#FlashbackFriday – How to Blog Well

One year ago today, a former HMA employee put together a great blog post on how to blog well. After seeing that HMA’s blog, which has been around for 10 years, has once again ranked in Feedspot’s Top 100 PR Blogs for Public Relations and Marketing Communications (results were just updated on Jan. 10, 2018), I figured a #FlashbackFriday was in order!
So how did we make the list? While this isn’t all the criteria Feedspot used to choose us, I think they had to account for some of the tips that from this Bulldog Reporter article:

• Create a loyal following—most of our readers are other Phoenix/Arizona communications professionals, but we also know journalists, clients and prospects as well as communications professionals from around the globe will click on a post or two. One of our most popular features is #MediaMonday, where we get insider information on some of our favorite journalists
• Set goals—our goal is to post once a day during the week and promote it through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus.
• Build an email list—we have an email that sends out a link to the new post every day to our subscribers.
• Be organized—each month, we build an editorial calendar with assignments for each member of the HMA team so everyone has the chance to write several posts each month. We discuss it every Monday at our staff meeting and make adjustments as necessary. And we have two consistent types of posts our readers can look forward to—in addition to #MediaMonday, we launched #FunFactFriday, where we share some interesting facts about some sort of topic on the first Friday of every month. You’ll also see #TipforTuesday and #WhatIs…Wednesday Our readers can be sure to check back on these days for these types of posts.
• Build a bond with your readers—we often write about our readers, whether they are journalists, mentors, or other communications professionals. We are sure to tag the right people when promoting the blog so they can interact with us.
• Find what makes you unique—while we host a marketing and communications blog, we are five individuals that contribute to this blog who all have different hobbies, interests, writing styles and past experiences. Some days you’ll find a post from Alison about sharks or Survivor. Others you might find a post by Rachel about her son and Pokémon. Or you might find a post from Scott about the latest in sports. Our blog is unique in that we all find different ways to relate our interests back to marketing, PR, communications or small business.
• Be yourself and experiment—just read the previous bullet again.
• Devote time to social media—as mentioned before, we promote our blog on virtually every platform available that makes sense for a business blog, and it takes time. Generally it takes us 30-45 minutes to post on every platform and also think of several tweets that can be posted on Twitter throughout the day.

Having a blog is fun. It’s nice to take an hour or two out of your week to write about whatever you want. And it shows clients and prospects: 1. you know how to write and you know how to write well (a skill that many don’t have); and 2. that you’re up to date on current trends in your industry.