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How Long Should A Blog Post Be? Finding The Ideal Blog Post Length

April 23, 2025 No Comments

How long should a blog post be?

What do readers prefer? How long do blog posts have to be to rank on Google?

We answer all of these questions and more in this post, starting with data-driven answers on typical blog post lengths bloggers use.

What is the ideal blog post length?

The simple answer is that the ideal blog post length varies between 1,500 and 2,500 words in most cases.

Let’s discuss a few studies that back this figure. The first comes from Semrush’s content marketing report for 2023.

The company analysed 30,000 websites and discovered that the average word count for blog posts published by high-performing sites is 1,152.

Note: Unfortunately, the link to Semrush’s 2023 content marketing report is no longer live. They have deleted it for some reason. Even though the data has aged a bit, it’s still valid.

The average word count for posts published by medium-performing sites is 902 while low-performing websites publish articles that are 668 words long on average.

In a QuickSprout study of Crazy Egg’s blog, posts that were over 1,500 words in length received 68.1% more tweets on Twitter (now X) and 22.6% more Facebook likes than posts that were fewer than 1,500 words.

Specifically, longer blog posts that were over 1,500 words received 293.5 tweets and 72.7 Facebook likes on average.

Articles that were less than 1,500 words received 174.6 tweets and 59.3 Facebook likes on average.

Finally, according to OrbitMedia’s 2024 study and survey of the blogging industry, the average blog post length is 1,394 words in 2024.

This is a 2.31% decrease from 2023’s average length of 1,427 words per post and a 72.52% increase from 2014’s average word count of 808 words.

A survey OrbitMedia conducted for this study, which included responses from over 1,000 bloggers, revealed that 63% of bloggers publish articles that are 500 to 1,500 words long on a regular basis.

37% of bloggers write articles that are between 2,000 and 3,000 words while only 3% of bloggers publish articles that are over 3,000 words long on a regular basis.

However, 31% of bloggers who do publish longer posts that are over 3,000 words on average on a regular basis say they see “strong results” from their efforts.

This is compared to only 12% who write posts between 500 and 1,000 words and 10% who publish articles that are fewer than 500 words.

Remember that blog post length is not a ranking factor

As you decide how long each one of your blog posts should be, remember that blog post length is not a ranking factor.

Here are the word counts for the top three articles that rank on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) for the keyword “what is a motherboard”:

TechTarget – 635 words
Spiceworks – 3,301 words
Lenovo -1,012 words

Clearly, Google did not consider word count when it was ranking blog posts for this keyword.

Domain authority likely had a much larger influence on this ranking since each of these sites has a domain authority that’s higher than 85, according to Ahrefs’ scale of this metric (DR).

Search engine optimization (SEO) experts advise smaller and medium-sized sites to write longer posts because it often takes more words to demonstrate authority on a particular topic.

However, it’s much more important to ensure your post provides value and matches search intent.

Short-form and long-form blog posts alike are capable of doing this.

When you write an outline for a post that targets a particular keyword, ask yourself what information the user is expecting to find when they enter that keyword into Google.

In your mind, when they enter “what is a motherboard” into Google, do they want a simple definition or a 3,000-word explanation that explains everything about this crucial piece of hardware?

This is why it’s so important to know your audience.

A tech blog that targets laymen and tech novices should write a shorter article while a blog that targets tech experts should really dive deep into this topic.

Instead of worrying about word count, you’d be much better off ensuring your website loads fast and is easy to navigate, that you acquire more high-quality backlinks, that you do not over optimize your posts, and that you publish a lot of articles that relate to your blog post.

What does google say about blog post length?

Google’s John Mueller tackled this subject on LinkedIn in October of 2024.

LinkedIn user Faseeh Ur Rehman asked:

“Hi John, is there an ideal content length that performs better on Google search results? Should we focus on creating longer, in-depth articles, or can short-form content rank just as well if it’s concise and valuable?”

To which Mueller replied:

“There is no universally ideal content length. Focus on bringing unique value to the web overall, which doesn’t mean just adding more words.”

User SEOBot_ followed up by asking:

“John Mueller, the industry is literally dead if you sense how the search is behaving. Also, do you have any example of content on the website that follows this and is able to get the Google love. “Focus on bringing unique value to the web overall, which doesn’t mean just adding more words.” This is a very vague and unrealistic ask if the GSC can start pinpointing this content/section as not making any sense or not adding any value. We really eager to learn and know how the content is actually generating value to the web. If all the value is being generated by top publishers/brands then what exactly the small publishers/niche site owners suppose to write to survive?”

To which Mueller responded:

“If you’re looking for a mechanical recipe for how to make something useful, that will be futile – that’s just not how it works, neither online nor offline. When you think about the real-world businesses near you that are doing well, do you primarily think about which numbers they focus on, or do you think about the products / services that they provide?”

He concluded with a final comment that read:

“If you count the words in best seller books, average the count, and then write the same number of words in your own book, will it become a best seller? If you make a phone that has the same dimensions as a popular smartphone, will you sell as many as they do? I love spreadsheets, but numbers aren’t everything. I’ll drop out of this thread now, it’s going in circles. If you want a number, go here: bit.ly/bestkwd.”

In other words, Google does not recommend you to simply use the same number of words your competitors are using. They advise you to focus on providing unique value to the web instead.

Unfortunately, Google often contradicts themselves. And so, we persist.

How to find a keyword’s optimal blog post length

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to reveal how long an article should be if you do need a number.

It’s time consuming, but follow these steps to reveal an optimal blog post length for your keyword:

Open Google in a browser you’re not logged into.*
Copy and paste the text for the first article into a word count tool, such as WordCounter.
Record the number, then do the same for the next nine articles. Ignore videos, forum posts and shop pages.
Add up each of the numbers, then divide by the number of figures you collected, which should be 10. The result is your optimal blog post length for that keyword.

*Google takes your own search history into account when it showcases search results to you. For example, if you browse Reddit a lot, you’ll see more results for Reddit posts when you search on Google. Therefore, it’s better to use Google in a browser where you’re not logged into your Google account in order to see the true ranking list for a particular keyword.

On-page optimization tools

The method listed above is free, but it’s also time consuming. A much quicker way to reveal a keyword’s ideal blog post length is to use an on-page optimization tool.

We mostly recommend Frase due to its affordability and ease of use, both of which are great for beginners. Sign up for a free trial here.

However, Scalenut, Surfer SEO, and NeuronWriter do a similar thing.

When you input a keyword into one of these tools, it’ll reveal suggestions for the following aspects of your blog post:

Word count
Number of images
Related keywords
How often you should use your target keyword
How often you should use each related keyword

Each of these suggestions is based on the top listings for your keyword.

Word count suggestions are based on an average word count from your competitors. You can view word counts of each one individually with most of these tools.

It’s a simple way to reveal a word count range you should target in order for your post to remain competitive.

Use your own knowledge of your target audience

Again, you know your target audience better than SEO tools do.

If your audience would appreciate a shorter explanation, write a shorter blog post.

If your audience expects in-depth analyses of topics, focus on writing long-form content.

It’s great to have specific metrics to target, but if you actually know your niche and your target audience through and through, your posts will likely be exactly as long as they need to be if you write naturally.

Create topic clusters on your website

Here’s one thing that’s predictable about SEO:

Competitive keywords typically need more words in order to cover their topics properly while less-competitive keywords typically require less.

This is why creating topic clusters is so useful. They allow you to cover everything about a particular topic with long blog posts while covering individual topics that relate to that original topic with shorter blog posts.

Related posts are something search engines want to see on your site.

Creating topic clusters is also a great way to publish a mixture of long and short-form content on your site.

Final thoughts

Most studies will tell you that the ideal length of a blog post is between 1,500 and 3,000 words.

And generally, you’ll find that the more in-depth your content is, the better it will perform. You’ll get more shares, earn more links, etc.

But the most important thing is to cover the topic in as much detail as you need in order to achieve your goals.

By Lyn Wildwood

Lyn Wildwood is a member of the Blogging Wizard content team and a freelance writer for hire with over a decade of experience in the marketing space. She loves sharing new tips on WordPress, blogging, and online business as a whole.

Sourced from bloggingwizard

In News

11 Blogging Tips For Beginners To Succeed In 2024

June 27, 2024 No Comments

By Megan Mahoney

Blogging is still one of the best opportunities to make money online as you can build an engaged audience and then sell products, services, or sponsorships.

Yet, the prospect of building a blog that will generate thousands of dollars can feel daunting if you’re just starting your journey as a blogger.

The blogging landscape is more competitive than ever, and the strategies that used to work even just a few years ago no longer work today.

While getting started might feel overwhelming, set aside just thirty minutes or an hour per day for blogging, and by implementing the tips outlined in this blog post, you’ll be well on your way to success.

Whether you’re blogging about your travel adventures or striving to attract customers for your business, these are the simple beginner blogging tips that will help you achieve your goals.

1. Define A Specific Niche

If you publish a blog article about dogs one week and gardening the next, it will be difficult to build a loyal audience of avid readers because people interested in dogs may not be interested in gardening.

Selecting a specific niche and only publishing content relevant to a specific topic solves this problem.

You’ll also find ranking in search engines like Google easier if you specialize in a specific niche. This is because search engines want to ensure they’re showing accurate information to their users, and one way search engines determine the credibility of a blog is by analysing the different topics it covers.

This concept is known as topical authority. By showing search engines that you’re an authority on a specific topic, you’re more likely to rank well for your target keywords.

How do you select a specific niche to blog about?

If you’re blogging for business, the answer is clear – write about your business’s niche.

However, if you’re starting a blog to build an audience that you’ll later monetize through sponsorships or affiliate products, your niche options are limitless (i.e., a travel blogger, a food blogger, etc.).

To help you select a niche, write down all of your interests and passions on a sheet of paper. You can also notate your level of passion for each niche.

To further narrow down your list, here are three other criteria to consider:

Your expertise: If you’re highly knowledgeable about that particular niche, it will be easier to write the content as you won’t have to do much research beforehand.
Your competitive advantage: Is there a reason why your lifestyle or industry access might give you an advantage in this niche? For example, if you’re a flight attendant and travel frequently for work, you’ll have a unique advantage in writing a travel blog because you already travel much more frequently than the average person. You could also discuss unknown tips on airports and flight deals.
The value of the audience: Some niches are much more valuable than others. For example, if you have a successful blog about camera gear, you’ll likely make more money than someone with a blog about baking simply because the average order value of a camera is significantly higher than the average order value of baking supplies. So whether you end up selling your own products through the blog or making money through sponsorships or affiliates, you’ll make more money if the end product has a higher profit margin.

One of the downsides of blogging is that it’s very competitive – especially if you’re targeting a high-value audience.

You can solve this problem by niching down and targeting only a specific subset of that niche.

For example, the “dog training” niche is very broad and competitive. However, you can stand out by becoming “the dog trainer for Labradors” or “the dog trainer for older dogs.”

