With the many different forms of online journalism, including blogging, it’s important to keep editorial standards in mind. Posting a blog article might be a lot easier than publishing a magazine or newspaper article, but the same care should be taken to ensure that the writing is accurate and of good quality.

If professional editorial steps are not followed your blog won’t be a success, and with all the good content online no one will really care - except you of course.

If you manage your blog in the same way as a professional publishing company would manage their magazines or newspapers you’re on the right track.

The Processes

The below list is a guide to ensuring that you create a professional blog that will quickly gain credibility and deliver good articles day after day.

• Research:
  It’s easy enough to say “I’m starting a food blog”, but what sets your blog apart from the millions of other blogs focusing on the exact same topic? It could be your writing style, the layout of the blog or an interesting spin you put on it, either way, research will help you decide.
  
  Consider the following points when conducting your research:
  - Is there currently a blog out there providing the same content? Chances are that the answer to that will be “yes”, so how will your blog be different?
  - How will your blog be better than the rest? Compare strengths and weaknesses through a competitor analysis.
• Target Audience:
  You should know exactly who your target audience is. If you know enough about the type of content you want to promote, this shouldn’t be too difficult. In magazine publishing this is a gruelling process. Market research is conducted to describe every single detail of the audience. You need to think about who exactly will be reading your blog? Will they be male, female or both? How old are they? Where do they work? What do they do in their spare time? What are their favourite restaurants? The list goes on and you need to sum up your target audience in an individual person. This will make content creation easy and extremely targeted.
• Tone, Mood & Style:
  Blogs are much more casual than most magazines or newspapers but this doesn’t mean that you need to write in slang and forget about all grammar and language rules.
  You should decide on your exact tone, mood and style:
  The tone is the writer’s attitude towards the topic as well as towards the reader. It is achieved through word choice and sentence construction.
  Mood is what the reader feels while reading an article.
  Style is the way the writer uses words to create the overall feel of the article as well as the actual events or information.
  These three elements work together to make your blog funny, serious, academic etc.
  
  
• The Team:
  Make sure that you have a professional team to write, edit, source images and upload all of your articles. It is important to have a style guide which all members adhere to. This will ensure uniformity and consistency throughout all blog posts. A style guide includes information on how to write certain information.
  
  For example:
  Dates – are they written 01/01/2001 or January 01 2001 or 01 January, 2001?
  Headings and subheadings – is each word written with a capital or not? Which font should you use and which size is the lettering?
  
  All the formatting and editing adds to the professionalism of your blog.

• Layout:
  It is important to spend time on the layout of your blog. As an online platform you should keep in mind that visitors read in a different way than they do printed material. Their eyes should be lead to your most important information – as they probably won’t read every single word. Make use of call-to-actions and buttons to get readers to where you want them. The layout of your blog will determine how much time visitors spend on it. Think about this – have you ever visited a website which was so cluttered that you closed the tab and moved on? Read more about how visitors read HERE.

All of the above can determine whether your blog succeeds in attracting readers or if it becomes a dormant site that no one ever bothers to visit. If the above is in place and you have quality content you’re sure to have a winning blog.

Think I’ve left something out or have any more essential blogging processes? Share them with me here by commenting below or connect on Twitter @Soundidea.

How to Manage Your Blog Like a Professional Publication: Part 2 focuses on the main part of your blog – content.

Carina Claassens is a Writer for Sound Idea Digital | carina@soundidea.co.za | @SoundIdea | www.soundidea.co.za

Request a Digital Marketing Services Consultation