Struggling to string sentences together? Tired of writing posts you're not completely confident with? Dont worry! Every blogger has gone through torrid spells where things don’t seem to flow as well as you’d like. Blogging is a skill that needs to be honed and requires patience; ‘Rome wasn't built in a day’ springs to my mind when I think about the progress I've personally made over the past year.

I realised I had to take a more pragmatic approach with my writing, ask myself questions such as what are my audience taking from this? Is my tone of writing suited to my audience? Am I being concise enough?

These things are hard to execute but all that is needed is a more methodical approach to writing. For those struggling with blogs, you’re not alone, my first few blogs were mediocre and lacked quality.

In my time of blogging, I've come across many blogs that are too long, too boring with hardly any valid points.To help conquer this problem, here are some tips that continue to help me improve my blogging skills:

Introduction 
Having an eye catching opener will immediately grab your reader's attention. There are various ways to having a solid intro:  Can use humor, stats or you can throw a question into the intro, everyone has their own way of starting but it certainly has to be captivating otherwise readers will leave before they’ve given the blog a chance.

Quality over Quantity
Quality beats quantity every single time. I used to be obsessed with the amount of words I clocked up, which was one of the worst approaches I could possibly adhere to. It’s extremely important to supply quality content for your audience, blagging will just bore your readers and scare them away.

Be concise 
Keep it simple, only say what needs to be said.

Understanding your audience 
It's important to make your content relevant to your target demographic, you have to understand your audience. What information are they gaining from your blog? What will keep them on your page? For instance, if your speaking to businesses, it’s best to speak more formally and professionally.

If the core of your target audience is young people, you could be more expansive with your writing and speak slightly informal (not too much of course).

This kind of versatility in your writing can help you become more specific in terms of producing the relative content your audience needs.

Embrace Structure 
Couldn't forget about the actual content could we? A particular problem I had was finding the right flow for my audience. I struggled to string sentences together, to say I was lacking cohesion would be an understatement.

How can you overcome this? Pinpoint some facts, things you can elaborate on and if needed, do extra research to gather more information. Having some kind of structured plan is pivotal in keeping you on track. Furthermore, try and refrain from massive paragraphs as they can look quite daunting and intimidating.

The benefits of blogging?
Blogging is an integral part of marketing, its ability to drive traffic to your website through SEO is unrivalled. There’s different ways of driving traffic to your website, such as pay-per-click ads, but that’s is expensive and when the budget runs out, say goodbye to your traffic.

Blogging doesn't cost a single penny and can go a long way in establishing or enhancing your social media presence. This marketing tactic helps you draw in new audiences and if you can create a synergy between your blogs and your social media channels, your traffic will fly up in no time.

Now, onto the more technical side of things, SEO. Producing quality content will allow more pages from your domain to become indexed in search engines. If you haven't guessed it by now, content is king and is the best strategy to use for SEO.

If you would like to know a little bit more about SEO, have a look at one of our previous blogs http://estateapps.co.uk/blog/the-importance-of-seo.

Now implement this into your writing!
If you implement the steps above into your writing, you will definitely see improvements. It may seem like you're going in a vicious circle, constantly making the same mistakes, but out of personal experience, those mistakes start to occur less with practice and belief.

Keep reading and writing and you will reap the benefits of hard work and perseverance.

I hope this blog post has given those who struggled, the confidence to continue writing blogs, remember, don't give up, great things take time!