This will help you stand out because someone with an older dog will be more inclined to talk to a specialist who works exclusively with older dogs rather than a generalist who works with any dogs.

2. Engage With Your Target Audience

One of the biggest mistakes beginner bloggers make is choosing topics based on what they want to write about. While there’s nothing wrong with writing for your own pure enjoyment, it’s essential to provide content that interests the reader if your goal is building a loyal following.

If you selected a niche you’re passionate about, there should be plenty of topics that both you and your readers enjoy.

However, the best way to determine what topics your readers want information about is to engage with them directly.

You can do this by joining Facebook groups, Slack groups, Reddit threads, and industry forums. Then, make a list of the most commonly discussed topics as these will become your first content ideas. You’ll also learn the general industry terminology, which is helpful as you begin writing your blog posts.

For example, if you have a web design agency for real estate agents, consider joining a group like the one below to learn about common marketing questions real estate agents ask. You can also provide helpful answers to questions about marketing, which can help you earn your first few readers and develop genuine relationships with industry experts.

3. Select Relevant Low Difficulty Keywords

Unfortunately, people don’t magically find your blog post as soon as you hit publish – especially as a new blogger.

While there are plenty of different ways to promote a blog post after it’s published, Google is perhaps the best (free!) opportunity to get your blog post in front of new readers. The process of optimizing your blog posts to appear in search results like Google is called SEO (search engine optimization).

For example, if you just wrote a blog post about “how to train a dog to sit,” you want Google to show it to people who search for terms related to training a dog to sit.

These phrases that people commonly search in Google are referred to as keywords.

While keyword research is an entire topic in its own right, here are two basic keyword research tips:

Only target keywords relevant to your audience: As we discussed in the tip above, your audience should be interested in the topic. If you’re blogging for business, the topic should also be a problem that your product or service solves (e.g., topics related to generating more real estate clients would be great for a web design service to target because the service solves that problem of earning real estate clients).
Choose keywords with low difficulty scores: Remember when we discussed earlier during niche selection that it’s important to select a low competition niche? This is because it’s more difficult to rank for a keyword with many blog posts targeting it. This is especially true if you’re competing against a highly authoritative website like Forbes. Since search engines tend to favour websites with well established credibility, it can be difficult for a new blogger to outrank them in the search results. Unfortunately, if your website doesn’t rank in search engines, it will be difficult for you as a blogger to earn new readers.

So how do you check the difficulty of a specific keyword?

There are plenty of SEO tools that make this easy, and Ahrefs and SEMrush are among the two most popular.

These tools analyse the search result pages (SERPs) for a particular keyword and then assign it a difficulty score based on the authority of the other websites ranking for that keyword.

These tools consider plenty of factors when creating their difficulty scores, but the only thing you need to know is that lower difficulty keywords (keywords that are easy for new bloggers to rank for) have lower difficulty numbers, whereas more competitive keywords that new blogs likely won’t rank for have higher difficulty numbers.

So list topics you might want to cover on your blog, and then type each into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. You’ll likely see different variations of that keyword as well as its difficulty scores.

As a beginner blogger with a brand new website, only select keywords with a difficulty score of 15 or less. As your website earns more authority, you can target increasingly competitive keywords.

You’ll also see a volume metric. This is the estimated number of searches for that keyword each month, so the higher the search volume metric, the better.

Source

You’ll probably have a long list of similar keywords for each topic, so select the keyword with the lowest difficulty and highest volume.

Once you select a keyword, what should you do with it? How do you optimize your blog post to rank for it?

To get started, just include it in the title of your blog post.

These next few tips will discuss how you can optimize your blog post to rank for your target keyword.

4. Deliver The Most Effective Advice

There are usually tens or even hundreds of helpful blog posts covering any content idea.

And most of the information in these blog posts is accurate and helpful. So why should someone read your blog post over the other blog posts? In other words, what makes your blog post the best on that topic?

One way to do this is to provide the most effective solution to their problem.

This may sound obvious, but let me illustrate this with an example.

Earning backlinks is a major challenge for SEO professionals, so it’s no surprise that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of blog posts on building backlinks.

Yet building backlinks is a popular content idea because it’s so challenging, meaning that most of the solutions mentioned in these blog posts are only minimally effective.

For example, broken link building is a common link building technique that might require about five hours of work to earn one link:

On a scale of one to ten, broken link building is probably about a 5/10 strategy, as you might spend several hours to get one quality link.

On the other hand, Brian Dean recently shared a case study of a new backlink strategy that allowed him to build over 5,000 backlinks (many of which are high quality links) in 30 days. As a result, his strategy is probably a 9/10 solution to the problem as it requires minimal effort and produces high results.

Therefore, Brian Dean’s blog post is much higher quality simply because the solution is much more effective.

While it may take some time for search engines like Google to realize that your content provides the best solution, they will pick up on positive user engagement signals, like a long average time on page, many organic mentions and backlinks from people who found your ideas remarkable and reshared them, and other signs.

Of course, thinking of the most effective solution to a real problem that many people face is challenging.

To identify the best solution to a problem, experiment with multiple tactics or talk to people who have experienced these challenges and ask what worked and didn’t work for them.

Real experience will make your content more helpful than content written by bloggers who have never personally experimented with the theories they’re writing about, as they won’t be able to articulate the drawbacks and downsides of various “best practices.”

In fact, you’ll notice that this is exactly what Brian Dean did when writing the post on link building. He called out the challenges he experienced with traditional link building tactics and then used that as the launchpad to show how he created a more effective solution.

Search engines also recognize that people with real experience tend to produce better content, so they often optimize their algorithms to recognize expertise and experience within content and tend to rank those blog posts higher. In fact, Google released the acronym “EEAT” which stands for:

Experience
Expertise
Authority
Trust

So the more you can focus on finding the absolute best solution to a problem, the better your content will perform and the more loyal readers you’ll earn.

Of course, this means that the real work begins long before you ever begin typing a word of the blog post, but the essence of great content marketing is solving a reader’s problem.

5. Package Your Advice As Simply As Possible

Scientific papers and textbooks provide excellent expert advice, so why do people turn to TikTok creators and other less credible sources for information?

Most scientific papers and textbooks are boring and difficult to understand, whereas many viral creators package their information in interesting stories.

The lesson?

If your content is difficult to comprehend, you’ll struggle to build a loyal following – regardless of how effective your advice is.

Therefore, optimize your content to be easy to understand and fun to read.

The first tactical strategy for making your content easy to understand is to write at a fifth or sixth-grade reading level. This rule applies even to sophisticated niches, like tech gurus and healthcare professionals.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use industry terminology or that you must dumb down the information. Instead, just think about keeping your sentences simple. Here are a few specific tips:

Write in the active voice
Keep your sentences short
Use an app like Grammarly or Hemingway and aim for a fifth or sixth grade reading level
Get directly to the point

Here’s a great example of how you can simplify language to communicate the same point:

In addition to optimizing the sentence structure for simplicity, you can also make your blog post easier and more enjoyable to read by including stories and real examples.

Stories and examples make it easier for people to understand your point, and they make the content more memorable.

Here’s a great example of storytelling copywriting:

Instead of stating the point directly, the copywriter used a story to communicate his point – it’s important to take breaks. The story makes his content memorable and more enjoyable to read.

6. Optimize For Scannability

When you’re researching a topic, you want to learn the most important information as quickly as possible. If you glance at the two screenshots below, which blog post are you more likely to read?

Article 1:

Article 2:

While both articles contain the same information, the first one is much easier to scan because it uses bullet points, bold, short sentences, and headers.

Readers will likely skim through the first article and read the important parts, whereas they’re more likely to immediately hit the “back” button on the second article, which is a wall of text.

It’s also worth noting that the more scannable text (the first screenshot) ranks first in Google. This is likely because search engines noticed that people were staying on the first page for more time, indicating that it delivers a better user experience than the other posts.

The takeaway? Make your content easy to scan.

To make your content scannable, here are a few tips:

Use screenshots and graphics whenever possible to communicate your point
Use bullet points
Bold and italicize important points
Limit paragraphs to four lines or less

If you want to write in a flow state, write in long paragraphs as you’re drafting, and then use this checklist as you’re editing to optimize for scannability.

7. Follow SEO Best Practices

Including a primary keyword in your blog post’s title is a great start to optimizing it for SEO, but there are a handful of other SEO best practices that all bloggers should follow to maximize reach.

Here’s a quick checklist you can use to optimize your blog post for SEO:

Properly format each post: Use H2s and H3s for each subheader.

Include internal links: An internal link directs readers to another helpful blog post on your website. For example, rather than providing a detailed explanation of internal links, I’m simply linking to another blog post we’ve written about internal links. This ensures you don’t have to go on a side tangent to explain a subtopic, yet readers that want more information can go to that link to learn more. From an SEO perspective, internal links help search engines crawl your website more efficiently, translating to better rankings.
Include related keywords: You can use a tool like Clearscope to identify keywords related to your primary keyword. Including related keywords helps search engines understand what your blog post is about and ultimately helps you rank higher in search results. For example, you can see that some keywords related to “best travel credit cards” include “car rental,” “card offers,” and “cash back.” Including those keywords in your article helps search engines like Google realize that your blog post is about travel credit cards, which can help your blog post rank higher in the search results for keywords like “best travel credit cards.”

Include FAQs: Another strategy to earn more real estate in the search results is to look at the frequently asked questions that pop up for the primary keyword. For example, if you’re writing a blog post on “how to start a business,” these are some great FAQs to include in your article:

Target Featured Snippet Opportunities: Featured snippets are the answer boxes that sometimes appear at the top of the search results. You can identify these opportunities by pasting the top ranking blog post’s URL for your target keyword in a tool like Ahrefs. Then, sort by “SERP feature” and check “Featured snippet.” From there you’ll find a list of different keywords with featured snippets.

Then, optimize your blog post to rank for those featured snippets. You can do that by searching the current featured snippet and then format your blog post to match it. For example, if the featured snippet opportunity is “how to become a business owner,” be sure to structure your blog post as a list:

In addition to following on-page best practice tips, here are a few technical SEO tips that you can apply to all of your blog posts:

Optimize for mobile: Most people access blog posts on mobile devices, so make sure that the blog post is easy to read on a mobile device. Today, most websites are mobile friendly. Otherwise, try a different website theme.

Source

Improve your site speed: If your website takes too much time to load, people will click the back button, and then use a tool like PageSpeed Insights to test your site speed, and if it isn’t up to scratch, consider hiring someone on Upwork to fix it:

8. Collaborate With Influencers

As a beginner blogger, you probably won’t receive any organic traffic to your website when you first start publishing blog posts, as search engines like Google tend to favour ranking more established websites.

An easy solution to quickly earn readers is to collaborate with influencers.

