There is no doubt that blogging has become business. Businesses make money, businesses lose money, businesses fail. Same thing happens with blogging. Majority of blogs fail, only few survive. There may be many reasons for that, like not understanding the concept of blogging, not having enough knowledge about blogosphere, not having any ideas how to get started, lack of motivation etc.
No one was born expert; experts become experts by working hard on a daily basis. I believe anyone can gain authority on any field. All you need is a dedicated passion towards it. Initially it is little difficult to get started, but after that it’ll be easier.
So if you’re a blogger who just got started and wondering how to turn-on your blog, don’t worry. In this post I’ll let you know exactly how to get started and what your initial strategies should be.
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| Starting a New Blog |
Starting a blog is easy, but maintaining and building readership isn’t. There are many hurdles that we had to cross in order to reach our goals. Blogging is not an easy thing; you had to come up with different ideas and Blogging strategies every time. Even after that it is hard to predict what works and what doesn’t.
While starting our blog or business, we need to have a proper outlook or blueprint. It should be done wisely; otherwise there is no way to get succeed in blogging.
First of all, you need a certain set of skills like:
- Writing skills: It is no-brainer that every blogger needs to have a least amount of writing skills. Without basic writing knowledge it is impossible to write good content and attract audience.
- Creative thinking: It is essential quality to have to be a good blogger, since you’ve to come up the unique ideas every time.
- Promoting skills: good content alone can’t help you get succeed; you need to have little bit of promoting skills.
- Technical skills: If you run a self-hosted blog then you’ll need to understand more technical things.
The planning you do before starting a blog becomes useless if you don’t execute properly. You’ll realize how difficult it is to build audience when you launch a blog. From creating content to promoting takes lots of dedication and time.
So let’s get started with proper planning steps:
Content Creation
Every Blog’s success depends on the content which it provides. You need to create unique and irresistible content. Not to forget quality. You need to have a content planning before starting any niche blog. And creating unique content is necessary because there is no way that you would rank well in Google in this competitive blogosphere.
You need to create irresistible content to stand out from the crowd. Better the content, the better the results will be. For this you need to do lot research and thinking, I usually spend 2-3 hours to write quality posts. This depends on you and your set of skills.
Creating something of our own isn’t easy, because in schools and colleges many of you were used to just by-heart what is written in the books. There was no room for our creative thinking and writing, blogging requires creativity. Only way to develop good creative writing skills is by writing more and more daily.
Write irresistible posts often. In case you’re wondering how to create an irresistible content, read this awesome guide by Rahul Kuntala here. Producing in-depth quality content will help you get better Google rankings since Google loves quality and informative content.
Recently Google rolled out another major algorithm called ‘Hummingbird’ – This algorithm will make search engine more accurate by showing relevant contents. So the old method of targeting keywords might not work in the upcoming days.
Honestly, I don’t like black-hat SEO methods. Suppose if we need any particular information, we Google it and if we don’t get relevant information on the first page we will be pissed, right? Exactly, I believe only in white hat SEO methods, if your content is good enough you’ll be ranked higher in Google, of course you have to do some little more hard work.
You need to produce the Content which your readers genuinely like, just filling pages without providing relevant information won’t work. When starting a new blog make sure you do a lot of research on your niche before publishing your first post, uniqueness is better since there are already thousands (millions) of blogs sharing same thing.
One way to create unique content is by writing personally; it’ll stand out from the crowd because it’ll be original and your perspective. And personal writings always attract loyal readers. You may know Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com, notice how big fan following Pat has. All he achieved from his honest writings. He even shares his monthly income report every bit-by-bit. Honesty is the best technique to build loyal readers.
Scheduling
After Content creation planning you need to maintain proper scheduling. At least publish one article per week. There are some people suggest that publishing daily will increase search engine visitors, but if you publish daily your article doesn’t get much exposure. Google says: “One quality article per week is better than publishing low quality articles daily.” When you publish articles daily, it is difficult to maintain quality and your post length might end up short. It might also look like spam.
So just make sure you write one or two quality article per week. Quality is always better than quantity.
Promoting
As I mentioned above, good content alone can’t help you get succeed, because without promotion your blog will stay unnoticed. In case you are not promoting your blog and only work on creating good content, let me reveal you that you’re wasting time.
See, there are many freelance writers who have exceptional writing skills and yet fail to succeed with their own blog. When you start a new blog you need to have some promoting strategies, there are many promoting strategies which you should implement like; Guest blogging, blog commenting, social media, advertising etc. let me explain the promoting tactics which you should implement on your blog:
Essential Promoting Methods:
Guest Blogging
People won’t notice new blogs and often they ignore you because you’re a newbie. The best way to break this shackle is by writing a guest blog on top blogs. Honestly, guest blogging is little tough and you need to work little harder. Writing your first guest blog is even tougher since you won’t have any experience and you may little hesitate at first, but don’t worry you can overcome this Guest blogging fear by reading my guest post on ShoutMeLoud here.
You need to write guest post often to attract audience. Trust me, it’ll be exciting. Guest post gives you the opportunity to highlight yourself and your blog, and if you’re a freelance writer it would help you to get new clients.
Guest blogging is the best technique to promote your new blog. More importantly you get a backlink and you don’t have to spend anything other than your time. Guest blogging is cost-less, so it is one the best tactics to promote your blog.
Blog Commenting
If you have just started blogging, first thing you have to do is list-out your niche type blogs and comment on their blogs daily. Pretty easy, isn’t it? Well you have to do it quite often. Like guest blogging it is also cost-less and effective technique to build audience. Commenting on other blogs helps you to build a good relationship with other bloggers. And if you comment on dofollow blogs you’ll get little juice that will help you to get higher search engine rankings.
Social Media
If your blog or brand doesn’t have social media profiles then sorry to say this, but the fact is you’ll never succeed. There is no way you could survive in the blogosphere. Social media plays one of the major roles in the blogging success. You might have heard of social media marketing, it is not a myth. You got to take advantage of social media.
First thing to do after creating your blog is to set social media profiles on: Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Linkedin, StumbleUpon etc. With the latest Google Authorship trend, it is mandatory to use Google plus. Case-studies have found that using Google Authorship has increased click-through-rate (CTR) on SERP. Facebook and Twitter are also very useful to drive massive traffic.
Advertising
Advertising of course needs money; it might help you to promote your blog. There are many advertising methods you can use like Google adwords, Facebook ads, direct ads on other websites etc.
It does take a little investment, however you don’t have to use this if you use strategies that I mentioned above. And those strategies can bring natural traffic.
Technical Skills
When you’re running a self-hosted Blog/website you got to have some technical skills as well. It is not that technical, but still it is. Here I also include SEO as technical. SEO is little technical because you’ve to Learn how to do keyword researching, you have to learn how to set sitemaps and understand things like nofollow-dofollow, you have to stay updated with latest SEO algorithms, you’ve to learn how to build backlinks, you’ve to understand Meta description, Meta keywords, web master tools etc.
And you also have to understand bit of WordPress themes, plugins and widgets. A blogger needs all these technical things to be successful. You also need a professional looking theme. You might have to learn how to tweak it since hiring a designer might be expensive.
There are unlimited technical glitches that you have to deal with while running a self-hosted blog. So, it is little mandatory to adopt some technical skills.
Conclusion
Blogging is just not writing posts, we have to learn so many new things on a daily basis to get succeed. That’s why majority of blogs fail, they stop doing these necessary things. On this blogging business it is always important to stay on your toes. If you’re thinking to start a new blog, consider these blogging strategies and tips and do not ignore any.