13 Steps to Successful Blogging
Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing a real sellers sell. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.
1) Where to begin?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I am not saying that because I’m the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without any knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. This allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog. It allows you to focus on content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, in case your blog successful you will not lose any money or are left to the invoice. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you’re ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can easily add your latest blog entry the announcement of your “move”. Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has “moved” and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience for everyone. Upgrade if you want. . . but only if necessary!
2) Niche
A niche is a targeted product, service or topic. You must first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose one area you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does not matter if your topic is popular as long as an audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Everything can be regarded as a niche, while a target no matter how big or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the family cat is a bigger niche in the market, if people are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche. . . You can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)
This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting for readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on one days to day making it attractive to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one days here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will likely result in your blog failed. To prevent your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to your blog daily with multiple entries update. Although, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily. Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries. Until you have a steady audience you should try to your blog everyday with at least 3 or more items daily update. The best way to achieve this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day tending to your blog and adding new items. It may even be wise for a certain time you spend on your blog every day schedule. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you do not come to work for days or weeks. . . you lose money or worse you fired! The same applies here. . . if you do not update your blog for days or weeks you will lose visitors.
4) Traffic
It is no secret. You need traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS / XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You need your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should take your RSS / XML feed URL to ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blog Digger blog. You should trust your blog to share with family, friends, colleagues, employees and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you need your blog entries (which are valuable and lengthy articles) to content such as GoArticles Syndicator. com or Article City. com. Once submitted your articles can be collected and published by others. The trick is to make your blog URL address in the “About the Author” passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the “About the Author” passage is included in each publication and the link you followed is included, crawled and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough as 10,000 publications on the web to produce. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your position in search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is worth. You should try at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and write your article to at least 10 Article Syndicator.
5) Track Your Blog
How do you know if your blog has traffic? Precisely because no one leaving comments does not mean that your blog is not growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are return visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what “you” say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd or 3rd time. Some do not respond, but are active daily visitors.
Tracking your blog should not be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter. com or Active Meter do the trick. Install (copy / paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Better use a service that allows you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors and unique visitors are standard for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to your audience
When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while the blog legible and interesting.
7) multiple blogs
Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with Home Journal. com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to your policies for each site). You can copy / paste of 1 blog for all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This makes it possible to attract more visitors and also the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your targeted keywords increases.
Short & Concise
Apart from the long article one weeks for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short and concise (if you can help). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no other option than long blog entries, but try to avoid it as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors want information quickly and browse through your entries. It is good to be detailed and useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that way about your subject. Stay keyword-focused.
9) Digital Art
Try for non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a little spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.
10) Keep it Personal
A blog is most successful when it is privately held. Try to personal experiences related to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal efforts.
11) Interaction with your visitors
You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: “Monday Money Tip” or “Photo of the Week” which entices your readers to look forward to every week.
Give your readers in advance about a product, service, or topic that you will see and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you say that you “will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech broadcast. Comments will be appreciated.”
Try your best to exclusive information not found much. Never provide confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get into trouble, but try to get the scoop everyone does. Like: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about “Paris Hilton Getting Married” would be interesting to your readers if you have an actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring had. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will probably come with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family and others about information they only can find at your blog.
12) Make Money
Once your blog has gained real momentum and your blog traffic grows, it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You need contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. Besides contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds. com, Amazon. com, Mamma Media or General Sponsored Advertising.
13) You’re a professional
You’re a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a webhost and a domain name to choose for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace. com, WordPress. org, Movable Type. org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic, it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last item on the blog is a “move” announcement. The title should be “moved” and the blog entry should state something like “I have a new home for my blog, bookmark and follow the link: http://www. Yournewblogdomainname. Com / ‘. This way all returning visitors and new readers should be no problem finding your new blog domain. Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog too popular with the search engines.
At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will lead to a more powerful and interesting blog. The old adage “two heads is better than one”, more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author a vested interest in the blog will have. The idea of a team blog is profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.
Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog or a popular concept, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making Money Online is not an overnight experience like many think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, effort, perseverance and you’ll be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.
For more information about successful blogging subscribe to the magazine Home Newsletter
Tags: Blogging, Steps, successful, Writing