The only problem is that, as a new blog with zero followers, there isn’t a strong incentive for influencers to work with you if you can’t send them any new readers. The solution to this problem is to offer them another form of value.

For example, if you’re a brand new travel blogger, you could reach out to a resort with a significant following and offer to create a promotional video of them (perhaps involving an interview with the owner). In exchange, ask them to share it on their social media profiles.

This is beneficial for them because they get high quality, free marketing materials, and it’s also beneficial for you because they’re sharing your content.

Here’s a great example of a vacation resort that reshared the video of a travel blogger:

If you consistently collaborate with influencers, you’ll eventually earn readers and develop genuine industry relationships, which will ultimately set you up for excellent long term growth.

The key to landing influencer collaborations is to always ask the question: How will this collaboration benefit the influencer?

9. Establish A Consistent Content Calendar

The more high quality content you publish, the faster you’ll grow.

However, many beginner bloggers are overly ambitious and try publishing multiple blog posts per week. Unfortunately, the ultimately become overwhelmed and give up.

Instead, set a goal of publishing just one blog post per week. By publishing once per week, you’ll still grow at a reasonable rate, but it won’t be so overwhelming that you give up.

This will help you develop the habit of writing blog posts, and over time, you can either increase your publishing rate or hire other writers to help you.

To stay organized, create a content calendar. This way, you can establish all of your content ideas for the month and set milestone goals throughout the week to stay on track. For example, you can set a goal to have the draft written by Wednesday, edited by Thursday, and published on Friday.

Trello offers several editorial calendars you can use for free.

Alternatively, here’s an example of simple Google spreadsheet content calendar:

10. Establish A Content Repurposing Strategy

Once you write a blog post, you can extract snippets from it to publish on other platforms, like Twitter, LinkedIn, and even your email list.

You’ve already done the hard work of creating the initial content, so extracting a few snippets from it should only take a few extra minutes, yet it will help more people discover your brand.

For example, this travel blogger wrote a post on visiting Florida Keys:

Then, she repurposed the content into Instagram and Facebook posts. While these were both sponsored posts, it’s an excellent example of how bloggers can repurpose their content:

In fact, content repurposing was a key reason Alex Hormozi grew from 180,000 to over 1.2 million followers in just one year.

He only spent about two days per month creating content, and therefore only published a few long form pieces of content per month. However, he then had a team that repurposed snippets from those long form pieces of content across different social media platforms which allowed him to publish 80 total pieces of content per month.

As you grow, you can also hire a freelancer to repurpose the content for you.

11. Measure Progress And Seek Feedback

Starting a blog can feel overwhelming. There’s a lot to learn, and even advanced bloggers are always learning and improving. Instead of trying to make your first blog post perfect, just get started and then make one improvement to each blog post you write.

Over time, your blog posts will become better and better and you’ll earn more readers.

Once you start to build an audience, you can also ask for their qualitative feedback on your blog posts. A key mistake many larger bloggers make is failing to interact with their audience.

However, interacting with your audience will help you understand their pain points, which will help you think of better topic ideas and improve your writing. Direct communication with your audience will also help you build a deeper relationship with readers, which will help you monetize your blog in the future.

From a tactical standpoint, you can interact with your audience by responding to their comments. This is what we do here at Copyblogger:

You can also send them an email asking for feedback on your content. Or, you can just ask them about their biggest challenges.

You can also measure success based on traditional content marketing metrics, like traffic and social shares.

Start Your Blog Today

Starting a blog is just like starting a business – it might be hard to get traction in those first few weeks, but you’ll eventually grow if you just stay consistent.

Nevertheless, we realize that the initial stage can be overwhelming. That’s why we built the Copyblogger Academy, a community of entrepreneurs and marketers who earn money through writing.

Inside the Academy, you’ll have access to eight different courses on various marketing topics, including email marketing, copywriting, and SEO. You’ll also connect with like-minded peers and can ask seven-figure entrepreneur and Copyblogger founder Tim Stoddart for direct feedback in the community. You can sign up today risk-free. If you aren’t 100% satisfied, we’ll give you a full refund within the first 30 days.

By Megan Mahoney

Sourced from copyblogger

In News

4 Ways To Use ChatGPT To Make Money on Twitter

December 19, 2023 No Comments

By Karen Doyle

Many tech and finance experts are talking about ChatGPT and how it is revolutionizing content creation. But can you actually use ChatGPT, or another AI tool, to make money on social media? You can, in fact, and here’s what you need to know about using ChatGPT to make money on Twitter (now X).

Affiliate Marketing

Companies use affiliate marketing to broaden their reach so they can get their message out to more consumers. If you have a lot of followers on Twitter (now X) you can sell other company’s products by promoting them on your feed. For every order the company gets through your tweets, they’ll pay you.

This arrangement requires that you choose a product or products to sell on Twitter, and every time a sale is made through one of your posts, you get a commission. To find products to sell, sign up for an affiliate marketplace like JVZoo or ClickBank. Then you can browse the available products and choose which one(s) you want to promote.

You can then use ChatGPT or another AI tool to create your posts. As with anything that you’re doing with AI, the key is to compose the prompt correctly. You want to be sure that your post sounds natural — like it’s actually coming from you — and that it represents the product accurately. You may have to try a few times to get it right.

Blogging

Successful bloggers know that it’s all about the volume of content — the more you can post, the more money you can earn. But writing all those posts yourself takes time. You can use ChatGPT to create blog posts much more quickly than you could write them yourself. You can ask ChatGPT to create a blog post and you can even ask for the post to be in your style or voice.

As a hypothetical example: If Chris Smith has a blog called “Cooking with Chris,” Smith could prompt ChatGPT to “write a blog post with instructions on how to bake sugar cookies from scratch in the style of Chris Smith of Cooking with Chris.” Plugins such as VoxScript allow ChatGPT to browse the internet to familiarize the model with Chris’ previous work, or several blogs can be fed to the AI manually to form a basis. Then, all Chris needs to do is verify that the recipe is accurate (trying it would be a good idea) and then post it.

E-Books

ChatGPT can help with writing e-books as well. When using AI to generate an e-book, it’s best to start with an outline. Determine the number of chapters or sections you want your e-book to have, and what each chapter or section should cover. You can write a detailed prompt for the entire e-book at once or break it up and do one section or chapter at a time. It is likely, due to current constraints, that several pieces will have be done separately and then assembled later down the line.

Be sure to review the copy carefully to make sure it flows properly and isn’t redundant, particularly if you’re using different prompts for each section. Once the copy is generated, you can write another prompt for an introduction and conclusion.

Promoting your e-book on Twitter requires that you have a following, of course, and that you are recognized as an authority in the subject you’re writing about. If that’s the case, you can use ChatGPT to write a post advertising your e-book and start selling!

All of these ways to make money on Twitter with ChatGPT come with the same caveat: any artificial intelligence tool is a data gathering tool. It’s up to you, as the owner of the Twitter account, to ensure that the content you are posting is accurate and doesn’t violate any of Twitter’s rules. Most importantly, it has to be content that you stand behind. Checking the sources is imperative, because you can lose your hard-earned credibility quickly by posting something without verifying the validity of information

feature image credit: Vertigo3d / Getty Images

By Karen Doyle

Sourced from GOBankingRates

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Instagram vs. Pinterest: Which Platform Is Better for Beginner Bloggers?

December 4, 2023 No Comments

By Danny Maiorca

Growing an audience on a social media platform is essential for bloggers. So should you get started on Instagram? Or is Pinterest the better option?

When you begin blogging, you’ll likely need to wait months or years before search engines begin to rank your website properly. However, you don’t need to sit around twiddling your thumbs until that happens. Social media allows anyone with engaging content to expand their audience.

Instagram and Pinterest are two platforms that many beginner bloggers turn to when trying to grow their online presence. Both have benefits and drawbacks, and choosing the right one will allow you to dedicate more energy to attracting website traffic. So let’s compare them.

Monthly Active Users

When looking at monthly active users, Instagram is much bigger than Pinterest. According to Statista, Instagram has around 1.35 billion people using the platform each month. And by 2025, that figure is expected to reach 1.44 billion.

Meanwhile, Pinterest had—according to Statista—463 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2023. This is down from its peak in Q1 2021 when the platform had 478 million. However, it’s still not a bad audience base, and you could argue that finding your target audience will be less competitive.

Learning Curve

When choosing a social media network as a blogger, you need to think about whether you can continue using it as your audience grows, or if it’ll reach a peak saturation point. You must also consider what the learning curve is like.

The benefit of a bigger learning curve is that you’ll grow more over the long run. But on the flip side, you might become discouraged if it’s too steep in the beginning. In terms of app usability, Instagram is arguably easier to understand than Pinterest.

Instagram is quite an intuitive app. With Pinterest, you’ll need to learn a few extra things—such as how to design engaging pins and create boards. If you’ve decided that you want to use Pinterest, consider learning how to design a Pinterest Pin in Canva.

Growing Your Account

Social media can benefit businesses in many ways, and if you’re planning to monetize your blog later down the line, using social media is worthwhile. It’s hard to grow on most platforms, but some are easier than others. So how do Instagram and Pinterest compare in this respect?

Pinterest operates more like a search engine. Users look for topics that interest them, and they can do so using the search bar or checking their home feeds. If you publish consistently on the app, you can increase your monthly viewership—which may lead to more outbound clicks.

Gaining followers on Pinterest is sometimes challenging, but your follower count doesn’t really matter. Statistics such as saved pins and outbound clicks are more important for bloggers.

Instagram

Getting noticed on Instagram is quite challenging, especially as a beginner. Although you’ll see a lot of advice about how often you should post and the types of content you should publish, you’re better off being authentic and posting when you need to. In that respect, you might want to build your blog audience first and let them naturally find your Instagram page later.

Content Diversification Options

Before picking your preferred social media platform as a blogger, understanding what types of content you can share is a good idea. Not only will you be able to determine what you should prepare in advance, but you can also pick a platform with a form of media that you like.

Instagram

3 Images

Instagram Carousel on a Person's Feed Screenshot

Instagram has evolved from being a simple photo-sharing app. Of course, you can share still images—and you have the choice to include up to 10 in a carousel post. However, since the introduction of Reels in 2020, video content has become more popular. If you want to stand out on Instagram, consider trying a selection of Reels ideas.

On Instagram, you can also share Stories in the form of both photos and videos. You can add stickers, along with encouraging your audience to ask questions and much more.

Pinterest also allows you to share videos with your audience, but these aren’t as much of a core experience as they’ve become on Instagram. You can also share carousel-style posts, but you’re limited to a maximum of five images.

If you like still images more than video content, you might want to think about using Pinterest over Instagram. At a later point, you can expand onto Instagram if you feel like you want to explore video content more.

Character Limits

Even if you don’t start a blog on Instagram, knowing how to write engaging content both there and on Pinterest can help you build the audience you’re looking for. But prior to doing this, you should understand what the character limits are on each network.

