Blogging and writing content online is a unique process that one has to adapt and involves being oneself and basically writing original content without much influence from relevant others. The online content creator also has to understand the target audience, be ready to listen to them and get ideas from them. It is their ideas and opinions that will enable the blogger to be strategic and choose the right topics and content to blog. All in all, the blogger has to be himself and be consistent both in writing and publishing their works and also interacting with his followers hence building a strong and consistent relationship with them. Thanks to the internet and more so the technological advancement that today, communities and followers always meet online to give their feedback which is a signal of a live audience. As a result, communication and expression of oneself concerning matters that are in the public domain or matters digital have become part and parcel of an individual and especially a blogger. Bloggers express their views, opinions and feelings on matters at hand and are of great concern to the public majority.
What are some of the best blogging strategies for beginners?
Getting ideas from your audience
Creating blog-posts that answer the most interesting questions from the people you engage and interact with on social media is a great way to gather ideas of what topics people would most like to read about which will help your blog grow . This is demonstrated through blog comments and likes.
Understanding your audience
There cant be a blog without an audience. Your audience/readers are people who shape your blog, correct you and even motivate you to write better or be better at it. When you understand your audience well, you will have a better idea of what the blog content will resonate with them hence a good start as one writes the blogs.
Writing for oneself first
While blogging, one has to focus on their thoughts ,ideas ,opinions and figure out how to put into words ,meaning ,they have to create their own original content and ignore the fact that everyone else will read what they have written . The content creator has to write more and the audiences will come. As one writes more, publishes more and when publishing ,they should do it for themselves .
Building an E-mail list.
Starting to build an email list is the first priority while blogging. It allows one to promote the new content to the relevant audience directly without worries on search ranking ,Facebook Edge rank or Online Road blocks in communication . As long as your fans are subscribed to it, you can always communicate with them directly at any time. To build an Email list, one needs traffic and something of value. There is a need to offer something for subscribing so that you persuade people to join and start seeing your blogs.
Trusting your existing readers.
As a blogger, never ignore your readers It’s easy to lose a reader than to find a new one, show them you value them by trying to give them quality content and respond to their queries on time. Focusing on your readers is a great way to get to know them better.
Have a call -to- action
It is prudent and advisable to finish a blog post with some kind of call to action. This can be something as simple as asking them to sign up for an email newsletter, or leaving a contact where they can reach you on time. A call to action can also be something as simple as following me on Twitter for more updates.
Being consistent
Blogging consistently is recommended because it is much easier to lose your traffic than it is to build it up. One also adds more subscribers as a result of consistent and constant blogging. Publishing articles daily or several times weekly is a process that improves your writing skills and popularizes your blog . Sometimes being consistent in blogging doesn’t necessarily mean to be a blog post ; but can be a Facebook update ,a tweet or a blog comment . As a sequence, one also has to update old content because as one progresses with the blogging journey, thoughts, opinions and knowledge will keep on changing. By not being consistent in blogging, one will not be doing justice to their followers as blog posts will not be reflecting new thoughts of knowledge and ideas. Also ,consistent blogging and updating has a SEO benefit too ;sometimes Google may opt to demote your ranking due to outdated content .So, the rule is simple ‘keep your content fresh and up-to-date.
Give away your knowledge
Many bloggers tend to hold back the good stuff out of fear of giving away what they call the ‘secret sauce’ yet there is no secret sauce in a world where everyone has high-speed access to the internet all the time.
Being true to your voice
Staying true to yourself and your voice is a stand that young bloggers should practice and implement in their blogging life . People don’t care to follow sites so much; as sometimes they tend to follow people. Your voice is the most important, yet overlooked part of blogging. Writing is not about picking the right topic ,it is about finding the right voice ;What matters, what readers really resonate with ;is not much what you say but how .
Being patient and giving it time
One has to master the art of planning to invest in blogging for a long period of time before they see returns. Be willing to invest more over a greater period of time to see better results. One has to stick it out for years without results and consistently learn, iterate and improve thus a road to achieving something remarkable.
Giving your Email list a priority
If one is blogging to create a business, a movement or support a cause, an Email list is important. The Email list is the community, caring about these people, writing for them and delivering value to them
Writing catchy headlines
No matter how great your content is, it doesn’t matter unless one has an amazing headline. People have limited time to decide if they should click on your post, and your headline will make them decide. Also, most people discover content via search or social and therefore may discover and decide what to read based on the headline. The headline is therefore crucial as far as content writing is concerned as one has to write a compelling one that will attract more people and followers so that they may find the urge to read more. The headline is also essential in making it easy and desirable for people to share your posts. In other words, the headline should be SPUB meaning; Simple, Powerful, Useful and Bold.
Make it worthy referencing
One has to make sure that each post has an original lesson or actionable item, making it ‘citable’ on the web. The content should be worth remarking about hence a more straightforward content to work with. It should be a unique article, full of presentation of ideas, opinions and points of views that nobody else has ever talked about them before. People should be able to cite, quote or link your article and above all, share and talk about it.
Do basic on-page SEO
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your content to rank higher in the search results. Google confirms this by saying; Just think ‘when you search for ‘dogs’ you probably don’t want a page with the ‘dogs’ on it hundreds of times. With that in mind, algorithms access if a page contains other relevant content beyond the keyword ‘dog ‘such as pictures of dogs, videos or even lists of breeds’. It includes basic practices like placing your target keyword in the title, Meta description and H1 tags and using short descriptive URLs to let you know what you expect from a page. Also, one has to remember to put exact match keywords in the copy because the presence of related words and phrases also matters.