As you read blogs, what do you admire? I love organized blogs. I love blogs that help me. Mostly I love blogs that have a real person with a fabulous personality and deep thoughts. I can’t give you tips to improve your personality, but I can help you learn to organize your blog so that people can find out who you are. I’m just getting started on this blog. I’m defining and building it, and you can watch it as it grows. Now, I just have to take my own advice.  If you want to see my more established blog you can check tchistorygal.net.

1. Create Pages That Work
   1. Only use a few (3-7) Main Pages, and create sub pages if you have lots of information. Examples might be: About, Start Here, Resources
   2. Main Pages are short, but highlight your purpose.
   3. Spend the most time refining your About page because people will go there first to see if they want to spend any time with you. Invite readers to your social media accounts. (I just redid mine.)
   4. Include contact information for readers to fill out, if your purpose is to build readership and/or sell products.
2. Publish with Social Media
   1. Social media, even if you don’t understand it, builds statistics, and may build long-term readers. Many people who have had blogs or even used Facebook don’t take advantage of social media. It is constantly growing, so that’s another learning curve. Establish social media accounts, such as Facebook, Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and others. Invite your email contacts to build each platform. Set WordPress to link automatically to social media.
   2. To build readership and relationships check your social media often and learn how to use it.
   3. Join social media groups so you can send posts and pages to specific groups who would be interested in those topics. It helps to add hashtags (see the bold # below) when you post so that groups will be notified.  (You can make these up yourself.) For example one blogger, Suzyspeaks,  has a special place on her Twitter account to tweet your posts, but only on Sundays. This is how another blogger took advantage of that opportunity and tweeted her post:
      Errin Krystal ‏@ErrinKrystal

      Read about my new serial #SundayBlogShare Midnight Redemption: The History, The Synopsis & The Cover Art Reveal http://wp.me/p6ShHR-c1 

3. Revise and Repost
   1. After a few months, or years depending on how much you blog, clean up and reorganize your blog. Remove or revise posts that haven’t attracted viewers.
   2. Revise your writing based on what you have learned about that skill from blogging. For example eliminate passive verbs and pointless adverbs like quite or really.
   3. Copy the link of your revision and repost them on social media.  Assuming that your social media presence has grown, it’s amazing how many people didn’t see it the first time, but now know you, and will visit it now.

These are my goals for 2016. What are your plans for your blog this year?