When sharing a Pinterest board, you can only write a maximum of 500 characters. With that in mind, your descriptions should be brief and give users an idea of what to expect when they click on your link.

Instagram, on the other hand, lets you type up to 2,200 characters. But while you have more room to share your captions, you should still try to keep your writing as succinct as possible.

Adding Links to Specific Posts

The main goal of using social media as a blogger is to drive traffic to your website, and ideally, to also increase your newsletter sign-ups. Removing as much friction as possible can help in that respect.

Instagram lets you add links to specific posts, but you can’t use hyperlinks. As such, someone would have to copy and paste the link into their web browser. However, you can add links to your Stories and bio.

On Pinterest, you can add outbound links in each pin. Moreover, you have the option to include a link in your bio and claim your website.

Will You Choose Instagram or Pinterest?

Both Instagram and Pinterest offer several benefits to beginner bloggers, and you can scale with both of them as more people discover your work. Pinterest is an excellent tool for helping others find your content, especially if your site still doesn’t rank highly in search engines.

Instagram is arguably a better choice for more established bloggers, and it’s worth letting your audience find your account from your site—rather than the other way around. But you can build a close connection with your audience on Instagram, and you may find that it’s an ideal option for encouraging newsletter sign-ups.

By Danny Maiorca

Danny enjoys exploring different creative disciplines, especially photography. He has a degree in Sports Journalism and has been writing professionally since 2016.

Sourced from MUO

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7 Easy Ways to Make Money by Blogging 2023

September 11, 2023 No Comments

By Dinistan Ajay

Do you want to make money blogging? Let’s get into it.

Here are the seven best ways.

So, the first idea is to

Put ads on your blog.

If you’re getting a lot of traffic to your site, there are pages that could earn a significant income from strategically placing ads on them. You could use a service like Ezoic, Mediavine, or Google AdSense.

This is the most passive way to earn income from your blog. If you build up traffic and keep it steady, you can earn thousands of dollars every month from ads alone.

The second idea is to

Sell a service.

First, you want to define your offer — what it is you can help people with and what people are willing to pay for. Then, spend some time creating content around your expertise. For example, if you’re a highly skilled divorce attorney with thousands of hours of experience, you can write about your personal experiences working with clients and how you’ve helped them.

By doing keyword research and writing about topics people are searching for, you’ll start to build an audience and become an authority on the topic. From there, you can offer your services and build up a client base purely from blog traffic. This can work in just about any field you have experience with.

The third idea, in my opinion, is the best way to monetize your blog

Affiliate marketing.

When done right, your income grows the more time you put in. Affiliate marketing is all around you, but you might not be aware of it. Let’s take TVs as an example. People often look up TV reviews and comparisons before making a purchase.

Review sites like ratings.com, TechRadar, and Tom’s Guide include links to each TV, and every link makes money whenever someone clicks through and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing has tremendous earning potential. Just look at NerdWallet, for example. Their main revenue source is affiliate marketing, and they made $379 million last year.

It’s the best way to build passive income in 2023.

The fourth way to make money blogging is by

Doing sponsored product reviews.

When you build up a sizable audience and get a decent amount of traffic, you become attractive to potential sponsors. Reach out to companies whose products align with your blog’s niche and share your traffic stats with them. Offer them the opportunity to be featured prominently in your content for a set monthly fee. Most companies will want that top spot because it generates the most visibility and influences purchase decisions.

Here is to go where the money is.

People often think of blogs as hobbies or online journals, but those people aren’t really making any money. If you want to turn your blog into a real source of income, think in terms of niches that make the most money. Avoid oversaturated niches or subjects that are not easy to monetize.

The most popular topics that make money include health, wealth, personal development, and dating. Create content around those topics and monetize them through services, digital products, physical products, and affiliate marketing.

Build an email list

Marketers often say that money is on the list, referring to an email list. To make money from blogging, you need to build a relationship with your readers.

Encourage visitors to sign up for your email list by providing multiple calls to action on your website. Building an email list ensures you always have a direct connection to your audience, allowing you to market to them whenever you have promotions or want to share new content.

Another way to monetize your blog is by

writing on Medium and earning money.

Medium is a popular online platform where you can publish your articles and reach a wide audience. It offers a Partner Program that allows writers to earn money based on the engagement their articles receive. When you join the program, your articles can be eligible for earnings based on member reading time and engagement, which includes claps and responses.

Writing on Medium provides an opportunity to showcase your expertise, connect with a community of readers, and earn income through your published content. Consider exploring Medium as a platform to expand your blogging endeavours and generate additional revenue.

By combining these strategies or selecting the ones that align best with your blog’s niche and target audience, you can create a diversified income stream and maximize your earning potential.

Remember, success in monetizing your blog requires dedication, consistency, and a commitment to providing valuable content that resonates with your readers. With determination and the implementation of these methods, you can transform your blog into a profitable venture and achieve financial success in the world of blogging.

Feature Image Credit: Photo by Rahabi Khan on Unsplash

By Dinistan Ajay

Sourced from Medium

In News

How to Build an Audience From Scratch In 2023

August 16, 2023 No Comments

By Tim Stoddart

If you’ve ever tried to build an audience, you might have experienced the painful scenario of posting a piece of content you’re particularly proud of and… crickets.

As the supply of content increases, accelerated by the introduction of AI content tools, it’s harder than ever to earn attention.

However, this also means that the value of attention is increasing, and those who succeed have more leverage than ever before. Famed investor Andrew Wilkinson sums this up well in the following tweet:

The good news is that building a new audience isn’t impossible.

It just requires a different strategy than before. So in this post, we’ll discuss a step-by-step strategy you can use to build an audience from scratch in 2023.

Step 1: Select a Topic, Medium, and Angle

If someone consumes a piece of content you created and then follows you, it’s probably because they liked it and want to see more similar content. So if you change the topic and style of your content, you might lose those subscribers because they might not like the new topic or style of content.

As a result, you’ll find that your subscribers frequently churn, and you’ll struggle to build a loyal following.

This was a key mistake Eric Siu mentioned he made when building his YouTube channel. He discussed marketing in some of his YouTube videos, while in others, he discussed NFTs and cryptocurrency. His audience began unsubscribing as the audience interested in marketing didn’t care about his NFT videos, and the NFT audience didn’t care about his marketing videos.

So the key to building a sticky, loyal audience is selecting a topic, angle, and medium. Here’s how I define each of these:

Topic: This is what you’ll talk about. Examples of topics include marketing, finance, food, travel, etc. Choose a topic you have unique knowledge about and are genuinely interested in. Content is a long game, and you’re much more likely to be successful if you have a genuine interest in the topic, as there will be a period of time when you won’t receive any reward for your efforts.

Medium: This is how you communicate your content. Examples of mediums include video, text, or audio content. The key to choosing the best medium is to select one you enjoy and can produce consistently. Publishing consistency is key to long-term growth, so if you don’t think you can produce that medium of content weekly, choose a different medium. For example, if you don’t think you can produce video content each week, you might want to choose text-based content.

Angle: This is how your content will provide a different perspective from other existing content. Similar to product-market fit, your angle is the differentiator that helps you achieve “content-market” fit. For example, if you’re starting a Japan travel vlog, how will it differ from existing Japan travel vlogs? Maybe you’ll interview local Japanese chefs and film them making a meal. The key to selecting a successful angle is to make it both unique and repeatable. For example, interviewing Japanese chefs and filming them making a meal is a repeatable format.

Select the topic, medium, and angle of your content

To help you choose your topic, medium, and angle, here are a few examples for inspiration.

Example #1: Justin Rowe

Topic: LinkedIn Advertising
Medium: Text (LinkedIn)
Angle: He shares tactical breakdowns and case studies of of how to improve your LinkedIn ad performance.

Example #2: Sam Parr and Shaan Puri

Topic: Entrepreneurship
Medium: Podcast
Angle: Casual business conversation between two seven/eight entrepreneurial friends.

Example #3: Caleb Simpson

Topic: Rent
Medium: TikTok
Angle: Asks people on the street how much they pay for rent and then tours their apartments.

If you look through each of these individuals’ content, they cover roughly the same topic in a repeatable format.

Note: You’ll notice that they all have audiences across multiple different platforms (Twitter, YouTube, etc.). Below, we’ll discuss how you can take an omnichannel approach, but when you’re first starting out, it’s best to focus on just one medium on one platform.

Step 2: Create Content and Publish Regularly

The main cause of content failure is the creator quitting too soon.

Your first pieces of content probably won’t hit, and that’s okay. In the early days, the most important thing to do is to get the reps in and hone your abilities as a content creator.

So select a specific content topic, medium, and angle and commit to publishing consistently for the next three months.

Here are a few tips to help you publish consistently:

Set a reasonable content publishing frequency. If you plan to publish every day, you’ll probably burn out quickly and give up. As consistency and a long-term vision are essential for content success, create just one piece of content, see how long it took you to produce, and then select a realistic publishing schedule you can realistically commit to for at least six months.

Batch your content in advance. Many creators find it easier to produce several pieces of content in one sitting once they’re in the flow state rather than setting aside several content creation sessions throughout the week/month. Batching content also ensures you publish on time.

Outsource and automate non-creative work. Plenty of minor tasks are involved with content creation, from editing videos to scheduling social media posts, but these small tasks can quickly add up to hours each week. So use software tools to automate tasks or hire a virtual assistant on a platform like Upwork to help you. By offloading low-value tasks, you’ll have more time to dedicate to content creation, decreasing your chances of burnout.

Once you publish some content, you can ask for feedback from mentors and peer groups.

For example, platforms like Intro.co and Clarity.fm allow you to schedule mentorship calls with world-class experts.

Alternatively, you can join a community like the Copyblogger Academy, where you can ask me (Tim) questions and receive feedback from other peers. We also do Q&A sessions with top content creators.

If you want to learn more about how to level up your content creation skills, here are a few additional resources you can check out:

How to improve your copywriting skills
How to improve your video content
How to improve your podcast content
How to improve your social media content

Another excellent method to improve your content is to study your competitors’ content and determine which content receives the most engagement or positive comments.

For example, if you produce video content on YouTube, you can filter by the most popular videos and then look for patterns and popular influencers to incorporate into your content:

Step 3: Partner with Existing Creators

There’s a misconception that as long as your content is high quality, it will naturally earn engagement.

Unfortunately, most algorithms (social media, search engines, etc.) give more visibility to content that earns a lot of traction and engagement within the first few hours.

When you’re starting, you probably only have a handful of followers, so your content won’t receive much engagement within the first few hours of publishing. Unfortunately, this means your content probably won’t receive much organic reach from the algorithms – even if the content quality is next-level.

This creates a vicious cycle that makes it hard to earn a following and receive more engagement.

To break out of this cycle and help your content receive more organic reach, consider collaborating with an influencer that already has the attention of your target audience.

