Categories for your blog post – who needs ’em?
Categories are the structure of your blog. They translate the big idea of your blog subject into smaller subject areas. Rather like a tree may have a main trunk but different branches.
Categories are a golden opportunity to help you and your reader explore your subject matter from different angles. You label a particular aspect of your blog with a particular category. This acts as a quick index of your ideas and helps readers find other blog posts in the same category.
Categories can help you find new ideas to write about, and also keep you interested and entertained. Your readers are more likely to be entertained and enjoy reading what you write, if you are excited or inspired to write.
How do you know what categories to use?
There is no hard and fast rule. It all depends on your approach to your blog subject. A blog which is just a collection of random thoughts is difficult for humans to read, and the search engines need a clear focus.
Let’s say you have a blog which is about growing vegetables. You could perhaps have categories that relate to when you harvest the vegetables: spring vegetables, summer vegetables etc.
When you get into action could be the basis for your categories .. which is more important than when you are going to eat the vegetables.
Categories could be based on personal recommendations. For example: easy vegetables to grow, different soil and condition types or even a category for “Trial this year” for new vegetables you are trying for the first time. It all depends on where your interests lie.
Wildcard Categories
Every so often you may want to just write about something that is a bit more off topic. A category that can absorb more random thoughts helps your blog to be more cohesive. So a category called Inspiration for example could cover best practice in your market, exciting initiatives, influential leaders – men and women, conferences and a whole host more.
Very often when you are interested by something happening in the news, or a major event you can still make it relevant to one of your main categories, but a wildcard category which can accommodate more off normal topic limits keeps the reader engaged.
Categories and tags
Ideally you want to only have about 5 categories. For finding a description which matches the content still further you give the blog post a tag, or tags. This is similar to the use of hashtags which are preceded by the symbol # common in social media. This helps not only your reader and the search engines, but actually makes it easier for you to plan new content.
If you want some inspiration for your blog join us for International Women’s Day and write a post you might not otherwise write.
