features do have the blogging side.

Maybe you don't want to host it on your website for whatever reason.

Is it good to actually use those other channels like medium or LinkedIn specifically?

Yeah, LinkedIn has a somewhat new, or at least new to me, feature called LinkedIn Newsletters.

So I've literally just found out about these.

So I don't know a ton about them, but I do know from a little bit of research they can be quite effective.

And the nice thing about LinkedIn and I use LinkedIn a lot, is people go there expecting to read about business things.

So if you have a business, that's a great place.

Now, the downside is anything you post on LinkedIn you don't own.

So you have to weigh that as a risk.

But yeah, a LinkedIn newsletter could be just as effective, if not more so than a blog.

It just you.

It's worth trying, potentially.

It depends again, on your customer base, what you're trying to achieve, who you're trying to talk to and meet.

But yeah, LinkedIn is great.

Medium can also be great.

I don't know.

I don't know.

At least for me.

Like, I don't read about a lot of business things on Medium.

It's more about like hobbies and things.

So maybe.

But again, it depends on what you're trying to do.

And if you have written content, say you have a blog or a LinkedIn newsletter, you can Copy and paste it into a medium account and you can click the little button that says this is not original.

It's okay, you can do that.

So these are all valid things that you can explore for your business.

I can't tell you what's going to work for your business, but I can tell you trying new things is always a good idea.

Could you almost make like teasers within LinkedIn because they have newsletters, but they also have the actual blog feature too.

Could you almost write like teasers through that to get them over there?

Maybe you don't.

Like you said, don't trust these very well because one day the feature is there, the next day the feature is gone.

Yeah, you can do teasers for sure.

The thing you have to be careful about is you don't want to put too many clicks in someone's way.

So if they have to click to go to another website, if you're in, if they're interested, they will click.

If they're not, they won't.

So that's not good or bad, it's just the truth of the matter.

So that would be the only probably hesitation I would have to do that.

But it may work for you.

And what have you found the best ways of leveraging social media with your blog posts?

Have you found Twitter X?

Which by the way, if you have the premium account, they now have articles now too, so you could technically write them on there too.

But what have you found the best way of leveraging those?

Because you write the blog, you do your best to do like SEO and everything, but you still gotta promote it through other channels.

Yeah.

So I, I have a pretty simple setup that seems to work for me is I just, I have a Facebook account.

It does okay.

It's not great.

LinkedIn I think is where it's at for my business, editing, writing, like that's a much better platform for me.

And Twitter is not good for my mental health.

So I don't go over there.

So fair enough.

But what I do is I just, for the week I schedule out for me, it's one post a day.

And I, what I try to do, no matter what, is whatever I'm posting, whether I'm linking to a blog post or a graphic or something, is I try to pull out the value for the reader.

If I can pull out those little snippets of my blog post and say, here's a stat that you can do something within your business, or here's five quick tips to how to self edit your next blog post and just put it right there in the post and then they can read the article if they want.

But for me, I feel like if I can be the guy who always provides value, then I'm going to see more traction.

My social media posts, it's not about me, it's about you.

What's in it for the reader?

I think as long as you can focus on that and focus on delivering value, then you know that's going to be the most important part of your strategy.

Gotcha.

And once you finish, let's say, or finish your first draft, like how should they go edit it?

Should they use the AI part?

Because AI can actually help.

Should they have.

You can proofread yourself, but a lot of times you miss still the things that you actually wrote as well.

Should they have somebody else look at it or two or three?

What's your process for that?

Yeah, I'm a little bit biased.

I'm going to say that you should hire me to do it.

But you can actually edit it yourself if you don't have the means or whatnot.

You can also, if you have someone in your life who is good at that thing, you can ask them if they would do it too.

There's a pretty basic process you can follow.

A hundred thousand foot view is after you write your first draft, step away.

A couple days is great.

If you don't have a couple days, a couple hours is okay too.

And then you're going to start reading it through as slowly from the top.

You're going to start just questioning everything.

Is that word spelled right?

Does that sentence make sense?

And stop and verify.

Look it up.

One of the myths that I think people have about people like me as an editor or proofreader, you must just know how to spell every word.

No, I have a dictionary.

I look them up.

I don't know how to spell every.

No one knows how to spell every word.

Look words up.

If you don't know if they're right or not, use Grammarly.

Grammarly is not perfect, but it's a little better than nothing.

It will help you catch the more egregious errors.

So you're just going to go through and look at all of it.

And then here's the trick, here's the key.

Here's like the secret sauce.

Once you've done that, stop, walk away for a little bit, come back, and here's where you're going to really find a lot of mistakes.

Read it backwards.

So start at the bottom.

Either, either the sentence or the paragraph level.

Just read it backward.

What that does is it breaks the flow of the article, because when you read something, you're getting into it, you're getting into the flow and excited about where the story is going to lead.

That's not great for proofreading, editing.

So if you read it backwards, it breaks all that up and you can really just concentrate on the technical aspects of the writing.

So if you take anything away from this podcast and you want to become a better editor, that's it.