When they promote your brand to their audience, your content will naturally receive more impressions, which will help it receive more engagement and ultimately help you earn more followers.

The tricky part is getting an influencer with a larger audience to agree to do a content collaboration with a smaller brand with a small audience.

As a rule of thumb, partnerships are most successful when incentives are aligned.

So before you ask an influencer to collaborate with you, ask yourself how this partnership will benefit them.

Some influencers agree to interview smaller brands if they can repurpose the content on their own social media accounts. As most influencers are already setting aside time to create their own content, many will agree to an interview with a smaller brand if they can use that content for their personal brand.

Alex Hormozi is a great example of this in action. He often repurposes all of the interviews he does as social media content, like this clip that he swiped from an interview he did on Impact Theory:

Many influencers also share the content when it goes live and give your brand a shout-out. Here’s a great example:

Brett Adcock promoting a podcast episode on Twitter

Not all influencers will agree to an interview, especially if you have a smaller audience. To increase your chances of receiving a “yes,” look for influencers that have recently done interviews with competitors that have a similar audience size.

You can also look for influencers launching a book, as they tend to be more open to interviews.

Note: Even if you’re just writing text-based content (like Twitter or LinkedIn threads), you can still interview someone and then write out the key points from the conversation and post that on your social media channels.

If you’re struggling to get an influencer to collaborate with you, consider paying for an interview. For example, you can use a platform like Intro.co or Clarity.fm to pay for calls with world-class experts.

You can also pay an influencer directly to promote your content. However, collaborations tend to be more effective as influencers are often more vested in the partnership when their own thought leadership is involved.

If you’re producing audio or video content, you can also offer written guest posts to blogs with similar audiences and simply ask that they insert the video or podcast link somewhere inside the guest post. For example, popular car YouTuber Doug DeMuro got his first several thousand YouTube subscribers by writing for the car blog, Jalopnik, and then inserted his videos into the written content.

Finally, you can also pay to promote your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Step 4: Adopt an Omni Channel Approach

Once you’ve established a solid publishing schedule for your main channel, the best method to increase your output and reach with minimal additional effort is to adopt an omnichannel approach.

For example, if you’re already creating video or podcast content, you can chop that video up into multiple shorter clips and post it across social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.

This allows you to scale reach and engagement exponentially, as your single long-form video is now ten or twenty pieces of content.

Eric Siu and Neil Patel do a great job of repurposing the content for Marketing School. You can see an example here:

To help you automate this process, you can use a tool like Repurpose.io. Or, if you’d prefer to outsource the entire process, you can hire an agency like Shortzy to do it for you.

For example, you can also put the video script into an AI content writer tool and ask it to write a blog post or social media content based on the script.

The key to succeeding with an omnichannel approach is optimizing each piece of content for the platform on which you intend to publish it. For example, if you’re repurposing a piece of content on TikTok, optimize it with subtitles and edit it in the fast-paced style of content that TikTok users like to consume.

If you feel overwhelmed at the prospect of repurposing your content across multiple additional platforms at once, choose just one additional platform and then add more as you become comfortable repurposing.

Step 5: Double Down On What’s Working

The content marketing landscape is always changing, and the marketing campaigns that work today might not work as well a year from now. So as you grow your audience, consistently collect audience feedback to learn what content resonates best and then produce more of that content.

The same methodology applies to your general audience growth strategy.

Look at your growth metrics and double down on the partnerships and marketing strategies that drive the most audience growth.

Many entrepreneurs become distracted by new trendy marketing tactics, but the key to long-term success is focusing on what works and doubling down on those marketing strategies.

While experimentation is a great way to discover more effective strategies, limit new marketing campaigns to just one or two per month. Other than that, focus all your efforts on the top two or three marketing campaigns currently driving the most growth.

For example, if email marketing promotions currently drive 50% of your growth, double down on doing more email campaigns.

Bonus: Consider Different Monetization Strategies

The purpose of building a following is to eventually convert them into paying customers, but when and how you monetize will significantly impact the long-term revenue you receive.

First, monetizing too early can cause your audience to lose trust in your brand, and many will either unfollow you or ignore your offer.

You can think of the trust you build like a bank account – the more value you provide and the longer you wait to withdraw, the more you can ask for when you pitch an offer.

So how do you know when you’ve built enough trust that you can make an ask?

There isn’t a hard and fast subscriber count or engagement rate, but a great test is to make a small non-monetary ask and see how many people respond. For example, you can ask your audience to respond to a specific question in the comments or on social media.

You can also use a sentiment analysis tool like Awario or Brandwatch to gauge your audience’s general sentiment and identify specific audience complaints.

Responding and engaging with your audience is also a general audience-building best practice, so you’ll probably be able to estimate your audience’s loyalty based on the comments you read daily.

Once you feel that you’ve built a loyal following and have reached a stage in the business where it makes sense to monetize it, there are several different monetization strategies. Here are a few you might consider:

Start a business: This strategy is probably the most work, but it’s also the most profitable long-term monetization method. Ryan Reynolds’ business, Mint Mobile, is an excellent example of a billion-dollar business created mainly on the back of a single influencer’s audience.

Offer a course: This is one of the most popular audience monetization methods, and Ramit Sethi and Pay Flynn are excellent examples of content creators that have built multi-million dollar course businesses off of their audience.

Affiliate sales: There are always plenty of product businesses that need promotion, so you can partner with other brands and offer their products and services to your audience. When your audience purchases those products, you receive a commission. This is a great way to quickly generate revenue, but it isn’t as profitable or long-term focused as the previous two options. The Influencer Marketing Hub is an excellent example of a website that built its audience through SEO and monetizes primarily through affiliate sales.

Sponsored posts: This option is similar to affiliate sales, as you’ll be promoting other products or services to your audience, but instead of receiving a commission based on sales you generate, you’ll be paid a flat fee.

There isn’t a single best monetization strategy for everyone, and you can run multiple monetization strategies simultaneously.

The key to successfully monetizing your audience is taking a long-term approach and balancing the ratio of value to asks. You’ll lose credibility if you’re constantly promoting products and services, and your audience will eventually stop following you.

Start Building Your Personal Brand Today

As attention becomes more difficult to capture due to the increasing volume of content online, the value of attention will also continue to increase.

The good news is that as the volume of content increases (aided largely by the introduction of AI tools), the percentage of authentic content continues to decrease, so you can still stand out if you have a genuine, authentic message to share.

Your first few pieces of content probably won’t hit, but if you seek feedback, consistently hone your skills as a content creator and deliver an authentic message, you’ll eventually build a loyal following.
If you want to accelerate your skills as a content creator, consider joining a peer/mentorship group like the Copyblogger Academy. You can ask me (Tim) questions directly, and we also do regular collaborations with other top content creators like Amanda Natividad, Brian Clark, and Steph Smith. You’ll also have access to a group of supportive peers that you can lean on for advice, feedback, and inspiration.

By Tim Stoddart

Tim Stoddart is CEO of Copyblogger. In 2011, Tim founded Stodzy Internet Marketing. He currently lives in Nashville with his wife, his son, and their pitbull named Alice. Follow Tim on Twitter.

Sourced from copyblogger

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21 Proven Blogging Tips to Boost Engagement & Earnings for Long-Term Success

March 22, 2023 No Comments

By Steve Allen

A quick Google search reveals hundreds of blogging tips.

But which ones are most important?

And which ones should you follow, regardless of all the AI hype?

Well, in this post, we’re covering 21 tried and true blogging tips that just work.

They will help you:

Get more traffic
Build a loyal audience and community
Know what to write about
And earn more income.

Let’s dive in.

1. Start an Email List Early

Spencer Haws, the founder of Niche Pursuits, stated something surprising on a recent podcast episode.

Even though he grew the traffic to Niche Pursuits by 585% in 2022, he said he would still choose his email list over the blog if he had to choose one of them.

That’s a bold statement, but the truth is this: email converts!

This study shows the average ROI is $40 for every $1 spent on email marketing.

That’s why this first blogging tip is to start an email list early.

The question is:

How do you grow an email list in the early days?

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Create a lead magnet your readers can’t resist
Add an exit-intent popup to capture leads
Create a landing page and run $5 ads daily
Read our post on how to build an email list without a website

To get started with automating your email marketing efforts, check out AWeber.

2. Build a Community

Sure, it’s important to increase blog traffic, but building a community around your blog has additional benefits.

Similar to an email list, it provides a direct way for you to communicate with your readers.

And other like-minded individuals can get in on the conversation.

Additionally, it’ll help you build your email list faster and form a stronger connection with your audience.

To start your community, try some of these:

Get active on forums in your niche
Answer questions on Quora
Share your posts on social media sites
Start a Facebook group

When you provide a lot of value on these platforms and become their go-to source of information, you’ll grow your community independently from your blog.

3. Choose the Right Niche

When you first start your blog, it’s important to find your niche or you’ll get lost in a crowded space.

Some other benefits when choosing a niche include:

1. You’ll establish topical relevance faster
2. You’re seen more as an expert when your blog helps solve a specific problem
3. It helps you connect with your readers’ because they feel like you understand them

Big sites that cover a wide variety of topics can afford to do so because they have huge marketing budgets.

Choosing a smaller niche will help you grow your blog a lot quicker.

Why?

Because you can cover everything in a shorter amount of time, helping you gain some traction.

If you need help with this, read our post find your blog niche, or follow these quick guidelines:

Choose a topic you’re interested in or it’ll be harder to stay motivated
Competition is a good sign there’s money in the niche
Niche down in the beginning, then cover broader topics later
Find a niche with products you can review or content with commercial search intent

4. Get to Know Your Audience

Touching on the previous tips, you might notice a recurring theme.

And that is how involved you are in your niche and how well you know your audience.

If your content is quite generic because you don’t know the topics well, you won’t build a strong connection.

It’s totally fine to start a WordPress blog in a niche you know nothing about, but you’ll have better success the more you educate yourself about it.

On the flip side, knowing your audience because you live and breathe what you’re helping them with, will help you establish a much stronger connection.

5. Create a Reader Avatar

A reader avatar is an imaginary character you create that resembles your perfect reader.

This is an essential task you can do to help build rapport and connection with your audience.

Why?

This quote by psychologist Carl Rogers gives us a clue:

What is most personal is most universal.

Carl Rogers

This means that a person’s most personal problems are something we all struggle with.

When you define your blog avatar in fine detail, all of your readers will feel like you’re talking directly to them.

Start by listing things such as the basics; Name, age, gender, location, occupation, etc.

Then expand on your avatar with more details; Current challenges, goals, favorite movies, books, food, and so on.

Miles Beckler has a great post on this topic and even has a free template you can fill out.

6. Don’t Let SEO Take Over Your Life

Search Engine Optimization is an essential piece of the blogging puzzle, but try not to let it take over your life.

You could perform the perfect SEO strategy in the beginning, but it probably won’t get you far.

Let me explain.

In the early days, your blog doesn’t have any authority.

That’s because you don’t have enough content. Even 50 – 100 articles isn’t a lot of content these days.

What’s more important is publishing content every day, until you start seeing an upwards trajectory in Google Search Console.

When you’re seeing a consistent 100 visits per day, that’s a great sign things are working.

This is when you can work on more refined and advanced SEO tactics.

Be sure to read our post on how to increase organic traffic for more advanced strategies.

7. Do Perform Keyword Research

Even though a strict SEO regime isn’t vital in the beginning, it’s still important to do keyword research.

Keywords are the building blocks of your content and how Google understands it.

The last thing you want is to create tons of content that isn’t being searched by anyone.

Here are some very simple ways to perform keyword research.

Search for a term in Google and check out the People also search for section:

You can expand them to get even more results:

Reverse engineer your competitors’ keywords with a tool like Ubersuggest:

You’ll see some keywords the target site is ranking for, but you’ll need to create a free account for more results.

Find hundreds of keywords with Keywordtool.io. If you want to see the volumes, you need to upgrade.

Another excellent tool for a new blog is Keywords Everywhere:

You purchase some credits, and it shows the keyword volumes everywhere in your browser.

As long as you know people are searching the content you post, the search volumes aren’t so important.

Just stick to lower volumes in the beginning, with a few high-volume keywords sprinkled in.

8. Follow Google’s Guidelines

With so many so-called SEO experts around, it can be hard to know which advice to follow.

Some will say you need a high word count per article, others rely solely on backlinks, and others jump on the newest trend such as AI writing tools.

How do you cut through all the noise?

You go to the source and that is Google.

If your most valuable traffic source is organic search, then it’s wise to know what their Google’s guidelines are.

Here are a few insights to keep you in the loop.

A great place to start is with their SEO Fundamentals. It starts with the basics of how to get your site on Google and how Google works, to in-depth tips on how to create helpful content.

Their crawling and indexing section covers all the technical side of things. This is the place to go if you want to know the difference between Sitemaps and robots.txt.

Lastly, Google blog is a good place to check now and then. They often release important updates, including this one on the recent changes to E-A-T.

9. Strategy vs Quality Content

Imagine this:

Every post on your blog is of the highest quality, but they don’t relate to each other.

Here’s the deal: successful blogging guides the reader from one post to another, teaching them how to make positive changes in their life.

Eventually, they’ve gotten so much value from your articles, they’re inspired to buy the thing you recommend. Or sign up to your email list, or buy your course.

To do this, you need a strategy.

A blog content strategy is where you plan out multiple posts that interlink with each other for optimum impact.

The purpose of effective content marketing is to raise the awareness of your readers. Awareness of their problems and what’s causing them.

When you can shift the perspective of your reader through strategic content, you’ll see substantial progress with your blog.

10. Build Internal Links

In the last blogging tip, I mentioned internal linking articles.

This is important for many reasons:

It’s how an effective content strategy helps guide your readers
It can also help keep people on your blog for longer
People will see you as an expert when you link to multiple posts
It builds topical authority in your niche, which helps your blog rank
Your blog can rank faster with more content and internal links

As you can see, internal links provide a ton of benefits.

In fact, it’s what helped Rob Scheerbath go from zero to 33,000 pageviews in 8 months.

Link Whisper is the WordPress plugin created by Spencer Haws. It helps you create internal links on autopilot.

You can get Link Whisper here.

11. Your Blog is a Business

If you want to take your blog seriously, then you need to treat it as a business.

You can’t just load up a WordPress site and post a few articles, hoping it’ll become an overnight success.

The blogging business model needs a few ingredients to make it work.

The first step is to define how you’ll monetize your blog. This could be through affiliate marketing or by displaying ads with Ezoic.

Or maybe you want to eventually sell a digital product or service.

Either way, knowing how you’ll monetize will help you define the next step, which is knowing the types of content to create.

For affiliate marketing, you’ll want to create reviews, product comparisons, and how-to posts to support these articles.

Display ad blogs work best with question-related articles, list posts, or recipe posts.

Or if you’re selling your own products or service, case studies and interviews work well for this type of monetization.

Lastly, you’ll need to follow a system to produce content consistently. The best way to do that is by using a blog content calendar.

When you treat your blog as a business, know the main pieces of the puzzle, and produce content consistently, you’ll find it hard to fail.

12. Use Copywriting Frameworks

Copywriting frameworks are powerful ways to structure words that motivate readers to take action.

You commonly see these frameworks used in sales copy, landing pages, Facebook ads, or social media posts.

And you can bake these into your blog posts to create highly engaging content.

Some popular copywriting frameworks include:

AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)
PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution)
BAB (Before, After, Bridge)

Not only do these frameworks grab your readers’ attention and keep them engaged, but they also help you organize your ideas and identify your target audience.

For example:

Let’s say you want to write a post about the benefits of a morning routine.

You could use the AIDA framework to engage the reader in your blog post and promote an online course at the end.

Because these frameworks use psychological principles, it makes it super easy for people to follow and it improves conversion rates.

13. Track Things to Improve

This blogging tip is essential if you want to make consistent progress with your blog.

There are key engagement metrics that you need to track to know if your blog is performing well.

Without this knowledge, you’ll never know what’s working and what isn’t.

In the beginning, it’s best to install the tracking and ignore it until you’ve posted enough content to see some traction.

A good rule of thumb is anywhere between 50-100 posts or when your blog starts getting 200+ visits per day.

Once you hit this threshold, you’ll want to keep posting content and monitor your numbers every month.

The most important numbers to track are:

Impressions and Clicks in Google Search Console – An improvement in these metrics will tell you your content is being found and ranked in Google. And that people click the results.
Pageviews and Average Engagement Time in Google Analytics – These metrics will help you see which content is performing best so that you can double down on them. You can also improve the content that isn’t doing so well and see if it makes an overall improvement.

14. Promote Your Blog

To increase the exposure of your blog posts, blog promotion is a great practice to adopt.

Relying solely on SEO traffic isn’t as effective.

What you need is a social media platform to promote your content.

This can be done in many ways.

For example, re-purposing your blog posts on social media is a good place to start.

Also, emailing your list when you publish new content will bring your blog more exposure.

Lastly, let other bloggers know you’ve linked to them. This is a great way to get your blog noticed by other experts in your niche.

And they might even start linking to your site in the future.

15. Be Consistent

Being consistent is possibly one of the most valuable skills to develop as a content creator.

Most people’s success comes from doing small things every day over the years, rather than aimless luck.

The issue with achieving success randomly or by luck is that it isn’t repeatable.

To get consistent success with your blog, you need to create systems that drive predictable results.

The easiest way to do that is to create big goals and break them down into tiny actions.

Then repeat these actions every day until you see positive results.

16. Update Old Blog Posts

This is a blogging tip that many people overlook.

Sure, some posts will perform better than others, but this doesn’t mean you have to completely abandon old content.

In many cases, underperforming content can be reworked from a different angle.

Or you can add more value to the post by adding more actionable steps.

Even content that once performed well might have gotten stale in recent months.

You can give these posts a new lease of life by adding images, internal links, or reformatting the text.

17. Read More Books

If you want your blog to stand out from the crowd, read more books.

What many bloggers do is share what they’ve learned from other bloggers or from content that is freely available on the internet.

The problem with this approach is that most blogs are eventually talking about the same things, with little originality.

To share a completely different perspective, you need new material.

And reading books will spark way more creativity, and you’ll find it easier to write content.

18. Diversify Income

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

And this goes for the income streams on your blog.

In the early days, it might be wise to focus on one revenue source so you stay focused.

But when you’re getting consistent traffic, you want to branch out.

So, if you started with affiliate marketing and you’re getting a decent amount of traffic, why not add display ads?

And if you’re doing both of these, how about offering a service or even coaching?

There are tons of ways to diversify income, read our post how do bloggers make money online to find out more.

19. Done is Better Than Perfect

Nothing is perfect in life. No matter how good you get, someone else can overtake you.

The point in following these blogging tips isn’t to reach perfection, only to help you improve and make progress.

It is far more effective to publish 100 mediocre articles in one year than it is to publish 12 perfect ones.

Why?

Because you will learn so much from publishing more content, even if they aren’t perfect.

With more content, you’ll start to see how Google works, and you’ll get an idea of which articles work best for you.

You’ll also develop the habits you need to become more consistent. And you’ll appreciate the process instead of trying to chase the next shiny object.

Check out what happened when Spencer published 1,000 posts in 12 months…

20. Make Posts Look Pretty

What is guaranteed to turn people away from your blog?

Ugly formatting, big walls of text, and no images.

That’s right, to keep people engaged with your content, you need to spice things up a little.

For best practices, follow these quick and simple guidelines:

Use short 1-2 sentence paragraphs
Break up text with subheadings, images, and bullet points
Highlight important text with bold and italic font
Add quotes or info boxes to grab readers’ attention

Try a combination of these and stick to the same theme throughout your blog. That way, people will know what to expect.

21. Add a Mixture of Content Types

Just like the last tip, different content types are essential for a highly engaged audience.

A variety of content types will generate more repeat visitors and can even help you rank better in search engines.

The most common types of blog content are:

How to’s
Product reviews
Listicles
Question posts
The ultimate guide

Adding different content types will make your blog more interesting and will stop you from getting bored.

Conclusion

There you have it. These 21 blogging tips will turn you into an expert blogger in record time.

Our advice is to start with a few tips and practice them multiple times.

Then when you develop the skill, your confidence will rise, and you’ll feel more comfortable trying more advanced tips.

Good luck.

By Steve Allen

Steve Allen is a niche site builder, writer, and all-around WordPress wizard. He enjoys personal development, entrepreneurship, double espressos, and making things work better than they did before.

Sourced from Niche Pursuits

In News

How to Write Blogs your Clients will Actually Read

January 20, 2023 No Comments

By Nikola Baldikov

Blogging is the best strategy when marketing your products or services to a niche audience for whom you customize your content. As discussed, some flawless writing skills exist to captivate such audiences and improve your website visibility.

4 Ways to Write Blogs your Clients will Read

Millions of blogs with daily content releases reach the target audiences intending to relay particular information daily. However, such blogs face glaring setbacks evident in the competition from similar bloggers in the same niches offering superior content. It is, therefore, commonplace to find them struggling to fight for a share of the scarce attention afforded by the audience.

We outline strategies one can employ to emerge as the leading source of readable content clients want to see on their screens. But first, we examine a client’s thought process from the time they see a blog post to the time they finish reading.

What is a Client’s Thought Process when Encountering Blogs?

