Blogging Expertise

In my experience, everyone is an expert in something. That something can be a profession, like accounting, programming, or teaching. That something could be a hobby, like collecting, gaming, reading, or crafting. It can be based on life experiences, like negotiating, making small talk, or choosing a nursing home for an elderly parent. It can be very specific (”cooking with cilantro”) or very broad (”saving money”).

The trick is really to identify your expertise. Ask yourself, “What am I good at? What do other people ask me about?” Remember, it’s not necessarily something you would immediately think of as an “expertise.” Most of us are slow to recognize our own strengths, especially when they’re not traditional occupational skills. You might have to think about it for a while. But once you know your expertise, you can turn it into something that will help other people. Using blogs, you can also turn it into something that will add income to your bottom line.

A blog is a type of website—it’s also known as a “weblog” and its primary feature is that it makes it extremely easy to have a website. The days of tedious updates and waiting on a web guru are over. With a blog, anyone who can use the Internet can have (and maintain) a website. That means that you can focus on developing and sharing your expertise instead of messing with technicalities.

A blog is made up of short, usually informal articles (called “posts”) that give visitors a feel for the person writing the blog. It’s an ideal format for sharing tips and tricks, news, tidbits of information, and advice. Because they are so appealing, blogs are good at drawing a wide audience and keeping them interested. Whether you’re representing your own expertise or that of a company, a blog makes it simple to connect with people.

Strictly speaking, you don’t. “Blog” is one of the latest buzzwords and as a result, lots of folks are proclaiming blogs “the killer app” and making broad, overarching statements about how everyone needs a blog. Yes, blogs are excellent tools for businesses and experts, but they’re like any other tool: only as useful as you make it. If you read this page and it sounds exciting, blogs will probably help your business. If it just sounds like one more unpleasant to-do item, you might not be ready to invest your time and money in blogs just yet.

For the expert, though, a blog can accomplish many things. If you are an expert selling a product or service, a blog will help you attract customers by establishing your authority in a non-threatening way and exposing them to you on a regular basis. If you have an exisiting website, linking to that site with a blog will help both surfers and searchers find your main website more often. Even if you have no product, service, or website, a blog can become a stream of income on its own merit.

Blogging requires writing, bottom line. If you have decent writing skills, you can do this. You do not have to be a great writer; you just need to be able to clearly communicate an idea. Blogging will actually improve your writing skills. If you’re afraid you can’t blog because your writing skills aren’t up to snuff, consider blogging anyway and taking a writing class at the same time. It will be great practice, and when you’re first starting, it’s more important that you’re communicating ideas than that your writing skills are a little rusty.

Beyond writing, you will need to devote some time to a blog. How often you want to post new information is up to you, but successful bloggers typically post at least once a week; at least once a day is even better. Posts don’t have to be long, but you should consider if you are willing to put in a little time to make your blog successful.

As far as initial setup goes, if you’re working with someone who has experience setting up blogs, you can be up and running almost immediately. A basic, no-frills blog can be ready to go within an hour, and even a beautifully customized, “absolutely you” blog typically takes less than a week for an experience blog developer.

Once you’ve started, the time a blog will require depends on your goals. If you are promoting something, an hour or two a week will probably be sufficient to write a couple of short posts or one longer article. If you want your blog to be your main endeavour and bring in its own income, you’ll need to plan more time for it; an hour or more each day is a good start. That’s probably excessive if you have another job or business that you intend to keep, so focus on what you want your blog to do for you.

Blogs lend themselves well to communities. Most blogs encourage interaction between the author and the visitors, and among the visitors as well, by allowing visitors to comment about the blog’s posts. Over time, a community can develop and visitors will become regulars.

There are also communities of bloggers on certain topics; whatever your expertise is, you can seek out others who can benefit from it. When you find blogs that are focused on complementary topics, leave insightful comments on their posts and you will find yourself drawing people to your own blog.

There are directories of blogs available, and these are another form of community. When you have established your blog with a selection of good posts, you will be in a good position to receive traffic from these directories.

A well-designed blog helps immensely when it comes to bringing visitors, and I’m not just talking about the colors. Under the hood, a blog is like other kinds of websites; they all need good behind-the-scenes workings to make a site that works well for the visitors you already have, brings in new visitors, and helps other people promote for you. Most successful bloggers find that they receive most of their new visitors from search engines (people seeking out expertise), so it’s crucial that your blog works with you on this, and not against you. An experienced blog developer can help you make sure it does.