Last week I had the privilege of speaking to the Nashville chapter of national women’s networking organization Femfessionals about steps to building a successful blog. I’m on the board as the PR chair and I’ve always been on the attendee side, and not the presenter’s side, so it was fun to switch things up a bit and put on my presentation hat.

I gave about an hour and 15 minute talk on secrets to blogging and social media success and I thought I’d highlight a small portion of my presentation and four steps to building your blog:

Build Your Blog Platform

Build Your Community

Create a Strong Brand

Continually Educate Yourself

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Build your blog platform

Decide on a catchy easily branded URL with lasting power.

Gather up all your social media real estate (Instagram, Google+ etc.) Even if you don’t plan on using Instagram, for instance, any time soon, you need to establish brand ownerships of social media platforms.

Add your url to your email sig (use a free tool such as Wisestamp)

I highly recommend WordPress and researching the free plugins you can use for helping with things such as SEO

Always use social share buttons on your blog posts

Have a bank of at least 4 posts ready to publish when you launch

Build your community

Comment on other blogs in your niche community or start following them on Facebook/Twitter and interact with them

Look at what other successful bloggers are doing right

Join blog communities in your niche

Consider attending a local blog event or conference (here’s a FANTASTIC list of 2015 conferences)

Create a strong brand

Stand out from the crowd by offering unique, custom, professional content

Be consistent with your branding

Make sure your blog is mobile friendly

Use high-quality images and video (By 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to Cisco.) and Facebook status updates with photos are overwhelming shared more/liked more than text only updates.

Manually post your blog updates to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linked In but use a shortened URL to save space and don’t use the auto-generated image that is pulled up when you insert the url. For example, on Facebook and Google+ you will need to delete that image by clicking on the “X” and then upload your own larger pic. Just make sure your update about your post includes the URL.

Edit, edit, edit (brief is better)

Think “Pinterest” when you post. People are overwhelmed with content; make yours Pinnable.

What do you like to share on Facebook? Think about that when you create content. Does it add value, does it generate an emotion, does it make people laugh, does it inform or inspire?

Continually educate yourself

Keep up with blogging and social media news, it’s always changing

Subscribe to helpful sites such as Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, or Blogging Basics 101. NPTechforGood is an excellent resource if you work or run a nonprofit

Create a social media/blogging Pinterest board. Here’s a link to mine.

Do you have any tips to add? If your find this post helpful, please consider sharing or Pinning!