So you know you’re supposed to blog. Do you know why? Do you know why you need a blog? Do you want to build a community? Show your expertise in your topic area? Give existing community members some great content? Build SEO? These are probably reasons we should all be blogging.

Just like social media, we’d never recommend blogging just to blog. However, you need to start somewhere. And if that’s blogging once a month to start greasing the wheels and getting into the habit—so be it. We may not be into doing things without a strategy, but we are definitely into baby steps.

Here are a few tips for maximizing your blogging effort:

1. PLAN. See our post on brainstorming content for more ideas. If you can synchronize all your content efforts (bonus point for align online and off line), you’ll get more mileage out of all the work.

2. DO YOUR RESEARCH. Find good subjects for your posts. What have you been talking about with clients? What do people want to know? What are you an expert about? Then, research keywords to find what people are searching that are related to your topic. Or do those two things in reverse and match your topics to keywords.

3. WRITE WELL AND WITH PERSONALITY. If you’re bored writing it, we’ll all be bored reading it. And please, spell check and have someone give it a proofread before you post it. Don’t worry if you aren’t a writer, if you’re authentic and don’t have spelling errors, we’ll probably all forgive you if it’s not perfect.

4. PUT A BIRD ON IT. Just kidding, Portlandia joke. It doesn’t have to be a bird, but you need an image. Buy a stock photo that relates to your post or see if you can visualize some of your data. If you have the staff, infographics or hand-drawn images seem to perform really well.

5. PROMOTE IT! Don’t forget to post to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Use relevant hashtags (especially on Twitter) to get some mileage and more eyeballs.

There you go! You’re ready to blog away. Still not sure? Let us know, we can definitely help!

Image #fireworks used under Creative Commons by Flickr user Epic Fireworks.