How To Become A Great Blogger
Now that there are so many amazing website builders on the market, the question of how starting a blog is a much simpler one to answer. Even a complete lack of technical and design skills – or even knowledge – won’t prevent you from creating a blog and getting your blog live within a few hours.
Site builders really have lowered the barrier to entry, which is great, but there are still many more failed blogs than successful ones. So, we’re going to take a look at what it takes to rise above the rest to become a great blogger. Follow these tips and you’ll be an elite-level blogger in no time.
Choose Your Blog Platform
Obviously, the first step is going to be to choose a website builder to use for your blog! We’ve got a lot of recommendations just for bloggers so that you can create a stunning blog in no time. Website builders like Wix offer gorgeous templates geared towards bloggers. Because so many people read blogs from their smartphones and tablets, it’s important that your blog website is optimized for mobile. Whichever blogging platform you choose, make sure that it comes with a mobile-friendly format.
Recommended Blog Builders
These are some of the most recommended blog builders:
Find Your Focus
Your blog is your place to share your passions and opinions. If you want to gain an audience of loyal followers, one of your best bets is to find a specific niche. For instance, you can have a fashion blog, cooking blog, DIY blog, travel blog, parenting blog, or fitness blog. Try to determine a focus. If you find yourself jumping from restaurant reviews one day to home restoration how-to guides the next, people won’t know what to expect from you and they’ll be less likely to visit consistently.
Optimize Your Blog
You can write amazing posts and have brilliant ideas when starting a blog, but all will be for nothing if no one reads your blog. This is why, when creating a blog, you should invest time in learning how to use keyword research tools in order to optimize your blog design for the main search engines. There are quite a few good keyword generators and comparison tools available free of charge, and one of them comes from Google itself. Although aimed at AdWords users, you can use it to gain real insights into the terms your audience are searching for, and make use of those insights to create optimized content for your blog.
Promote Your Posts
In addition to SEO and using keywords, another way that people will find your blog is by seeing your posts shared. Make sure that you choose a website builder that allows you to add social media sharing buttons to your blog posts. This allows readers to easily share your articles that they like with just the click of a button. You should also take advantage of sharing your posts on your own social media platforms and may want to create specific handles just for your blog. Your blog’s home page is usually a good place to include the links to your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter so that your fans can follow you there as well.
Take Notes
If you are one of those bloggers who is often struck by inspiration when they are away from their computer, it is best you develop a note-taking system. You can carry an old-fashioned notebook in your bag, or download one of the many notes apps available for your smartphone. Once back at your desk, go through the notes and see what you are in the mood to write today. This way, you will never be at a loss for ideas.
Keep Track of Your Most Popular Posts
Your blog’s dashboard can turn into a priceless source of inspiration and represent your guiding light when creating a blog. Check which of your previously published posts received the most visits. Isn’t there an adjacent topic you can write on? Use the same keywords, but present things from a different perspective. Or, maybe that post needs some updating so that the content doesn’t become obsolete!
Follow Other Blogs in Your Niche
Taking a look around at what happens in the ‘blogosphere’ does not mean cheating. Nobody says you have to copy, but when learning how to start a blog, you should just inspire yourself! Once you find the topic for your next blog post, do your own research, express your own opinions, and write everything in your own words. You can totally disagree with others’ views and even express controversial opinions. Anyway, a great blogger has an opinion on important topics in their area of interest. Nobody’s going to bookmark your site just because you’re a nice person!
Create a Content Calendar
Updating your blog with fresh content on a regular basis will have people checking in regularly. If readers start to learn that you post something new every day or update your blogs every Tuesday and Thursday, they’re more likely to eagerly await those posts and visit your site. If one week you publish a new post daily and then the next week you only post once, readers will get tired of checking your site and not being rewarded. Eventually, they’ll stop checking so much because they can’t count on you. Create a content calendar for yourself helps you stick to a schedule and also will save the day should you ever experience a case of writer’s block. Develop a calendar of topics, either for a month or a week at a time. You can even organize weekly themes or a theme for different days of the week. For example, if you write a parenting blog, every Wednesday you could dedicate to a different kid-approved recipe.
Engage With Your Blog’s Visitors
The comments people leave on your posts are a valuable source of inspiration. Many successful bloggers use visitors’ comments in order to come up with new ideas. Put yourself in your followers’ shoes. When you read a post, leave a comment, and, upon returning to the same blog sometime later, you may find a whole page on the topic. You will feel great! The respective blogger really appreciated your words and inspired them. Won’t you come back again? If the idea does not give you enough meat for a whole post, at least have the courtesy to answer your visitor, even if just by saying thank you.