For most people, a website is the one thing that links what they do to their potential customers, whether that is creating a website for their business or an ecommerce site to help them take their side-hustle full-time. But selling something or marketing your brand isn’t the only reason to have a website. In fact, one of the areas that is growing faster than any other is blogs.
A blog Is your chance to run with your passion, become an expert in a certain area, help others in similar situations, give advice on something you know loads about or answer the questions people keep asking.
That last point has a lot to do with why I am writing this post: I receive so many emails asking for advice on how to start a blog, how to blog, about what blog topics are best, and about how to create valuable content.
If these same questions are dancing about on the tip of your tongue, then here are some of the answers and recommendations I always give.
The 4 Top Tips To Become Succesful At Blogging
1. You Need A Niche
This isn’t a must have by any means, but having a niche will drastically help you grow your blog. Becoming a blogger takes a lot of time and effort, so knowing what you’re passionate about is super-important. It could be cooking, law, honest parenting, business, finance, content writing – anything that you can write about.
Please know that you do not have to be a complete expert in a subject when you start your blog. If it interests you and people are looking for answers in an area of your subject then you will learn as you go along. If you pick the right niche for you then you will become an expert in no time. Every time you write a blog post you will have learnt a little more.
If you need help in deciding on a niche then please go read my post on the subject and how you can whittle it down to your own perfect niche.
2. Know Your Audience
When you have decided on your passion fuelled niche, your next step is to know exactly who will, or who might want to be reading your blog. If you are doing a blog about your mad little family, then it will be young parents. If it is a classic car blog, you will have petrol heads. If it is business law, you will find it is entrepreneurs and startup business owners. Once you know the answer, you will need to tailor your writing to suit your readers.
If you find this difficult then take a read of my post on understanding your customers.
3. Give People Value
The only possible way for your blog to become a success is if you add value to the lives of your readers. It is the only way you will start to see people reading, keep reading, and constantly coming back and tell other people about your blog. It is about getting people to be a long term follower of your work and advice.
You might use your experience as a premises liability lawyer to help employees and business owners better understand the rules, you might use your life as a new puppy-owner to educate people on the hilarious reality of owning a sofa-biting, show stealing animal, or you might use your Crohn’s disease to help new sufferers understand what help is out there. Anything, so long as it adds genuine value.
4. Originality Is Key
Unless you have a blog that strictly focuses on flip-flops made out of chunky peanut butter, you will need to accept there are other blogs out there that focus on the same thing you are planning to write about, which is why you need to do something different. You need to be original. To be original all you need to do is be you. That could be a fresh perspective, humor, creativity, imagery, anything so long as it’s fresh and you are true to yourself.
Not everyone is going to get you and not everyone is going to want to read your work but if you find the confidence in yourself to be you when you write then I promise you, you will find your own tribe of followers who will be loyal to you.
Final Thoughts
Most bloggers will want to earn money from their blogs and rightly so but if you do not put in the work with the advice I have given you above then earning money will be hard. People buy from people they like and trust.
Your first few blog posts won’t be perfect and that is okay. The more you write, the better you will become at speaking to your audience. I am not going to lie there is an awful lot to learn about blogging and being a successful blogger and it will take time. My advice is to get some training. I personally get all the training I need from Wealthy Affiliate which is also where I happen to host my blogs or websites ( they are the same thing really )
Many bloggers take the hard route and go searching around the internet getting advice from other bloggers. I personally appreciated the structured step by step training that Wealthy Affiliate gave me. It also meant I got to monetise my sites much quicker than most bloggers do. Take a read of my post on where to learn how to build websites or blogs for more information if you think you would also like to learn in a structured way. It’s free to join so it’s worth giving it a try anyway.
I do hope that you have found this post useful in your quest to learn about how to become successful at blogging. If you have please give it a share on your favourite social media platform.
As ever if you have any questions or just want to share your thoughts please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen