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11 Blogging Tips For Beginners To Succeed In 2024

June 27, 2024 No Comments

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

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 Stunning Blog Posts That’ll Drive Massive Traffic to Your Website

May 25, 2018 No Comments

By Moss Clement

With over 160 million blogs on the internet today, the need for stunning blog posts has never been more demanding. WHY?

Because every blogger want to stand out as the best, and in order for you to achieve that, you need to create stunning blog content frequently.

Many bloggers have been able to achieve that by creating epic blog posts that stands out from the crowd on a consistent basis, there-by walking tall as experts and influencers in their respective fields.

The blog posts they create has helped them establish a consistent brand message across all channels.

Question is;

How can I create remarkable blog content that will drive tons of traffic to your website?

In this post, you’re going to discover the best strategies that’ll help you to consistently create fascinating blog posts that will drive more traffic to your blog or website.

#• Write useful & informative content

The idea of writing useful blog post is to ensure you that you’re teaching and educating your audience, that’s the primary reason you setup a blog in the first place.

Your audience are always searching for answers or information to help solve their problems. Give them the information they’re seeking – provide them with useful content that will add value to their lives, thereby solve their problems.

That’s why I will always love this quote:

“People don’t care about your business, they care about their problems. Be the solution that they’re looking for.” – Melonie Dodaro

Here’s what Darren Rowse of Problogger also said about writing useful blog post:

“Unless a blog post is useful on some level I don’t think it’s worth publishing.” -Darren Rowse

With that said, try to figure out how useful your content will be to your readership. Thus, before creating content, take time to ponder over such questions as:

Will my post be useful to my readers?
Are my readers going to find this article valuable?
Will my post educate my readers?

These and many other questions are important in helping you write blog posts that are useful and drives tons of traffic.

#• Write in your unique voice

On WordPress alone, more than 79.2 million posts are published each month, which makes it a lot easier for your content to disappear in the noise.

So, it is important that you write in a unique voice, as it will help you stand out from the crowd.

Many Bloggers have successfully maintain consistency across all channels with their respective unique voice or style of writing.

People like Virginia Bautista, Lisa Sicard, Ryan Biddulph, Ravi Chahar, Lorraine Reguly, Cori Ramos, Arfa Nazeer, Janice Wald, Jane Sheeba, Susan Valez, to mention a few.

These experts have successfully set themselves apart from the crowd by their unique way of writing – their unique voice.

How can you write in a unique voice?

To write in your unique voice, simply learn from the examples of pro-bloggers in your niche and write what comes naturally to you.

Choose a niche topic you’re so fun of and have a passion for. This will help you bring out the juices in you.

But please, when choosing a topic you’re passionate about, try as well to keep a balance with choosing a niche you have a passion for and a profitable niche, because you’re going to pay the bills.

#• Be practical

The concept of creating contents that are practical is to help your readers take action, or help them put to practice the information they’re getting from your blog.

Your blog post should be written in ways that your readers and prospective customers can easily apply it to themselves and get positive results.

In this way, your readers will identify you as an expert in your field. So, be sure to create quality and actionable content by being practical in your writing.

Here is a tip to help you; study your readers and find out the issues they’re trying to solve, then offer a solution(s) by creating content around the issues they have.

For example, I read a post on Janice Wald’s blog about “4 Reasons You Are in Danger of Losing Organic Search Traffic.”

I also read the comments. One commenter asked Janice if she could write an article on how to regain your lost traffic. See screenshot.

This is a pain problem that must be addressed. Many lose traffic and wouldn’t know why and how to regain their traffic. So, writing in this way will get you more traction and social shares.

#• Create powerful headlines

I’ve written well enough articles about writing catchy headlines for your blog posts.

This is essential because an irresistible headline is a surefire way to attract clicks to your post. It urges your readers and moves them to click and read your content.

A statistics by Copyblogger shows that on average, “80% of blog visitors will read your headline, but only 20% of those will read the rest of your post.”

In other words, it means that while everybody might see your headline, not all of them will actually click to read your post.

Further studies revealed that an irresistible headline can generate as much as 500℅ more pageview.

With that said, spend reasonable time crafting the best headline that will attract readers to your blog.

Find here the best strategies to craft irresistible headlines every time.

You can as well use CoSchedule Headline Analyzer tool to help you craft catchy headlines.

#• Craft compelling intro

Just as a remarkable headline is a surefire way to get readers for your blog content, a compelling intro is equally important because it gives your readers heads-up to continue reading.

That is why I love this quote below:

The first sentence of your book is to convince readers that they have to read the second. – Simonoff Xuan

In other words, let the intro of your blog post convince readers that they have to read the whole content.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion. – Jhumpa Lahiri

This involves clear thinking on your part.

