Every year, millions of blogs are started. The stories of success that abound in the blogosphere apparently push a lot of people to buy domain names and web hosting slots so they can get a piece of the pie. However, the greater number of newbie bloggers end up with their hands on their faces, wondering why people seem to see a “do not enter” sign in front of their blogs.
Quite a few bloggers however go on to create successful blogs. I recently started my blog (Incomeversity), and happily, my traffic is steadily on the rise. From my personal experience, and from what I have observed in other professional blogs, there are a few simple facts every newbie blogger absolutely has to know if they want to succeed. In this post, I’d be explaining 6 amazing tips that will help you go from a being a newbie to a pro blogger in the shortest possible time.
The Secrets Of Blogging Success
1. You need to sound as an authority; otherwise no one will take you seriously
If you have followed successful bloggers like David Risley and Ramit Sethi, you likely have noticed how authoritative their articles sound. With each sentence, they show that they are convinced of their approach, and this alone tells you you should be convinced too. There is this article Ramit wrote about guest blogging. After reading through and seeing how much life he gave to this topic, I had to ask myself if this was the same guest blogging I had always known about, or if it was something new. Professional bloggers write with complete conviction, partly because they have much experience, and partly because they know that their tone and level of authority is currency in the blogosphere.
As a newbie blogger, you may find it hard to be authoritative in your posts because, well, you are still learning the ropes. However, with enough research, and a deliberate effort to sound like the pros (read posts by pros before writing yours), you will be able to come off as an authority each time you write.
2. Writing articles that feature people and products will help your blog succeed
This blog promotion method can help you get many social mentions and backlinks, and more importantly, help you connect and build relationships with influential people in your niche. Last year, I wrote a review of the top free and responsive WordPress themes. Thereafter, I contacted the designers of the themes I featured, informing them about the article and as a result, I got many social shares. Also, this was the first time I truly connected with other online entrepreneurs. Here’s one of the responses I got.
Here’s how to use this method: First, choose a topic about influential people or their products. For example, the topic “10 Most Influential Food Bloggers” will work wonderfully if you run a food related blog.
Next, write the article and make it really good. Praise the people you feature for their accomplishments, or if you feature people’s products, describe how the producers did a great job on each product and explain the benefits to customers.
Lastly, after posting the article, contact each person and inform them that they or their products are featured on your blog.
If you featured an influential blogger, mention that you have been following the person’s blog for a while (if you truly have), explain what a great job you think they are doing (point to specifics if possible), and politely request that the person shares the article with his/her social followers, or even links to it if possible.
3. If you don’t do keyword research, you’re probably wasting your time
A while back, I found a keyword that got high traffic and had low competition. Since it was a long tail keyword, I simply used the keyword as the name of my article, and the results were amazing. My blog was barely 15 days old at the time but this article made the first page of Google search. I even have an entire post about that article: My 15 Day Old Blog Ranked in the First Page of Google Search – Here’s How.
If you plan to get traffic from search engines (which I believe you do), you have to learn to do keyword research. And if you get a long tail keyword that can serve as a post title, absolutely use it, and here’s proof why you should. In the picture below, the title of the first post on top is exactly the same as the long tail keyword I got from my research. It is easy to see how much more search traffic this post gets than the others.
Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Keyword Eye are great tools for researching keywords.
4. You have to put your blog in front of people’s faces
The phrase “Spend as much time promoting your posts as you do writing them” is somewhat of a mantra among bloggers. People have tweeted it, written it in posts, talked about it in videos, etc.
Many bloggers fail because they believe all they need to do is write articles. They reason that because the internet is flooded with people, some good traffic will surely come to them. These bloggers usually end up buying 15 cats.
Granted, if you do proper keyword research, and try to come up with regular, interesting articles, you will get some traffic from search engines. However, to become a really successful blogger, you have to promote your post via twitter, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, Google+, and any other social media platform possible (when I learn Chinese, I’d add Weibo to my list). More importantly, you need to put your posts in front of influential bloggers in your niche. A simple social mention or a link from them could do wonders for your blog.
5. One of the best ways to get traffic is to write guest posts for high traffic sites
Guest posting on popular blogs is a must for bloggers who want to break into the blogosphere and gain recognition. They are also a veritable source of traffic to your blog because these popular blogs already get a ton of traffic, which means your post will be seen by a lot of people, many of whom will go on to visit your site.
To increase the traffic potential, insert links to articles on your blog that provide more information on the topic you are guest posting about.
6. You don’t become a star blogger in a month:
This last point is just candid advice. Blogging will not work for you if your aim is to start making money from it after a few weeks, it just doesn’t work that way. The successful bloggers you see out there today are people who have been at it for quite some time. The truth is, the longer you have blogged, the more experience you have. This will reflect in the quality of your articles (which means more recognition and back links), your promotion tactics, and your general approach to blogging and monetization. It is this experience that truly brings out success.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t go about this with a business approach. In fact it is best to monetize your blog as soon as you have enough quality traffic. However, do not quit because you compare yourself to top bloggers and wonder why you are not making big bucks like they are. It took them time to get there; it will take time for you too.
How Can You Apply This To Your Blog
This article has covered quite a few points that can be summarized into this simple course of action:
– Write great articles
– Ensure they are seen (by search engines, people in social networks, influential bloggers and their readers, etc)
– and don’t try to rush success. Understand that it might take some time for you to become a recognized blogger.
If there are any other points you think can help newbie bloggers catapult their blogs, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
