You want traffic to your site. Blogging generates traffic for your site. Everybody understands the first part, but surprisingly few businesses grasp the second part.
It’s tempting to give in to the idea that the only way to generate sales is, engaging in direct sales. Handling inventory, nurturing your email list, and calling to make potential customers will only go so far past a certain point. If you’re spending all your time trying to convert customers, then you’ll soon be neglecting reasons for customers to discover your business in the first place.
Blogging is a great way to build your audience and generate more traffic and sales for your business. You shouldn’t treat it as an unnecessary luxury. Even infrequent posts can help your business.
First of all, what is blogging?
Well, you are reading one! A blog is a web page where you regularly add and update content in a more personal tone unlike typical articles and other publications. Blog is a word derived from web log. Just as the literal meaning, it is a web page you keep a log.
You can use blogging to share your opinions, experiences, passions. Other than that,
building an email list
selling products
developing their personal brand as an expert
can be done through blogging.
You need to be consistent when publishing content. It takes time to see the results. The most important thing is the quality of the content you serve. For that, you should have a healthy start.
How to start a blog?
Do not just jump in and create a load of content on a blogging platform and complaint when everything goes wrong. There are few things you need to take care of. Blogging is fun. But if you do blogging with the intention of getting into business, it is serious and complicated. Gathering audience is the first hardest part. But that can wait a little. Before all the things, you need to consider different opportunities to monetise. If you are wondering why monetising comes first for a blogger, here’s the thing. Since you are considering doing business through blogging, you need to determine and plan everything from an entrepreneur’s perspective rather than a typical blogger.
You can sell either physical products like clothing or digital products like photos, designs. Or better, you can provide services like content writing, consulting and designing. You can try doing paid reviews/ promotions for other brands or affiliate with brands and get a commission every time you sell their product. Publishing is also a good idea for money blogging.
Next thing is deciding your niche. As it seems, it is hard to stand out in this field. Focusing on a specific group of people can help with that. Provide content they can’t find anywhere else. That would make them stick with you and be lifelong audience for your content.
One good example is providing vegan or vegetarian recipes that are hard to find.
The niche you use directly affect all your plans. It does not only require you to serve your audience consistently but, it is the focal point of monetization of your blog. Niche must be something you are passionate about, so you can enjoy what you are doing. Only if you do so, can you serve your customers to the best.
You can use Google to research on your competitors and Buzzsumo to get an idea for how well the content on this topic performs and what channel is the best.
Next important thing is deciding the blogging platform. There are two options you can choose from
1. Self-hosted – This one give you more customizing opportunities but you have to pay a monthly fee.
Ex: WordPress.org
2. Hosted – These are available for both free and paid. They let you get started right away and some already have built-in audiences.
Ex: WordPress.com, Blogger
You should choose the platform according to what you want to do and what you need. Usually, bloggers go for free hosted platforms like Tumblr and Medium because they allow you to republish on the platform and access already existing audiences.
Shopify is a hosted platform where you get both the ecommerce site and the blogging platform. Addition to them, you will get hundreds of apps to add to your online business.
Next step is to select a name and a theme for the blog.
Choosing a domain
When choosing a domain, it is better for you to not use your own name. The domain must be catchy, easily remembered. Other than that, it would be good to use a domain which do not have different spellings to avoid users being confused. You have to find whether the domain name is already in use or not too.
After you settled down that, you have to select a theme.
Theme is the look, layout and features of the website. There are plenty of free themes and also paid themes with more customisation options are available.
Building the audience is a nerve wrecking task. Most of the bloggers do not have a concrete publishing strategy and having to amplify your reach makes them scared.
After you completed everything, you need to focus on your posts. You should know how to get the best out of every post.
Build an email list
You should focus on getting new subscribers. Subscribers are a fact to decide your progress and they are the potential readers you can reach easily. Even if you migrate to another platform, your email list remain with you.
It would be good if you embed sign up forms directly into the pages with call to action to subscribe.
Keyword Research
You can use a simple way like Ubersuggest for this. Enter terms you can think of that can be used by audiences to look up the search volume for your niche. Starting with how to or best are more appropriate. This help you to decide what kind of content you need to provide.
Using Social Media
First, you have to find the platforms used more by your audience. It can vary based on your niche. Facebook page is good for those who don’t mind investing on paid promotions but there are free platforms like Pinterest or Instagram. Your family and friends can be a good starting audience.
Reduce, Reuse and Resurface
As a blogger, you need to be creative and always have fresh, unique ideas to grow. But being able to reuse the content is also needed. As an example, you can make a collection of some posts and post them under our best posts in 2019 or something. Creating micro-content of already existing posts and sharing them on social media is a good approach too. After sometime, you can allow your audience to participate on writing. They can share their thought on your products or services.
Mix of your content
You can’t post same kind of content every time. There need to be pre-planned mix of content. It must include topics that people regularly search on google, currently trends, visual or interactive content to add some colours and variety or some featured pieces from other brands.
You have to grab a suitable pace to post content and there are tools you use to schedule them Trello is a free tool where you can add and organize content. Or you can simply use a spreadsheet to plan your content calendar.
Creating a good blog takes time and effort, so you need to set up a well estimated plan. If you have a specific pattern of choosing dates to post, it would be easy for your audience to lookup for new content. It can avoid being forgotten or neglected by readers.
Always remember that you will not get a large number of readers. So, be consistent and provide quality content.
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