Many readers go through the ‘AIDA’ experience whenever they encounter a blog touching on a particular topic. The acronym stands for ‘attention,’ ‘interest,’ ‘desire,’ and ‘action.’ These four steps in the prospect’s mind define the major attack points you can use to make your audience glued to your content. Let’s break each one down individually:

Attention: the prospect comes across a blog whose headline captures the attention of their gaze.
Interest: the individual notices relatable words or phrases that interest them.
Desire: the internet user becomes captivated by the blog’s content, making them read through the article.
Action: the client follows through with the blog’s call-to-action elements, effectively fulfilling the blogger’s desire.

Despite the millions of blogs online users encounter, adherence to the blogging best practice requirements will take your readers through these steps. Understanding how to summon your writing prowess for each of the four pieces of the puzzle to fall in place is essential. The following pointers will help impose your content onto the audience without appearing needy and boring:

How to grab the attention of the audience

Simple: People like what they see. If you want to captivate an audience, the question is, “what will the clients think when they scan the article?”

Simply put, audiences want to encounter an easily scannable blog; an easy read is always welcome. This is also crucial when you’re starting a blog – you need to get it right from the get-go, so you don’t end up having to fix certain issues once your blog starts growing.

The following details will help you better your chances of making the blog easy to scan:

Create a consistent article structure

The structure of your piece will make you the best-read blog in no time. The audience will sense careful organization in your work, making it easy to pick out the critical parts quickly. People have short attention spans when on their devices because there are other distractions like messages, calls, and phone notifications. Additionally, they have a constant urge to visit social media sites and see what is happening worldwide. Social media has become an obsession for many people, and social media listening is one way to track this activity.

However, creating blogs with simple formats will make them less anxious to look away because they can quickly scan captivating parts of your content. You can consider these points when designing your blog outline:

Use titles, subtitles, headings, and subheadings to break your content into small readable parts. The user can quickly identify the content under each section without reading everything there.
Write brief and straightforward sentences. Leave out any fluff which will make your sentences overly lengthy and tedious.
Write short paragraphs with up to five short sentences. Long sentences will discourage your readers and divert their attention to other less stressful content.
Use numbered lists to break down the paragraphs and highlight important points. You can alternate with bullet points for diversity.

Use appropriate images

Images can capture user attention better than words can manage. Prospects scanning your pieces notice the imagery and graphics in your article before they notice the detail of the terms. However, it is essential to use images appropriate to the context of your article content to avoid misleading readers. Images also have a few rules of best practice, including:

Ensure the pictures are clear and contain insights into the textual content.
Always label the images using descriptive words for instant context creation.
Use alt text when uploading images to your blogs to make them appear in search results when users type in the keywords.
Always indicate image sources to avoid copyright infringement reports that will limit visibility.

Relevant topic headlines

Your titles and headings must contain relevant topic keywords. Users will quickly identify and appreciate the relevance of your headlines to what they desire to read.

How to write content that captures user interest

After capturing the audience’s attention, the second point of focus is to cultivate their interest in reading through your articles. Here, you must be keen on the detail of the text in the body, which will inform the users’ interest. Every reader is looking for a few indicators of an exciting piece, as detailed below.

Use simple language

Simplicity, as stated, is the best way to captivate readers. The people going through your blog want to get the scope of your writing immediately after they begin going through your work. Please ensure the words are simple to understand without needing to digest or refer to other sources to understand meanings.

The flow of the story should also be flawless, with transitions between sentences and paragraphs allowing for instant follow-up. Avoid using jargon that will put off the audience by confusing them without revealing the actual context of your content.

Use authoritative phrases

Be simple but authoritative with your writing if you must keep readers interested in your work. They must know that you understand your facts and can relay the same without appearing uninformed. It would help to employ scientific, niche-specific, and descriptive language whenever needed to stir your readers’ minds.

Avoid overcomplicating things using such words and phrases with reasonable breaks between instances. You can use Google to identify the correct use of some word constructions concerning the topic.

Be keen on grammar

Grammar is key in keeping audiences hooked on your piece long enough to follow your drift. Many readers will instantly close your blog post and find other relevant material if they encounter regular mistakes in your work.

Material that strictly adheres to grammar rules indicates professionalism which people admire and respect. The readers will readily exhaust the entirety of your piece if they see consistent, grammatically correct sentences and phrases. You can use free or subscription-based tools to check and correct any grammar issues. Examples include Grammarly, QuillBot, etc.

How to make the audience desire to read your pieces

Capturing the audience’s desire means you are deeper into the client’s mind with your blog post. Many writers fail to reach this level of client engagement because the two previous steps contain glaring mistakes that discourage readership. However, if you make it this far, the rest is almost child’s play: the reader is already willing to go all the way. Read on to learn how.

The following aspects will be forthcoming in shifting client desire in your favor:

Employ a conversational tone

A blog is an educative and informative piece aimed at a large audience accessing your website at convenience. Therefore, ensure your material engages as if in conversation with an eager student searching for knowledge. Tailor your content to make the audience appreciate your knowledge base and yearn to read on for more.

The best way is to use language that implores them to continue reading to discover what you have in store. You should be convincing and create a vocabulary that reflects a tone people are comfortable reading. Be sure to employ the active voice instead of the passive one because the audience will quickly see interest.

Understand your niche

The subject and tone of your article rely on the topic you are covering. Your delivery will also depend on understanding the niche you decide to cover with the content. Consequently, it is necessary to research extensively to know what, why, and for who you write. The niche also defines the characteristics of the audience your work targets. The following questions will help you understand the place and define the topic and tone of the content:

What content am I advertising? It enables you to define the nature of your product or service.

Who is the target audience? It helps define the characteristics of your audience. Your tone must align with the people reading your work. Are they adults? Children? Women? Men?

Why am I advertising this content? The point defines the solutions you are offering to the audience. It helps you figure out the type of language suitable for the context.

Use real-life examples

Readers will always relate to real-life situations which reflect on their lives or provide relatable contexts. Ensure to include the most relatable examples and case studies in your blog if you address particular product details. For example, when advertising a product, you can quote previous situations where it was helpful to a different audience. Your audience will quickly develop a connection to the item if they have a relatable problem.

Use statistics to back your statements.

Statistics are always helpful when you want to display your knowledge about the effectiveness and reliability of a product or service. The end game is to make the readers interested in understanding the implications of a service or product based on quoted metrics. Such insights also help in decision-making steps if readers want to take action. Thus, always provide authoritative links to said statistics so that they can confirm the truth of your words. They will be willing to try out the item on offer after that.

State and answer FAQs

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) offer the perfect chance to address additional client concerns. The readers will see the questions touching on relatable topics and quickly read on to see how you responded. They will then get the desire to discover more about your writings and what you offer outside the blog, cementing the purchase intent.

How to make the audience take action

The best way to ensure that your readers take action after exhausting the detail of your written content is to tell them how. At this point, readers already understand your intention, your solutions, and the benefits they stand to gain. Therefore, you must direct their next steps so they can follow up to buy, receive updates, or discover more content. The following call-to-action (CAT) moves are ideal:

Ask the reader to engage with the blog post.

You can implement various CAT buttons on your page to direct the client to engage with the blog post as desired. First, you can have buttons for sharing, commenting, and liking your post after reading its entirety. It helps expose the content to a bigger audience since the individual helps spread it to friends and followers.

Ask the audience for feedback.

You can ask the audience to give feedback about the post or make suggestions about future posts. Here, you get to understand their perspective of the blog post or needs you did not address. It helps you prepare your following content.

Ask the prospect to subscribe.

You can request the prospect to click and subscribe to your content notifications for future posts. Here, subscribers indicate serious interest and become targets for new content before everyone else gets access.

Remarks

The piece explores the different strategies that can strengthen your reach by enabling optimal engagements on your blogs. The avenues explored ensure audience satisfaction by ensuring that your content reflects positively on the audience. You will find that the ideas are simple yet effective in helping build a brand with loyal readers who follow your work religiously. The trick is to keep them engaged every step of the way through content that reveals your attention to their needs.

Images, sentence structures, keywords, tone, and grammar are some pointers that will inform audience interest. However, the article explains their application in a way that underscores the effort by successful bloggers to win over a loyal audience. Careful application of the details herein opens your blog to new followers who will make you a popular destination in your niche.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Suzy Hazelwood; Pexels; Thank you!

By Nikola Baldikov

I am a founder of InBound Blogging, specializing in SEO, content, and outreach strategies.

Sourced from readwrite

In News

How to start a blog: tips to make yours successful and profitable

January 20, 2023 No Comments

Sourced from The Guardian

From the benefits of choosing a niche subject to building a community and bringing in income

Focus on your niche

If you haven’t already chosen a blog topic, thinking about your hobbies, passions and personal experiences is a good starting point.

Pamela Rae-Welsh, the creative director at the online visibility specialist Worsley Creative, says: “With so much online content, you’ll need to carve out a unique purpose that your blog will serve. For example, rather than creating a general cooking and recipe blog, consider a specific niche, such as Italian-inspired vegetarian cooking.”

Whatever your subject, also think about what you are hoping to achieve to refine your blog’s aim. For example, that might be to help people, make them laugh or teach them something.

Choose your blog name

Once you have decided on your subject, you need a blog name. Bear in mind that your blog and domain name should be the same, and ideally one that will stand out from the crowd.

It could be relevant to your subject but it doesn’t have to be. Lynn Beattie, a personal finance expert and the founder of Mrs MummyPenny, says: “You simply need it to be as short as possible, and memorable, so it could be a specific word, phrase or play on words.” You could spark some ideas by using the Google keyword planner and the Wordtracker keyword tool to search for the terms you might write about.

Overhead image of a female blogger writing on the laptop

The name of your blog does not have to be relevant to the subject. Photograph: lechatnoir/Getty Images

However, make sure your name isn’t already taken, so search across web domains and social media. You can search and buy your domain through different registrars such as GoDaddy and 123 Reg. See if you can buy the .com and .co.uk extensions.

Pick your platform

You will also need to pick a blogging platform that you will use to design and write your blogposts and publish online. There are several to choose from, including WordPress, Typepad, Blogger and Tumblr.

WordPress claims to be the world’s most popular platform, and is great for beginners who are looking for a simple site that enables them to build a blog within minutes. There are plenty of YouTube tutorials that can help you get set up. You can then work on personalising your blog.

Blogging platforms include Tumblr, WordPress, Typepad and Blogger. Photograph: NetPhotos/Alamy

Design your blog

Choosing your design theme is important because first impressions count. Francesca Henry favours WordPress for her money-saving blog the Money Fox. She says: “You can buy some beautiful and functional themes from about £50 to £150, and get free plug-ins that help you do loads of things such as create a standalone homepage.”

A simple theme is usually best, while making your blog as user-friendly as possible, including a call to action to let your readers know where they can find you, with links to Twitter and Instagram, for example. You could also get a professional logo designed to complete your brand, or work on one yourself.

Find your audience

Go where your readers are. This could be on specific Facebook groups, for example, TikTok, Instagram or LinkedIn. Follow blogs on similar subjects, start conversations and tweet your posts.

