A blog by Jeff Atwood on programming and human factors. 26 Oct 2007 How To Achieve Ultimate Blog Success In One Easy Step. Always Be Jabbing. Define the target audience for your blog and cater to that audience. The best way to build a. In 2016, I started my first blog and by 2018 I quit my full time job as an accountant to pursue blogging full time. Today, I have a fleet of 9 blogs generating me passive income every single day. SuccessfulBlogging.com is about me teaching you my 7 figure blogging formula so you can achieve your own success! By doing so you can build a realistic roadmap and time table towards your own success. A few blogs that have grown a lot, that are very successful and I have learned a lot from in recent years and that keep me up to date are for example Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn and Quicksprout by Neil Patel. Set one or two concrete and measurable.
- Blogging For Beginners
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- Best Blogging Sites For Beginners
Blogging is hard! Yes, it seems easy, dreamy and a piece of cake lifestyle, but it's not! Successful bloggers put in long hours and work very hard to build a foundation for blogging success. After you've created plenty of content, you may be like me and find blogging to be easy.
In the book Start Your Own Blogging Business, the staff at Entrepreneur Press and marketing expert Jason R. Rich explain how to start a profitable business as a blogger by generating income from advertisers, subscribers, merchandisers and more. In this edited excerpt, the authors reveal the six steps you must take if you want to create and maintain a successful blog.
The following are basic blogging strategies every professional blogger should implement to help ensure success:
Blogging For Beginners
Define the target audience for your blog and cater to that audience
The best way to build a dedicated audience for any blog is to carefully and clearly define its target audience right from the start, and then create content that caters to that audience.
Focusing on a niche audience and developing appropriate content specifically for those people helps to ensure there will be strong interest in your blog's content, plus it makes promoting the blog easier.
Easy Blogging Site
The more narrowly you define your target audience, the easier it will be to identify those people, cater to their needs with your content, and reach them with your advertising and marketing messages.
The target market or audience you identify for your online content can be defined using one or multiple criteria, or various demographic characteristics, such as:
- Age
- Club memberships
- Education
- Geographic area
- Hobbies
- Income level
- Marital status
- Occupation
- Religion
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
- Special interests
Reaching a target demographic on the web is relatively easy (much simpler than doing it using traditional advertising practices in the real world). Carefully designing your online marketing efforts to appeal to your target audience will help set you apart from your competition and pique the interest of Internet users who are inherently interested in what online content you're offering.
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Put a unique twist on your blog's topic and content
It's virtually impossible to brainstorm a totally original topic to blog about. Instead, your primary and ongoing goal should be to continuously develop innovative content and put a truly unique spin on whatever topic you're blogging about.
You, as a blogger, are a unique individual with your own personality. To set your blog apart, be sure to incorporate your knowledge, voice and personality into your blog. This is one of the easiest ways to set it apart from your competition.
You can also set your blog apart by including proprietary information, publishing extremely timely facts or research, or by incorporating your own unique thoughts, ideas, perspective or expertise into each of your blog entries.
Be sure to research how other bloggers and website operators are presenting similar information, and then develop innovative ways to do it better or in a more unique, attention-getting, and memorable way. You'll want to keep constant tabs on what your competition is doing, plus stay up-to-date on trends happening within the blogosphere.
Another important strategy for creating and publishing a successful blog is to develop content that isn't readily available elsewhere in the blogosphere or on the web. The more unique and innovative your content and the better you target your audience, the easier it will be to build a following.
Add new content on a regular basis
To build and maintain a steady audience, regularly add new content to your blog. Every new blog entry should cater to your blog's target audience, offer content that's perceived as valuable, and build upon previously published content.
Easy Blogging Success Magazine
For a blog to be successful, you must stay on topic and cater to the wants, needs and expectations of your target audience. This means developing a thorough understanding of who your audience is, then adjusting your focus as trends and demands change over time.
Once you set a schedule for posting new content, it's essential to maintain that schedule, so plan accordingly and don't be over-ambitious. You're better off promising new content once a week then posting twice or three times per week on occasion, as opposed to promising new content daily (or several times daily) and not being able to deliver.
Transform your blog into an interactive online community
Instead of focusing exclusively on publishing content, develop your blog into an interactive online community. Encourage your audience to post feedback and comments, interact with each other, share their ideas, and enhance your content by adding their own information.
Be sure to incorporate a 'Share' button into each of your blog entries. Make it very easy for readers to share your content via email, Facebook, Google+, Twitter or LinkedIn. Virtually all the popular blogging platforms offer a widget that makes it easy to integrate a 'Share' button into your blog. Doing this can help you build your audience through virtual word-of-mouth.
Adopt a multifaceted approach to promoting your blog continuously
It will take some time to build an audience in the hundreds of thousands or millions. To achieve this level of success will typically require ongoing marketing, promotions and even paid advertising. Many of the world's most successful bloggers have relied on the mainstream media to generate publicity for their blog to help build an audience. Promoting your blog on an ongoing basis is as important as regularly adding new content.