For example, if your headline is a promise-driven or benefit-driven headline, let your intro follow in like manner.

In this way, your readers will want to digest the whole article to get the benefits, which will result in more engagement and massive traffic.

#• Write to a Particular audience

A remarkable blog content can get the highest traction when tailored to the needs of a particular audience.

For example, let’s assume you already know your target audience – their wants and needs, and as you create your blog post, you channel your content to the needs of this particular audience.

What will happen when you use the right keywords in your content?

You will be driving endless traffic to your website, because your content is tailored to a particular reader and addresses his needs.

So, before creating content, try to find out who your readers are, and pinpoint their needs and problems as well.

Wrapping Up

It is sometimes difficult to write a unique blog post that will stand out from the crowd.

But with practice and consistency, you can work your way up as an expert and create remarkable content on a regular basis.

However, how you will achieve this kind of success over time may be slightly different because every blogger has his own unique style of writing.

But if you correctly apply these basic blogging principles, you will be able to consistently create compelling blog posts that will drive massive traffic to your website.

This article originally appeared on https://www.mossmedia.biz

Feature Image credit: Pexels

About The author

Moss Clement is a blogger and freelance writer. He delivers high-quality, evergreen content to clients and businesses via blog post writing, article writing, ghostwriting and other writing services, etc.

Connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and Facebook.

By Moss Clement

Sourced from The Writing Cooperative

In News

24 Blogging tips to drive traffic to your blog posts

December 12, 2016 No Comments

Sourced from niume.

The most challenging aspect of creating your blog pieces is attracting a large audience and building a strong network of active and engaged readers.

This week, we want to share our experience on how to effectively increase traffic to your posts so that you not only enjoy blogging on Niume, but also make a profit from your own work.

We’ve created a general guideline that covers a range of different methods you need to get familiar with in order to maximise the productivity of your work and attract the desired audience. Have a look:

Keeping the standard of your posts high

1. Plan your post, create a clear structure

Before you start typing all you want to say, spend a minute coming up with a plan and a clear structure for your post. Aim for a compelling text that is easy to read.

Pick a smart and catchy title! Your headline gets read more than anything else on your post. In fact, 80% of people will read your title but only 20% of them will read the rest. The main goal of your headline is to grab attention so people feel compelled to read your opening. Write a short introduction to give your readers a hint of what they’re about to get into. Divide your main text into paragraphs and spread it over multiple pages to avoid exhausting your readers with never-ending passages of text.

2. Formatting

Pay attention to formatting – bolding important segments of your sentences, using sub-headings to break longer text into sections and adding titles and subtitles. This will keep your readers engaged. Nobody wants to read a huge section of text!

3. Include good quality images / videos

Having an image makes your content look so much better! Images also help you grab lots of traffic from image search engines. Specifically focus on the first image in the post as it will be the first thing your reader will see. Make sure your visual material is of a high definition. The better the visual quality your post presents, the bigger audience it will attract (and the higher revenue you’ll receive). It’ll also increase the chances for your work to get featured which will provide you with even more readers. Add a video if you have one and some relevant links (like sources, social media profiles or other blogs). The more visual a blog post is, the better!

4. Proofread. Proofread. Proofread.

Before you share your hard work with all your potential readers, give yourself some time to re-read it in order to avoid any kind of spelling or grammar mistakes that could create the wrong kind of impression.

There are plenty of methods you could use to perfect your finalised piece. Start at the beginning and read it all to the end – reading it out loud is always helpful as it forces you to fully concentrate on the text. Look for mistakes, you don’t want anyone else to spot them. Make sure your text is correctly formulated and your expression easy to follow.

Optimise your outreach

Taking advantage of Social Media

The most efficient way to increase your visibility and ultimately build up higher revenue on Niume is to share your posts across various social media channels so that they reach as many readers as possible. The built-in social media sharing tools at Niume allow you to distribute your work so that it can be continuously discovered by new readers. From there, you can build a strong and engaged audience. Simply use these tools wisely and consistently to get the best outcome:

5. Flipboard – a definite must-use! It is easy to drive tens of thousands of people per month to your articles using Flipboard and it only takes few minutes to set up and few seconds to share your articles. Just sign up to Flipboard.com and create a couple of magazines, one for each topic you write about. Subsequently, just make sure that when you create a post you share it in one of your magazines and watch the magic happen. To make it work even better and faster you can find accounts similar to yours and follow their followers to increase your reach.

6. Stumbleupon – another easy to use content aggregator with a massive audience. Just join Stumbleand submit your posts in the relevant category. It works best if other Stumblers submit your link as well.

