13 Steps to Successful Blogging

 

Here are13 Steps you can take to help you be a better blogger. 
This article contains information which details the art of successful blogging.  It explains how blogs can be successful while growing an everlasting experience.

Be The Best Blogger You Can Be

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging. 

1) Are You Asking "Where to start?"
You should begin the start of your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Blogger, Groove, or Wix. I don't say that because that's what I did, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog.  Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog.  It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move".  Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to! 

2) Choose Your Niche. 
A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google or Yahoo to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market. If there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog. 

3) Update Daily or Weekly if you can. (nothing less) 
This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog as often as you can (at least weekly) not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content and makes it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks will likely result in your blog having less regular visitors. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog regularly with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily.  Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries.  Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog often with at least 3 or more entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a each time for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog you'll lose visitors. 

4) Grow Your Traffic.
It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ZapContent.com.  Once submitted, your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engine will find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you as an authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and try to submit your article to 10 article syndicators, social platforms, or as a guest blogger to someone's blog. 

5) Track Your Blog. 
How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors. 
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose. 

6) Listen to Your Blog Audience.
When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. When your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords that you regularly use, then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as it possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting. 

7) If You Decide To Have Multiple Blogs Then Consider Using Your Content More Than Once.
Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with Blogger, Groove, or Wix or others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to another if appropriate. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers (but it's more work too!). This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords. 

8) Short & Concise vs Lengthy Posts
Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.  Stay keyword-focused with good grammar.

Go to Grammarly.com for premium grammar assistance with your blog writing.

9) Digital Art 
Try to include graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. A little can go a long way when a picture is worth a thousand words. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.  Be sure and compress your files as much as possible. Compressed photos will let your website load faster for the search engine. There will be less wait time, that will make a better user experience for the reader.

10) Keep it Personal 
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the detached style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write all of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors. Your reader is your friend, customer, fan, or student. Treat them with care and they will visit often!

11) Interact With Your Visitors 
You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week. 
Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated". 
Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog. 

12) Make Money 
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Bing or Yahoo. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for every click an ad receives, you are paid a small percentage of the profits. 

In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: Amazon.com, Audible.com or a generally Sponsored Advertisement (like a local business in your neighborhood). 

13) You're a Professional 
You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Groove.cm or. Blogger or Wix. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.  Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines. If you need help getting your new domain set up, then check the "frequently asked questions" section of the web platform you are using or your domain name provider.
At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. Look for a collaborator that has a blog that is similar in size and topic (niche).  This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog for both of you. The old saying "two heads are better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in their blog (so write your very best!).  The idea of a team blog or collaboration  is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors. 

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.


To learn more about successful blogging, read my other blog posts. Practice and a little creativity is all it takes. If you're having a good time with your blog, success will come naturally.

With the publicity that blogs are getting nowadays, there is no doubt that it has become one of the most effective income generating tools online today.


#Blog #Blogging #BloggingTips #MakeMoneyOnline #WorkFromAnywhere #WorkFromHome

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