There are those who have given up their full-time jobs to begin a blogging career. Check out this 5 step strategy to blogging success
While it’s commonly thought that blogging is more of a hobby than a career, there are those who have given up their full-time jobs to sit at their computer. Blogging has really taken off over the last decade, whereas in the late nineties there were only a handful of people blogging. There are now over 200 million blogs fighting for the limelight. They aren’t just acting as a diary for individuals either. Businesses have gotten on board with the trend, making money as they go along from simply promoting themselves. So how do we go about creating a successful blog to join the trend?
Check out this 5 step strategy to blogging success.Click To TweetChoose Your Platform
There are a whole host of platforms for you to take your pick from when deciding where to create your blog. Different ones have different qualities, although more than half of the websites in the world today are hosted by WordPress, which speaks volumes as to its capabilities. Ideally, you want a user-friendly interface that you are able to navigate yourself around with ultimate ease. This will make your experience with blogging a lot better both for you and those you are trying to reach.
A lot of people give up on the blogging process just because they’re not sure on how to correctly make their way around the site that they’re using. Try out a few different sites to see which one best suits you – Blogger and Blogspot are also firm favorites among the blogging community. If you already have a website set up, there are a myriad of integrated blogging platforms that you can use in order to get your message across to those who want to read it.
Pick Your Niche
Any blog you check out online will all have specifics on what they blog about. Whether this is relating to a trade, a skill, a hobby or a lifestyle, there is a certain theme in successful blogs that seems to take precedence. It’s not just subjects that can be your niche either. It’s important to remember that it can simply be your style of writing instead. Whether you are informative or humorous, it will be down to this way of getting your words across that people will keep on coming back to your blog.
For those who are already in business, you will have had your niche already picked for you; you generally just need to make your content interesting and relate-able for those who have chosen to read about the products or skill set that you offer. Whatever you are blogging about, there will be people who have written about the same things or similar to you. Don’t be afraid to look on their pages for inspiration. You may be able to pick up a few tips on how to orchestrate what you are doing, but it’s important to remember that you should never steal content, pictures, or take them without permission from the owner first. This can easily be traced, and all it takes is someone with knowledge of how to use the copy and paste function to find out.
Invest In Marketing
The more that you market your blog, the more traffic it will receive. The more traffic you receive, the more people that you have to either look at what you’re selling or make you money in other ways. Affiliate links and Google AdWords can bring you money without you having to do so much more than write a little piece on your blog in order to generate an income. There are people who can, and do, use this method. If you don’t know much about how SEO works or would like to hire somebody to do the hard work for you, you can click here.SEO is a good investment to make.
The more that you look at the marketing that can surround your blog the more success you will find. One of the most important things that you can do in terms of marketing is link your blog to social media. This isn’t just one account that you need to join forces with – make sure that it spans over Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as your main three. Most of the traffic that comes from these sites will be friends and family clicking out of interest, but it’s through their clicking and sharing that you will attract a wider audience.
If you know that you are wanting to branch out to wider audiences, it may be worth spending money on targeted marketing. This is where sites like Facebook take user data and match it to your target demographic. This means that you are getting your blog out to the people that you want reading it, or who you know will enjoy clicking on it at the very least.
The more people that you market yourself to the more money that you will spend. But with nearly 2 billion Facebook users worldwide, you certainly won’t be short of people to aim for. You get to link it with pages that they already follow as well as hobbies, interests, age and gender. There has never been a style of marketing that has been so targeted in what it does. It’s an extremely useful tool and definitely one that needs to be utilized to suit your business needs.
Communicate
There are always opportunities to communicate with those who are following what you’re doing on the internet, especially in the blogging community. It doesn’t take much to show a little bit of love back. Even more so when people are taking the time to comment on, like or even re-blog your posts. You should dedicate a certain part of your day to reaching out and getting in touch with those who may like you blog or those who are currently reading. You will find that your circle grows with each communication, which is great for recommendations. Ideally, you want to be aiming for maximum readership so that you are able to capitalize on the traffic that they are bringing to your blog.
Going back to social media, this is a great way to engage with those who may want to read your blog. The more that you can generate user interest, the more that people will actually want to visit your site. This isn’t just good for the numbers, but a brilliant way to create personable branding – all that those who engage with your writing want you to do is talk back to them, and for those who have a vested interested in what they’re actually talking about, they will want to actually do this. It’s not hard to press the like button on comments just to show that you’re there, you’re active and you’re reading what your following have to say.
Keep It Consistent
The thing with those who follow blogs is that they like those that they follow to be consistent. Those who are successful with their blogs update at least once a week, alerting their followers. It isn’t just blogging that it applies to – you’ll find that those who vlog (video blog) also stick to a routine in order to appeal to the masses. When people decide that they like a blog, they usually keep coming back to it for a while to see if you have new and engaging posts. If you don’t, then they’ll stop visiting. It’s as simple as that.
If you are just updating everybody about the goings-on in your life or of the company that you are running/working for, then it needs to be a bit more of a regular job. There’s a lot that can be ascertained about a person or business that doesn’t update its blog, with the main factor being that you’re too lazy or forgetful to update it rather than concentrating on a business or person being too busy.
You have to have reached a certain point within the blogging community to be able to make a comeback and still have the same readership; Heather Armstrong of Dooce recently took a hiatus and has had to bring her readership back up, although it’s still not the same numbers that she was hitting before she took the break. That’s just how fickle your readers can be; you need to keep their interest for the long-run, and this can only be done by constantly giving them what they want. Engaging, fun, innovative and thoroughly enjoyable blog posts.
