Who would have thought that blogging would become an actual profession?
Blogging is an art and there’s a science to being good at it.

So, how do can you become a better blogger? Here are five tips to help you out:

1. Study other professional bloggers.
You’ll discover that many of them provide useful and valuable content to their readers. Many bloggers are “cut and paste” bloggers, meaning they like to recycle what others have to say and that’s what they do all day. This is ok sometimes, but you want to let your readers know that you have something important to say on a subject and that you know what you’re talking about.

Subscribe to these probloggers that you come across and soon you’ll begin to learn all their secrets to creating a great blog. One person I highly recommend is Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net. I believe he’s the one that put the capital “P” in Problogger!

2. Practice! Practice! Practice!
Like any profession or anything we do in life, we have to practice to be good at it. Michael Jordan didn’t become one of the best basketball players just because he knew how to play. Michael Jordan practiced every day. Blogging is no different. Post to your blog(s) every day. The more you write, the better writer you’ll become. It’s as simple as that!

3. Know what’s going on in the world around you.
Part of being a good blogger is knowing what the latest news is on the subject that you blog about. However, don’t stop there. Let people know what you think and where you stand on these latest issues and current events.

There are a few simple ways to keep up on the latest news. One is to do a Google news search for the topic that you write about or better yet, sign up via RSS on news updates. You can also see what hot topics that other bloggers are blogging about by doing a Technorati (www.technorati.com) tags search for a keyword or phrase. Another way to keep up is to go back to the old school way of reading news: the newspaper! Duh!

The idea here is to simply read as much as you can. You’ll become a more educated and informed blogger. Besides, reading gives you inspiration and ideas on what to talk about on your blog.

4. Visit other blogs and leave comments.
The beauty of blogs is that you can exchange dialogue with other people. Blogs aren’t these one way communication mediums. You can actually leave feedback about another person’s article or simply let them know your views on a particular subject.

So, how does leaving comments make you a better blogger? Well, this engages other bloggers out there in the “blogosphere” and perhaps your comment will entice them to visit your blog. This, in turn, could lead to more traffic to your blog and new relationships.

5. Discover and use all the new blogging tools to enhance your productivity.
If I had to write about all the newest widgets, buttons, badges, and all these “Web 2.0″ blogging tools they’ve come out with, this post would turn into book!

However, the most important tool that a blogger should incorporate into their blog is an RSS feed button so that readers have a way of subscribing to their blog and receiving updates on it. If you don’t have an RSS button, how are readers going to remember you? Of course, there are other ways, but RSS is probably the easiest way for people to bookmark you.

As you browse other blogs you’ll find other fun widgets and bookmark lets for you to incorporate into your own blog. Although it would be nice to use them all, they can also be a little overwhelming for your readers if you have too much “stuff” on your blog.

So, there you have it! Five tips to help you become a better blogger. Once you do these five things - wash, rinse, and repeat!

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