Creating a successful blog that users will enjoy and return to takes planning and ongoing commitment.
Before starting your blog you’ll need to:
- plan your subject matter
- understand your audience
- know how often you’ll post
- know how you’ll promote and maintain it.
Purpose of your blog
Consider your motivation for starting a blog and to know what you want to achieve by sharing your ideas.
Starting a blog just because others have one is not a good reason. Your posts will lack focus and will fail to attract a dedicated audience.
Good reasons to start a blog include:
- Sharing observations of current research.
- Giving insights into living and studying at the University.
- Starting in-depth conversations around global topics related to certain research interests.
With a clear purpose you can plan and shape the type of content you want to write.
Identifying your audience
Be clear about who you want to communicate with and why they would engage with your content.
Think about who shares your passion – research communities, alumni, prospective students. Knowing your audience will help shape your content and writing style, and help you create posts that people want to read and share.
Scheduling your content
Develop an editorial calendar and set deadlines to help you create good content regularly. Inactive blogs or infrequent posting tend to lose readers and engagement.
If publishing quality content regularly is not feasible, reconsider whether a blog is right platform for your communications.
Promoting your blog
People will not read your blog if they do not know about it. You have to promote it.
You can:
- add a link to your website, and on any relevant print or online publicity.
- encourage your colleagues to link to it on their email signatures.
- advertise your published articles on social media.
- encourage users to subscribe to your blog by email.