7. Reddit – fast and effective, providing you with a great opportunity to be seen by a vast community. Reddit has great potential but it takes a bit of understanding. Make sure you read the Reddiquette to understand the platform’s best practices. Explore the subreddits and find the best ones for you and your content. Start here

8. Twitter – the more you use it, the more enjoyable and rewarding it will become! Don’t be afraid of tweeting the same post a couple of times a day. You can always change the text of your tweet by referring to different points you make in your blog piece. Your followers are online at different times and they will only see your post in their feed if they are online just after you posted it.

9. Facebook – perhaps the easiest to use to share your pieces with all your friends. Don’t forget about groups. You can find big communities around a specific topic which would be happy to read and share your articles and the growing Niume Writers Community is a great place to share your writing.

10. Pinterest – a fantastic visual platform meant for sharing your photography and art.

11. Google Plus – a great driver of high quality traffic

12. Linkedin – for somewhat more serious and professional pieces.

To help you take the most of the particular platforms and their advantages, check out our post about increasing your visibility on social media.

Content ideas

With Niume you have a great opportunity to write about the things you care about. However, creating regular content is undeniably more difficult than it sounds. The most significant elements that need to be taken into consideration are a) providing a good quality content with high value; and b) keeping your readers engaged so that they want to come back for more. Self-promotion won’t do the trick, you need to get your readers hooked!

Here are some ideas to get you started:

13. Interviews – interviewing other people can be greatly beneficial as it widens your online network, demonstrates that you have interest in the work of others, and provides your blog pieces with a variety of topics.

14. Lists – lists are incredibly easy to create and people love reading them. Don’t forget to include images that illustrate your points and success is guaranteed!

15. Reviews – sharing your honest opinion about something you’ve experienced can not only attract readers to find out something about the product / service, it’s most likely going to help them decide whether or not to purchase it.

16. Thought-pieces – if to critically analyse a situation sounds like your cup of tea, well-written thought pieces could to the trick for you. To offer a strong material with different perspective can be highly impressive for a lot of readers out there.

17. Experiences – take your readers on a journey with you, show them all the impressive places and you might even inspire them to take their own journey. Make sure to add plenty of images as they’re essential to your story.

18. The latest news – excellent opportunity to get involved in a wider discussion about the trending topics. Given that there’s never a shortage in information, you can add your voice into the debate and ask your readers to contribute.

19. Non-writing talents – if writing is not the only skill you possess, share it! You never know who might discover your talent, how you can connect with a wider community and what it might lead to.

Whatever topic you decide to explore, make sure you address it in your personal style. Let your own voice attract the readers. Think about who you are trying to address and what is the best method to do so. Be creative. You want to engage your readers and inspire them to come back for more. Be original. You want to stand out from the rest of the blogging fish in the sea.

Get involved in the community

With Niume, blogging is no longer a solo experience. Our spheres let you instantly connect with great amounts of bloggers that share your interests on a global scale. Take time to read your fellow sphere members’ pieces. Not only will you find hundreds of ideas for inspiration every day, but it will let you become a valued member of the community.

Specific actions you can take to increase your visibility within Niume community are:

20. Favouriting – a helpful way of keeping track of the posts that really impress you or you want to save them for later as it’s really easy to find all the articles you add to your favourites from your profile.

21. Hype – you can value different pieces of content by giving them positive hype or negative hype. Your rating will be completely anonymous, encouraging more honest feedback. By getting more hype you will increase the likelihood of your posts appearing on the Sphere’s Top Posts Sections, being featured by our staff, and showing up on Niume’s Popular Feed, all of which will increase the visibility of your posts.

22. Comment – the simplest action you can do when you find a post that stimulates you in any kind of way. Express your understanding, different opinion, or perhaps appreciation and let your fellow Niume members know that you’re interested in what they’ve got to say.

23. Subscribe – see a really good and informative post about an interesting topic that you never even heard of? Subscribe to the user and you won’t miss any of their future work, plus you might gain a new subscriber yourself!

Not to mention that all of these activities often cause reactions and you might be pleasantly surprised by the amount of support you can receive once you start supporting others. Just check out some of our immensely engaging Niumers who have set up a Facebook group enthusiastic about the Niume community. It’s a fantastic opportunity to start getting involved! Here’s the link.

24. Patience

Starting a blog is not the difficult part, however, to maintain it and keep going is. So don’t give up if you’re having a difficult couple of days and your work is not bringing you results you’d hoped for! Work on the imperfections and be patient with yourself. After all, the trick of becoming a successful blogger lies in resilience. Keep writing, finish your blog pieces even if it’s giving you a hard time, and practice the methods we’ve suggested!