Georgina Durrant runs the SEN Resources Blog, which is for parents and teachers of children with special educational needs and disabilities. “The blog now has more than 30,000 social media followers but it took a lot of regular, consistent posting of blogposts on my site, as well as posts on social media, and a lot more work than I initially expected to get there,” she says.

“You don’t get very far just sharing links. It’s about building a community around the blog. My following increased when I joined in and started conversations on social media. The readership of my blog kept on increasing as the community grew.”

You could add a YouTube channel to your blog. Photograph: Éric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images

Add other channels

There will be people who prefer to listen or watch rather than read, so you could add a YouTube channel or podcast to your blog. Marie Brown, a blogger at Beyond the Kitchen Table, which builds websites for small businesses, also has a podcast called the Website Coach. She says: “A podcast is a great way to market your blog, and featuring as a guest on other people’s podcasts is another option.”

She matches her podcast and blog topics. “You can either use the podcast transcript as the basis of the blog or, as I do, write the blogpost and use this as the outline for the podcast episode. I link the blogpost in the show notes to the podcast episode,” she says.

Keep building your blog

You will want to focus on getting your brand known, producing content and sharing your expertise before potentially turning a profit. Networking to build up backlinks will ultimately help you to monetise your blog, too.

Rae-Welsh says: “Google is looking for unique, relevant and trustworthy content to rank in the search engines – the more you add relevant and quality content, the more traffic you will get, which will give you more opportunity to monetise.”

There are free tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics that will help you create content that will be seen by search engines. “But it’s worth investing in learning SEO [search engine optimisation] properly if you want to make your blog a success,” Rae-Welsh adds.

Make a profit

There are various ways to make money from your blog. For example, firms that are relevant to your blog’s subject may want to buy some space and advertise their services using a box or banner. You may also want to consider approaching a particular brand to collaborate and produce a specific campaign on a subject you are passionate about.

You can also make money from sponsored links, where advertisers pay bloggers to publish a post that includes a link to their website. But you will need to ensure you make it clear that the post is sponsored.

Alternatively, there is affiliate marketing, where links are placed into your posts or on your page that direct readers to a website selling something. You will earn a commission on any sales. You can find companies looking to place affiliate links on sites such as Tradedoubler and Amazon Associates.

Beattie adds: “There are so many other ways a blogger can make money, such as writing for brands, product sales, public speaking and social media advertising. The key is getting a well-diversified income stream.”

Feature Image Credit: Illustration: Jamie Wignall

Sourced from The Guardian

In News

11 Steps to Help You Start Your Blogging Career

August 4, 2022 No Comments

By Saffrom Clacy

Are you interested in starting a blogging career and making money from it? Here are the steps you need to take.

Have you wanted to build a profitable blog, but don’t have a clue where to start? There’s no need to search tirelessly for tutorials.

With the right steps in mind, you can be on your way to having a blog that will showcase not only your online presence, but work effectively as an additional income stream.

1. Choose a Niche

This can feel like the most difficult part of the blogging process, but it’s important to establish a niche. It’s common to think that specializing in many things can be more appealing to others, but that’s not always the case. Focusing on a smaller space will draw in audiences who seek specific services.

Do you know everything about building computers? Use that as your niche. For example, an e-commerce copywriter writes for online stores, so this makes them experts in their field. You could have a technology niche such as reviewing computer graphics cards, Chromebooks, or Apple iPhones.

Think carefully about your primary focus; it can determine how many people want to find you, what brands will reach out to you, and how much you can make overall.

2. Research a Reliable Platform

What platforms are best for blogging? When publishing your blog, you want to use a reliable platform with a system that is easy to use, works well with the type of blog you want, and is in line with your budget. If you’re looking for great levels of customization, WordPress is perfect for your needs. There are hundreds of website templates you can play around with.

Squarespace is useful for visual blogs, such as photography, art, or design niches. LinkedIn is another alternative if you want to go the professional route and connect with people in your desired industry. However, if you’re a complete beginner when it comes to blogging or general website building, Wix may be a better choice. Here’s how to build a unique website without coding using Wix.

3. Customize Your Website

Although basic coding knowledge is really helpful, it’s not necessary for building a blog. After signing up for a website builder, choose a template you feel comfortable starting with. You can use a variety of pre-made templates to change existing features and make them your own.

Customize your blog by adding a homepage or an “About You” page with a photo of yourself, a contact page, so people can reach out to you, and of course, a homepage to start blogging. It doesn’t need to be perfect! What matters is that you’ve started piecing it together. However, if you’re struggling with this process, feel free to reach out to a website designer.

4. Publish Your First Post

Writing a blog post for the first time may seem intimidating, but the most important thing is to just get started. Think about what kind of blog topics would work well for your blog; would you like to write guides, written tutorials, recipes, lists, reviews, industry news, current events related to your niche, or just anything you find interesting?

How do you write your blog once you’ve come up with an awesome idea? First, consider what kind of heading will entice someone to read your blog; will it be witty, serious, or state a useful statistic? Secondly, write the way you would talk. Putting your voice and personality into a blog post will not only make it more genuine to readers, but will feel more natural to you.

Thirdly, keep in mind the way you’re laying out your piece; what kind of fonts do you want to use, and are you sticking to the standard US spelling style? Depending on your audience, the formatting will be very different.

5. Create High-Quality Images

Do you click on a YouTube video simply due to the colorful image alone? With blogs, visuals are very important to catching interest. A good quality image can decide whether somebody wants to read through a piece, so you want to make sure it’s high quality.

Think about the standard sizing for your feature images, as well as the photos you’ll use in a blog post. These should be clear, stretched to a pleasing size, and not blurry. Canva is always a great option here. If you’re feeling creative, you can use GIFs too.

6. Maintain Your Website

Have you ever clicked away from a website due to an unexpected page error? Keeping tabs on how your blog is running will determine how many people are viewing or staying on your site. Your site should be running effectively, have no broken links, be updated accordingly, and always be user-friendly.

If you aren’t very tech-savvy, make sure you hire someone who can do the technical work for you. An optimized website is something that always needs to be checked.

7. Take Advantage of SEO

Blog posts may be the main attraction of your website, but incorporating SEO is the main reason behind how you gain clicks, readers, and potential followers. Research the most-used keywords on Google with an SEO tool such as SurferSEO, the latest and popular trends related to your topic, and compare your posts to other blogs that rank higher on Google.

These SEO strategies, over time, can place you higher in search engines. Still confused? Check out some tools that will help you write the best blog titles.

8. Always Network

Networking with professionals within your niche is another useful resource as it can be the main driving force for your blog. Grow your online presence by joining relevant Facebook groups or blogging networks, attending courses to expand on your skills, and connecting with people on LinkedIn who share similar values.

Take note of how to network like a pro. This can be the key to you finding the next follower, or having people refer their audience to your site. It’s a win-win scenario, and it works.

9. Build an Email List

Using an email marketing platform such as MailerLite can do a lot for your blog. An email list is a collection of contact information from people who have signed up and opted to receive emails from you. However, building a reliable email list of clients and followers can take time. It isn’t about the quantity of data added to your list, but the amount of loyalty you have. You don’t want to spam inboxes!

How often are your emails being opened? Are people scanning, or clicking links to your blog pages? Are people sharing your blogs? By tracking these analytics, researching, and being a bit more creative, your email list will be one to rely on. If you’re new to email marketing, have a look at the ways HubSpot can benefit your marketing career. Using this program is a great way to get started.

10. Learn Affiliate Marketing

With affiliate marketing, businesses pay you if your blog refers people to their website or products, so having ads on the sides of your blog isn’t always a bad thing if it benefits both parties.

Not only is affiliate marketing helpful in getting brands and companies to notice you, but you can easily make a few cents per click. If you’re not really sure where to begin this process, there are a range of online resources.

11. Keep Track of Analytics Data

With any blog or website, keeping track of your analytics data is incredibly important to help you become profitable over time. Checking analytics daily will help you figure out where your viewers are coming from geographically, whether you’re being found organically or through social media, information on what keywords are being used on Google in relevance to your blog, and more. This will ultimately boost your traffic.

Start Your Blogging Journey Today

If you’ve been considering starting up a blog, now is the best time to start. Online spaces such as blogging are only growing more and more, and experts in their niche of choice are always appreciated. Creating a successful site definitely takes patience and dedication, but always trust the blogging process. Now you can start your first draft!

By Saffrom Clacy

Sourced from MUO

blogging

How long should a blog post be?

What is the ideal blog post length?

Remember that blog post length is not a ranking factor

What does google say about blog post length?

How to find a keyword’s optimal blog post length

On-page optimization tools

Use your own knowledge of your target audience

Create topic clusters on your website

Final thoughts

By Lyn Wildwood

Sourced from bloggingwizard

Blogging is still one of the best opportunities to make money online as you can build an engaged audience and then sell products, services, or sponsorships.

1. Define A Specific Niche

2. Engage With Your Target Audience

3. Select Relevant Low Difficulty Keywords

4. Deliver The Most Effective Advice

5. Package Your Advice As Simply As Possible

6. Optimize For Scannability

7. Follow SEO Best Practices

8. Collaborate With Influencers

9. Establish A Consistent Content Calendar

10. Establish A Content Repurposing Strategy

11. Measure Progress And Seek Feedback

Start Your Blog Today

By Megan Mahoney

Sourced from copyblogger

Sponsored Tweets

Affiliate Marketing

Blogging

E-Books

By Karen Doyle

Sourced from GOBankingRates

Growing an audience on a social media platform is essential for bloggers. So should you get started on Instagram? Or is Pinterest the better option?

Monthly Active Users

Learning Curve

Growing Your Account

Pinterest

Instagram

Content Diversification Options

Instagram

Pinterest

Character Limits

Adding Links to Specific Posts

Will You Choose Instagram or Pinterest?

By Danny Maiorca

Sourced from MUO

Put ads on your blog.

Sell a service.

Affiliate marketing.

Doing sponsored product reviews.

Here is to go where the money is.

Build an email list

writing on Medium and earning money.

By Dinistan Ajay

Sourced from Medium

Step 1: Select a Topic, Medium, and Angle

Example #1: Justin Rowe

Example #2: Sam Parr and Shaan Puri

Example #3: Caleb Simpson

Step 2: Create Content and Publish Regularly

Step 3: Partner with Existing Creators

Step 4: Adopt an Omni Channel Approach

Step 5: Double Down On What’s Working

Bonus: Consider Different Monetization Strategies

Start Building Your Personal Brand Today

Reader Interactions

By Tim Stoddart

Sourced from copyblogger

1. Start an Email List Early

2. Build a Community

3. Choose the Right Niche

4. Get to Know Your Audience

5. Create a Reader Avatar

6. Don’t Let SEO Take Over Your Life

7. Do Perform Keyword Research

8. Follow Google’s Guidelines

9. Strategy vs Quality Content

10. Build Internal Links

11. Your Blog is a Business