I currently run blogging websites which are for me successful in that they both bring in a satisfactory income and they also make me a key influencer. For some years now I have written and shared blogs along with speaking about how to become successful with blogging at major industry awards and seminars across the country.
A question you need to ask yourself before you set off in to the world of blogging is ‘What am I looking to achieve?‘.
Blogging can be simply an exercise that you indulge in for you have an interest in a subject and you want to share your passion / knowledge with other like minded enthusiasts to you wanting to make a full time living from it. The good news is that both options and everything in between is possible.
Key lesson: It will not be easy and will not happen over night, you need to stick at it and invest time and sometimes money in order to achieve your goals – Goals can be simply numbers of readers / new connections you make to being paid by third party companies to write blogs and share them on your website.
So, you have decided what you wish to achieve from blogging so from this point on wards we will look at the key steps in order to make your blogging successful:
- Pick a great name / theme / domain name. Depending on how successful you wish to be, from the outset it will pay to have a decent name and theme to commence with and also to spend time finding the best domain name (ideally having key words within) as well as securing the usernames of social media platforms. So at this point you should have yourself a great domain name, a good blogging title, a decent website and also, if you can, the domain name as a username on the main social media channels.
- Who are you up against? I suspect that no matter what subject you are wanting to be blogging about you will have others doing exactly the same. Research what is out there at present, how big the competition is and if there are avenues that you can exploit / fill. As an example your interest might be in wine, but this will be a massive topic online with near on millions of articles / blogs / social media media user profiles to compete against / get your voice heard over – Why not reduce the competition down to concentrating on a favoured wine country / region / style? Your research should tell you what you are up against, how good / bad they are doing and possibly will give you ideas to copy / improve on.
- Get writing. Now you are live online and you’ve done research, you will have in mind the topics you wish to cover. You should look to publicise relevant and engage content which will engage readers to your blog. One will never be enough, at this early stage you need to think about at least one blog a day and also make sure it is shared out to any social media accounts you have.
- Supporting content. Blogging is fine though complimenting them is even better. What photos / videos / research / stats / surveys / info-graphics can you include in each blog to keep your readers fixed? When your content is engaging it will entice readers to comment more, share, like and more – importantly it will encourage them to look out for your next update / blog.
- Further explore and get to know your surroundings even better. Once your blog is underway and you are building quality content then you need to see how to further improve your status and reputation. Again it will all depend on the goals you have set for blogging, but once you have a solid blog running nothing stops you from networking in the sector you are in. For example, and wine again, what is stopping you from attending wine tasting events as a key blogger / requesting interviews with wine makers / requesting samples to review and much more?
Once you have a busy blog, excellent and regular content and you also have made yourself a name in your sector you then have made a success with your blogging career.