Read it backwards and you'll catch a lot of those tiny little mistakes you missed the first time through.

So once you've gone through that process, then you're going to have caught a lot more errors than you would otherwise have.

And now if you want all of them gone again, hire someone like me, who's a professional.

But that's going to get you pretty far down the road.

And for the SEO side, like, what are some good tips and tricks to actually get the most out of it?

Because we talk about social media, but the other big one is the SEO side, because it still cares about written content.

Yeah.

So if you look at SEO best practices, the very first thing is content is still king.

If you don't have quality content, the rest of this doesn't matter.

So that's the number one thing.

Have you written the best article you can possibly write about the subject?

And we're assuming you're an expert at the subject because that's why you wrote the article.

After that, then you have to start looking into those SEO best practices.

So, for example, let's talk formatting.

People don't want to read giant paragraphs when they're reading a blog post.

We're not sitting down to read a novel.

We're trying to find an answer to something.

So the more you can break up those long paragraphs into shorter ones, the better it's going to be.

So plenty of white space.

And this actually is especially important in the mobile world.

So something like 60% of website visitors are mobile.

So imagine trying to read a gigantic paragraph on your phone.

It sucks.

No one knew that.

I'm just going to back out and go somewhere else.

Two to three sentence paragraphs and then white space, and the two to three more white space.

Right.

Plenty of breaking up that text.

In addition to that, you've got formatting or the headline formatting issues.

So have you got your head, your headers formatted in the correct way, not just that they're bold and bigger, but that they're actually formatted as H1, H2, H3 in the software.

Have you thought about keywords?

Are my keywords still relevant?

Have I included other keywords that might relate to the subjects in some way?

Another big one is evergreen content.

So anytime you can write a blog post or an article or a newsletter or anything, and you can make it evergreen, it's just going to serve you and your customers down the road.

Imagine you're reading an article about technology and you come across a reference to Y2K.

Okay, I'm pretty sure that's out of date, right?

So go back and take those out or don't include them in the first place.

Another factor is something like, I just read this.

Only 16% of people actually read a blog post or an article.

That means 84% are just skimming or scanning.

So have you written this piece with that in mind?

So do your headlines, do your headers show the flow of the article?

Have you pulled out important information as call outs or quotes or diagrams or pictures?

Like, those are a lot of the SEO best practices that you can implement.

It's fairly easy to do, but it does take time.

And again, that's things that we're happy to do for you if you'd rather.

So those are just a handful of the things you can do to improve that SEO.

And should they actually use like the press release style for their blog posts as well, like the important information on top and then trickle it down?

Because like you said, most people are skimming for things.

So a lot of times if they go hunting all the way down the article, they probably aren't going to read very much.

Yeah.

So for that you need, you have to have a good introduction.

Again, you have to hook people.

And I do agree that introduction needs to tell people either what to expect in the article or give them the TLDR version, something like that.

And then you have to have a good conclusion because those are the two things that people are going to read even if they're skimming.

So yeah, most definitely.

Yeah, for sure.

And what do you see for the future of blogging?

You see shorter content written almost like shorts, but for blogging, I'm just making things up.

But do you see that going on where it's just more small little blog post?

Do you see longer format coming back because record sales have outpaced CDs for some odd reason?

Do you see, what do you see happening?

Yeah, first of all, I like records better than CDs because they're more fun to look at.

I don't know if that's the reason, but.

So I will tell you that SEO as of today, SEO best practice is the ideal length of a blog post is between 2,100 words and 2400 words.

So whether you consider that long or short is up to you.

I don't know the answer to that.

But the other piece of that is don't write a blog post to be 2100 words if you don't have 2,100 words worth of stuff to say about it.

So can you write a really good 500 word blog post?

Sure you can.

I would say I would go back to look, make a quality article, make it the best article you can make it and let the length be what it is.

Because I think length is a factor, but maybe there's more important factors and as far as trends go.

Yeah, I.

Boy, that's just such a good question.

I.

It just.

I think it is.

So much depends upon the person and the subject.

I don't know.

Yeah, I'll have to look into that and see if I can find some information out about that.

And where can people find you online?

Yeah, you can find me a couple places.

The easiest way is to go to cedarpressproofreading.com that's my website.

And actually all this SEO stuff we were talking about, I've got a free blog assessment.

You can just download it.

I don't need your contact information or anything.

It's just there and you can get a feel for what your blog needs to look like and how it needs to look.

And you can also book a call with me if you want right there on the website.

You can also find me on LinkedIn if you just search for Cedar Press Proofreading, I will pop up.

And any final thoughts for listeners.

Write quality content and you can't go wrong.

And if you could just spell check it for me personally, I would appreciate it.

That's actually pretty important.

Spell checking.

Always spell checks.

Anyways, thank you John for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brewing and sharing your knowledge on blogging.

Thank you so much for having me and Brett.

Really appreciate it and thank you for.

Joining Digital Coffee Marketing Group.

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All right guys, stay safe, get to understanding your blogging needs and how to blog well and see you next week later.