Starting A Blog? 15 Tips Every Blogger Should Know

March 25, 2016

Blogging trends always change.


Whether you’re starting new or planning to start blogging, it’s important to analyze modern blogging habits, because every little action you do can either make or break your blog. It’s better to start off on the right foot than to waste time fixing your mistake.


Here, I will give you some pointers on how you can enhance the look and feel of your blog so you can get more people on your site. In fact, they’re what most successful bloggers do to shine out from the thousands of others. Want to be the best? Here’s how:


Write Your Personal Story

#1 (my top pick) starting a blog tips


Your story represents who you are. Without a story, you’re nobody. Tell people how you grew up, what you’re passionate about, what you aspire to be, why you’re writing a blog. After all, people love reading stories about bloggers they admire. Not only will they feel connected with you, they will remember you forever.


That said, make your story a legacy. So the day you become viral, everyone will know you based on your story.


Find Your Own Voice

Many bloggers start writing exactly like their influencers, hoping their success would rub onto them.


Wrong.


Find your own voice. Your voice is what enhances your character, reveals your unique personality, and shows the type of person you are. It tells people what you stand for and what you value. This is what distinguishes you from the ordinary. Be confident in who you are, and your voice will be heard louder, making people remember you more.


Bigger Is Better, For Blog Photos

In this modern era of blogging, you’ll often see blogs with a huge widescreen picture placed on the very top. There’s good reason for that. For one, having bigger visuals draws the line between a modern blog from an old-school one. It gives the impression that your blog is more up-to-date and active, leading people to come to you.


No matter what genre your blog is, big images are the way to go for grabbing attention. Take a look at Iamafoodblog or FashionToast, and you’ll see why what I mean (hint: take a look at the number of their followers, likes, and shares). Given that fact, show your audience what your blog is all about. It beats describing it with a 1,000 words.


Reply To Comments

When you write your blog, you’re not only writing it for yourself. You’re writing it for your readers. Take a few minutes of your time to check your comments and reply back. It shows people you care about their feedback. In fact, it’s one of Moz’s 21 tactics to increase blog traffic. By leaving comments, you drive people to come back to your site to see what you’ve said.


Plus, when people see tons of comments, it tells people three things: one, you’re extremely popular. Two, you have value to share. Last but not least, you’re well-liked.


Don’t forget to comment on other blogger’s posts too. Take it from Sue Water’s reflective blogging idea – check and improvise your blog while reading and commenting on others’. You’ll be a better blogger in the end.


Start Collecting Emails Early: Setup An Email List

#3 (a must-have, no matter your goal is for blogging) starting a blog tips


Ask any successful blogger for “starting a blog tips”, and most likely the first thing they’ll say is to set up a mailing list. In other words, a subscription box. You see, when you have a list of emails on hand, you can send your readers the latest posts you’ve published or alert them when you have a new product. This gives you a constant supply of traffic, and much more if your readers inform their social groups about you.


With that said, get started on setting your mailing list. Every minute delayed could mean several missed opportunities. I highly recommend incorporating Mailchimp to your blog. It’s a wonderful software that keeps track of your email subscribers and makes it easy to send emails. The good thing is you can try it for free if your mailing list is less than 2,000 contacts.


Give Meaning, Give Value

#2 (nearly tied as the 1st pick) starting a blog tips


People don’t come to blogs to read useless junk. Whether you’re writing a fiction, reviewing a product, or spilling your life story to everyone life, keep your readers in mind. Give them value, a reason to come back to your blog. After all, that’s what they came for in the first place.


What kind of value, you may ask? Things like teaching a life lesson, sharing news stories, providing a useful guide, satisfying their boredom. People love learning and if you provide good value, your blog will be shared many times. Not to mention, you can start getting loyal subscribers.


Sniff Out What Your Competitors Are Doing

85% of bloggers I’ve talked to don’t bother to see what their competitors are up to. That’s a big problem in my book. If you want your blog to rank higher than everyone else’s, you got to do your homework. That means figuring out what keywords your competitors are using and finding the source of their backlinks. This will help you determine what topic you should write about and recommend to their backlink source. In the end, you’ll get more people to see your post.


