Blogging for English teaching serves several purposes, two of which are especially relevant for English teachers. It can be a great business card as each blog post transmits to your audience who you are, what is your background, expertise and interests. But it is also a useful aid to marketing as you deliver dynamic content targeted to the needs of your audience. You can use your blogs to complement your English classes, to answer questions that come up in your classes, to engage with learners and prospective clients and to provide valuable advice on areas within your niche of expertise.
I’m often asked that question as teachers find writing exciting but what to write about seems to be the big decision to make for the majority of them. The good news is that it is easier than it seems. Teachers who have a degree in English or other languages have a unique chance to share their understanding of the language structure and provide contrastive analysis that helps learners through L2 acquisition. Not to mention the broad and enriching opportunities that literature and poetry offer writers.
Many of the teachers who have stepped into English teaching come from all walks of life: art, science, sales, hospitality, engineering, law, medicine and so on. Those teachers can successfully use their transferable skills and integrate other areas of expertise to language learning, thus making an interesting contribution to learners with specific purposes.
As an example, one of our members, Brian Loughnane at Oxinity is an excellent English teacher with experience in tour guiding. His blog posts shed light on amazing unknown facts about Barcelona (see Unique Barcelona Facts - First major female serial killer of 20th Century turns out to have been a Barcelona VAMPIRE!).
Only practice and interacting with your audience will give you the clue to whether you are on the right path. You’ll find your voice and niche and also inspiration to persevere in this task.
While there are no set rules, around 800 words would constitute a good, comprehensive blog post dealing in depth with the topic you’ve chosen.
Reading is much easier if your ideas are developed in paragraphs preceded by a title that summarizes the subsequent development of the paragraph.
The use of heading 2 for the titles is highly recommended, as well as incorporating the keywords chosen for the blog post. For that purpose, create an interesting title to capture an audience. Title should be 50-60 characters approximately.
Keywords can help you generate more organic traffic, so they have to be used in our title, subtitles and paragraphs and even in the url.
A long tail is a combination of words that better filters users' searches. Thus, if a user were to search for "teacher" he would find billions of results, the vast majority of which would be totally useless.
If we nuance our search with other words, we increase the probability that we will be easily found. Thus, our first keyword "teacher" would be further narrowed by adding
"English teacher"
"English teacher in Barcelona"
"English teacher in Barcelona for children"
Our long tail "English teacher in Barcelona for children" is much more likely to bring the target user to us.
There are pages that can help you with your keyword planning and provide information on the level of engagement and traffic of the chosen keywords.
Ubersuggest is a good tool to use for that aim.
Remember that keywords and long tails can increase quality and quantity of blog traffic dramatically.
Using a google doc is going to make editing and formatting easier than writing on the blogging tool itself. When pasting a text from a google doc, the format is quite the same as you’ve written it on your doc, size, font, headings and hyperlinks included.
is a very good way of increasing SEO results. Use links to other blogs, websites, resources and videos to illustrate your idea. Remember to open them in another window, so that the reader stays with your blog post.
Such as pictures, images, videos, or infographics add dynamism to your blog and the visual element gets more attention from the reader.
I recommend using authentic photographs whenever possible from your own library.
Description and summary are necessary elements that would appear under the url of your blog post. Use a short description to summarize your blog post. Description should be up to 160 characters.
Traditionally we finish our blogs with a recap or summary of our main ideas, but to that I would add another strategy.
Finish your blog post with some kind of call to action to sign up for an email list. Be encouraging and invite your audience to follow you up or to sign up for a class with you.
There is no excuse for you now, but if you still struggle, do not hesitate to contact me for joining our free webinar on blogging. Easy, enjoyable and really effective!