How to Become a Successful Blogger
Starting a blog can be a very lucrative business considering the fact that social media marketing is rapidly evolving. Crafting a blog is considered one of the oldest forms of content marketing because both small and big blogs offer a cheaper form of marketing compared to others. You may be running a blog now or are thinking of starting one. That is a great step, but one question you should ask yourself is ‘how do I become a successful blogger?’. Well, you are in the right place.
In this article, we are going to delve into the various factors that make a blog successful and hence you earning the title of a successful blogger. However, before we get started, it is important that you understand that for you to be a great blogger, you must be able to interact with the world and learn a couple of things while at it. Some bloggers may be lucky in creating novel stories by tapping into the recesses of their minds to craft an incredible work of art.
However, for most of you, you have to draw your creativity by interacting with the world and paying closer attention to events and your inner thoughts in order to create something your readers will consider to be unique and evocative. Another thing is as a blogger, you have to be part of a community. Using such forums to make comments, share ideas and support to people on different topics is a brilliant way to commanding authority in a particular niche.
But first, what is your goal as a blogger?
Well, for you to achieve success, you have to have goals that define your success. It is through the set goals that you can come up with a plan to work up to achieving your end result. Ask yourself whether you are writing just for the sake of it or is it because you are passionate about it. Is that you love the style of writing that your blog? Are you blogging so that you can keep your readers informed on certain topics? In other words, it is important for you to have a goal in mind so that you know what path to follow and push through to achieve it.
So many people often ask what the formula or success is. But the truth is simple-following through with your plan to get to the end goals. You have to start by identifying what problem and needs your target audience have and then following through to addressing the problem. If you are an affiliate marketer, does your product help your target audience solve their problems? Does it make their lives easier?
Today, so many bloggers use their blogs to offer their target audience and readers the information they need. The information has to be of high quality and offer value to the end user. The next thing is to use Search Engine Optimization to drive traffic to your website.
But is this how you become a successful blogger? Let’s delve into some of the key factors that you have to pay attention to in order to attain success. These factors include;
Treat your blog like a business
So many people treat blogs as something that they just do during their free time and as such do not put in their best effort, time and resources to making it something lucrative. To be a successful blogger, you have to first think of your blog as a business. When you do this, your attitude changes and you accord it a higher degree of attention and seriousness it deserves.
When you are in business, your main aim is to offer your clients the best services possible. In the same way, you have to create high-quality content that helps your clients solve their problems by reading your blog posts. Again, you have to send out your posts on a regular basis. Work hard to optimize your content for search engines and use different content marketing platforms to get the message to the target audience.
In short, you have to be willing to learn the ropes of running an online business that is ready to make profits rather than just running a simple blog.
Maintain a high degree of consistency
Did you know that success goes hand in hand with consistency? Well, if you didn’t, now you do! For so many years, traditional means of content marketing such as newspapers used a publication schedule. This is something that is also seen with weekly TV episodes, monthly magazines among other issues. In other words, to be successful, you have to employ a posting schedule.
Consistency can be the number of times you post in a week as well as the day of the week when you send out your posts. For serious business, you cannot say that posting once a week is enough. If you are going to be successful, you have to make at least 3-4 posts per week if not every day. The other measure of consistency is the quality of content you are sending out to your target audience.
Therefore, take time to analyze what schedule works best for you without compromising on the quality and relevance of your content. Remember that consistency is not just about editorial schedules. It has something to do with the type of posts you produce as well as the intros and outros used in every blog post. It also about the style you employ down to the basic font, buttons, colors, images among other elements that make up your blog.
Understand your target audience
This is one of the most important factors to consider. When crafting your content, the first thing is to know who you are crafting it for. In other words, your readers are the very reason why you are writing. This means that, if you have no idea who you are writing your content for, then you may not know whether the content you are creating has a positive impact or not.
You may be thinking ‘but I will use keyword research’. Well, it is true that keyword research and analytics will help you drive traffic. However, the most important thing is to understand whether or not your content offers your target audience a basic understanding of the topic they are interested in and helps them address the problems they are facing.
To ensure that you are able to nail it with your target audience, you can use email lists. This way, you can broadcast your messages to all people on your email list and then asking them to subscribe to your blog posts. You could also ask them what problems they are facing within your niche or the things they would like to see on your blog. Even better, you can choose to have a real conversation with people on different social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook or Skype among others. This way, you get to learn a lot about your target audience, and hence tailor your messages to them.
Define your niche
You cannot get noticed if you do not narrow down your niche to something specific. Trust me, if you are junk of all trades, people may not take you seriously. The truth is, everyone has their own problems and each blog is trying to address these problems. The most important thing is for you to identify a niche that will help you target a specific audience in the broader topic in your niche. Before you can even start blogging, define what your niche is.
Many people start a blog on a topic like weight loss and later realize that there are so many niches under this that targets a wide range of audience. For instance, there are those that are interested in keto diets, others would like to work out using training while others do not wish to use weight loss equipment among others. In other words, rather than starting a blog about Cooking, start a blog about travel cuisines, gluten-free recipes among others.
In short, once you have a broad topic, identify a niche within it that you can create content that targets a specific audience. You may read more on how to find your blog niche to better position yourself as a successful blogger.
Have a content marketing strategy
It is one thing to create a blog and it quite another to market your content to cover a wider customer base. Many people think that if they created content on products that they like they will be successful. Well, you can be, but it is a risky move. Yes, it is important to be passionate about something, but you are not selling the content to yourself but a target audience. You may look at another blogger who may be successful in their niche and want to copy what they are doing in the quest for success. But, you may not get the same outcome.
However, when you know who you are targeting, you can determine the best strategy to use. In other words, when you have a suitable content marketing strategy, you can plan your campaign more effectively to attain success. Use your mailing list to determine the demographics of your target audience, what they like and when they are active on social media.
Having basic information about your target audience helps you to segment them and craft messages that are tailored to each group and boost the impact. You will realize that not each of the segments has the same behavioral patterns and hence, marketing your content to them can be different from one segment to the other.
Have an actionable pages
This is one of the main reasons why I insist on bloggers building their blogs on platforms that host a fully-fledged website instead than one that has a few basic web pages. For instance, you can use WordPress.org to build a beautiful blog that will not only attract the attention of your web visitors but will motivate your target audience to scroll through every single page of it.
To achieve this, you can employ such tools as web page builders, plugins and email marketing tools that will play a critical role in helping you manage and cloak your affiliate links. Have pages that are actionable and prompts your readers to take action. One of the things that I have learned over the years is that many people ignore the start here page and the resource page. It is the start here page that will help you create a page of links to valuable resources that your readers can access to get further insight into the topics. On the other hand, the resource page helps you build a list of links for all the tools that you use within your niche among other things that you might deem important to your audience such as articles, courses, and books among others.
When you have such actionable pages, you are not only keeping your clients engaged in valuable content but also winning their trust as their go-to guy when it comes to your niche of specialization. They will consider you an expert and this will drive traffic and make your blog a success.
Food for thought
Starting a blog and being successful at blogging is something that you can achieve. With the tips we have discussed in this article, you can be sure to nail it and make it a lucrative business. All you have to do is start by setting SMART goals and working out a plan towards achieving them.
With blogging, you have customers/target audience who are looking out to reading and benefiting from your post. If you are going to win their trust, you will have to be honest with them. Most importantly, if you are going to be a successful blogger, you will have to be ready to really grind it out. Just bear in mind that success is measured in inches rather than miles. Therefore, celebrate every small milestone and work at becoming better and better at what you do each day.
So, what are your blogging goals in 2019? What is your plan? Whatever it is, do not forget to follow these keys and success will be your portion this year. Good luck!
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