Be sure to check your competitor’s content, design, and images too. If you want more people to be on your blog, you’ll need to make your site look and feel better.


Cut It Short, But Keep It Strong: Write Short Posts

A study by Microsoft revealed that our attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013 thanks to modern technology. And with people usually on-the-go, it’s hard for them to read long posts. Because of these reasons, it’s best to write shorter posts. If you do though, make sure you compromise by keeping it strong, stripping it down to the core message. Replace the fluff and storytelling with compelling words and you’ll notice how powerful this grabs people’s attention.


Keep It Long, But Add Depth: Write Long Posts

Before you ask, let me explain how writing long content can also work. When you write a longer blog post, the more keywords and more relevant content you have. Based on Neil Patel’s case study, search engines rank long blog posts higher, which translates to more traffic.


People like, and tend to share, longer blog posts with in-depth quality. These are usually informatives, how-to guides, and blog series. All in all, if you’re going to write a long post, remember to provide value for your readers.


Invest A Little Bit Of Money

You can never match up with the big players if you don’t spend money. What puts them on top of the game are ads, tools to help them rank, promotional giveaways, just to name a few.


To be at their level or higher, I’d suggest spending money on ads first so you can be at the top result for searches. You can also reach out to a web agency to redesign your blog and make it ten times prettier and easier to use.


Befriend Influencers

Most new bloggers don’t realize how important social relationships are to the success of their blog. Similarly to real life, if you don’t make any friends, you won’t prosper.


Start building an army of allies. Because once you’ve built a solid connection with them, you have everything to gain. You’ll be able to discover their secrets to their success, ask for backlinks, get mentioned on their social media, gain recognition from all of their followers. It’s so much faster generating more traffic to your blog when you got infinite support.


Get In With The Crowd Through Social Media

Today, it’s rare to find someone who doesn’t have a social network account (in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Linkedin). With over 1.8 billion active users checking their social accounts, tap into this gold source and alert people about your blog.


Anything that captures people’s attention and fascinates them has a higher chance of getting shared. That’s what I’ve noticed many successful bloggers do. They actively update new posts on their social accounts, and end up getting thousands of shares, likes, retweets, and followers. I recommend making “clickbait” type of headlines. It’ll be your best bet to get viral.


Make Your Site Mobile Responsive

When’s the last time you saw someone check their mobile phone? A minute ago? 20 seconds?


Given your answer, don’t make it frustrating for users by making them pinch their screen to read your blog. I bet you, you probably lost them to another site that’s easier to navigate. With smartphones ranked as the 2nd most popular device to search the Internet, make your blog mobile-friendly.


Not only will it help you get more traffic from mobile users, but Google will rank your blog higher because they’re now including mobile responsiveness as a ranking factor in their system. Since not many people are aware of the new changes, get a head start and find a web design agency to make your blog adjustable to all screens.


Staying Connected: Backlinks

Backlinks open more doors for people to come to your blog. The more backlinks you plant on other people’s site, the more followers you’d get. This tells Google how popular you are and indicates that you have valuable content that’s worth reading. Because of this, Google will rank your blog higher.


A word of advice though: be sure to get backlinks from reputable sites like Google, Wikipedia, and Yahoo. The reason why is because it hints to search engines that your blog must have good content for these high-ranked sites to link to you. That gives your blog a positive reputation, which leads to a higher rank.


To get backlinks, you must reach out to influencers or actively participate in forums. The goal is to build close bonds with people by sharing valuable feedback, and that takes time to build. If you want to speed up that process, use these great SEO link building tools.


Time To Cross Off

Creating a successful blog doesn’t happen overnight. But if you sit down and fulfill these tips, you’ll have more traffic coming your way. Remember, these are not just any tips. They are tips based on successful bloggers that will make your blog outshine from the mediocre bunch.

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