Success in blogging comes from these core things. You can set yourself apart from the masses.
A good blog starts with a good blogger. That’s you, the blog owner. To be a good blogger is to have good content. Good content is content that is valuable or needed by your audience.
That kinds of makes sense, right? Then why do so many new bloggers spend so much of their time making their blog look great, and so little time writing?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that your blog look like crap. No way. Your blog should look good, and should be easy to use as well. I’m just redirecting your priorities. Content is king.
To be a good blogger is to be a writer, a teacher, and an adviser all rolled up into one. A good writer has a consistent writing style. Read this to help you discover your writing style.
Here’s some valuable advice for bloggers, especially new bloggers.
Focus on your content first
If you have a new blog, set a realistic schedule for yourself to develop content. Stick to your schedule. For instance, you might decide to write a blog post once a week. As long as you get your post done (and ensure it provides value), then you can make time that week to work on the look and feel of your blog.
I am not suggesting that you be writing once a week. It all depends on your goals, your niche, how much time you have, and the expectations and needs of your audience. You might choose to write a new post every day for the first month, then twice a week thereafter. There is no right or wrong way to do this, just make a schedule and stick to it. The important thing is that you produce quality content before you make your blog look awesome.
By doing it this way, you will have more motivation to continue blogging. As an added benefit, your posts will begin to spread through the Internet which will, in turn, bring you more organic traffic. Get blogging!
The look, feel, and function of your blog
It is important, but not as important as you may initially think. It may be interesting for you to learn that many of the most popular blogs looked very different when they were first started.
So now that you are on a schedule to write new blog posts (you did set a schedule, right?), you can also choose to work on the look of your blog. By running WordPress, this is fairly easy, but it can consume a lot of your time (that’s another reason to get the writing done first).
When you first start your blog, it’s probably best to just choose a theme that is included with WordPress to get up and running fast. Write a post or two, get on a writing schedule, then find a theme that appeals to you. If you have questions, you can always ask me. The amount of time you invest on making your blog look good can be affected by the theme you choose. Some are just easier to use than others. If you have no desire to do this kind of work, you can always hire someone if you have the budget.
My intention is to help you start a great blog within your budget. It is a good idea to have some working knowledge of WordPress, but don’t worry about that if it’s not your thing. Keep in mind that plenty of people build and run great blogs, who have zero technical skills (or the desire to obtain them).
I also want to say that monetizing your blog is an important part of working on your blog for those of us who wish to earn some money blogging.
Website traffic
There is a third important component, and that is to drive traffic. There are many ways to do this. I am not going into detail here since it is not the intent of this post (I’ll write separate posts for driving traffic). It’s important know that traffic is meaningless if you don’t provide that great content. And as mentioned above, writing great content will begin the process of driving organic traffic.
To summarize
Just remember that a good blog has good content. I use the word good loosely… you can substitute another word such as great, awesome, or whatever works for you. Once you start your blog and launch it, you will want to do the following:
Set yourself a schedule to populate your blog with valuable content and stick to it. Always do your writing (your blogging) before you work on other parts of your blog. For instance, if your schedule is to write a post every day, then write your post first thing in the morning, and after that is doe, work on the look of your blog, driving traffic, or on monetizing.
These are the things you may want to do:
First, start your blog if you haven’t already done so (just do it!)
- Get blogging (create content/write posts)
- Monetize & work on your blog (get set to make money & make it look good)
- Drive traffic (let the world know)
Questions? Let me know what’s on your mind in the comments below.
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