Keep the blog's look, overall design and content professional
Always convey a professional image, regardless of the subject matter or your audience. The look and overall design of your blog should be professional, and easy to read and understand.
Also, be sure to edit and proofread your work carefully to avoid or correct any errors. Spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in your blog take away from your credibility and make your blog appear amateurish.
All bloggers have one thing in common: they want their blog to succeed. For most bloggers, success means converting loyal followers.
No matter when or why you started your blog, a few tweaks here and there to your blog and your attitude can change things for the better. Check out our list of seven tips to help you succeed as a blogger.
1. Find a Niche
This little bit of advice has been bouncing around the Internet since the dawn of the first successful blog. Still, a lot of newbie bloggers don’t take this advice to heart, partially because a lot of new bloggers aren’t sure what to blog about and partially because others don’t know what a niche is. Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered.
Niche is defined as, “a specialized but profitable corner of the market.”
What we really mean when we say “find your niche” is to narrow your blog’s focus. Talking about anything and everything that comes to mind is great if you’re writing for yourself, but readers may find that chaotic and difficult to follow. What readers really want is a collection of related and helpful articles on the same topic to help solve a problem or question.
Examples of niches include:
- Parenting
- Finance
- Beauty
- DIY Home Décor
- Fitness
- Web Design
While it’s true that there are blogs on practically every niche, the key to really being successful and hitting your target audience is to narrow your topic even further. Find a hole in the market and focus on that. This will reduce your competition while making you a go-to expert in your niche.
For example, Blogging Basics 101 started because there were tons of sites with blogging advice for intermediate and advanced bloggers, but there wasn’t a lot of good advice for novice bloggers.
Another example would be if you wanted to start a travel blog. Instead of focusing on travel in general, you might narrow your focus to a single country or city. That way, you become the number one go-to blog for people looking to visit that area.
2. Don’t Be Afraid to Self-Promote
Promoting your own project on social media or within your group of friends is intimidating for a lot of people. You don’t want to sound like you are bragging, and you definitely don’t want to come across looking like spam.
If you want to succeed, however, you have to get the word out there, and who better to do that than you? It’s all part of the marketing process, and bloggers have to learn how to use social media and blog commenting functions to market themselves.
Sometimes tooting your own horn isn’t all that bad. The key is to find a balance between self-promotion and humility. Many bloggers and social media enthusiasts suggest using 80 percent of your social comments and shares to promote other people’s works and 20 percent of it promoting your own products and services.
3. Build on What Works
Experimenting is all a part of the process, so don’t be afraid to try something new. Start a new weekly blogging series, try placing ads, or start guest posting.
Use your website statistics and commenting functions to see how readers react to these new ideas. If you’re not seeing any indication of a reaction in your stats, poll your readers to see what they think.
Testing one thing here or there isn’t likely to hurt your blogging practice. Some of these experiments can lead to a huge increase in traffic. The good news is that you can always ditch the ones that don’t work.
4. Perform an “Above the Fold” Test
Above the fold includes the content you see when you first view your blog. It’s anything that you see without scrolling.
Since you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression and help readers find what they’re looking for, you want the most important information above the fold. For instance, people should be able to tell who you are and what you do without scrolling. If it’s not evident in your blogs title, it’s worth adding a tagline. If you want to draw attention to your call-to-action, that should appear above the fold as well.
Not sure how your website performs in this regard? Use the Clue App to set up a free 5-second test. Send the test out to your friends or followers to see which information readers see as most important. Don’t like the results? It’s worth rethinking your website layout.
5. Make Your Blog Sticky
Sticky is a term that means you’re encouraging people to return to or stay on your blog. For example, you might link to a relevant article from your blog’s archives. You can do this within the content, or you can list additional resources at the end of each blog post. The idea is that these links point to your own content and offer readers more in-depth information on the topic or a related subject.
As you do this, people are more likely to stick around and subscribe to your blog. You can also make your blog sticky by inviting readers to subscribe to your blog or by making your RSS feed available with the click of a button.
6. Look for Ways to Extend Your Blog
To get people to stick around and keep coming back, it’s worth extending your reach outside of simple blog posts. This helps you reach more people who enjoy other forms of content and contact, and it keeps your blog from getting boring.
Examples of ways to extend your reach include:
Easy Blogging Success Quotes
- Hanging around industry forums or social media
- Sending out newsletters
- Starting a podcast series
- Releasing videos
7. Create Quality Content
People have been saying it for years, and the saying still holds true. Content is king.
Without well-written and engaging content, your blog isn’t going to go anywhere. Yes, your blog design and your marketing tactics are important, but they’re practically useless if you don’t have quality content. People may come because of the marketing, but they’ll stay when you deliver content they need.
Pro tip: Creating content users “need” can encompass anything from teaching them something to providing entertainment. While blogging about yourself can have its benefits, you should always be focusing on solving the readers’ problems first (whether they want a good laugh or are looking for advice). Satisfying their needs is what will drive readers to subscribe to your blog.
Best Blogging Sites For Beginners
Have you seen success with other techniques? Let us know what you’ve done with your blog that your readers love.