Tag Archives: blogging how to

10 tips for starting a successful blog

1. Clearly define your niche

The narrower it is, the better it is. Remember that you are not looking for millions of visitors. You are looking for visitors who will do business with you. 200 people coming to your blog and 10 among them submitting your contact form is much better than 5000 people coming to your blog and just 5 among them submitting your contact form.

It is also easier to start a successful blog if your audience is selective. It means there is less competition.

I’m publishing a blog on content writing and copywriting. This is not a narrow niche because in the field of content writing and copywriting there are multiple fields, but when I started it was a niche because there were very few content writers.

Suppose you start a blog on digital marketing. Again, it is a broad topic and many people might be covering many things in the field of digital marketing. How about just creating a blog on podcasting for digital marketing, or digital marketing writers? Or even graphic designers for a select few graphic design tools?

2. Blog about something you love (or hire a blog writer)

I know, this is a clichéd advice. You love different ice cream varieties, and you would like to start a blog on ice cream recipes, but you are into finance and your business requires a successful blog in the field of finance.

Since you are into finance, you must be passionate about your topic (unless fate has entrapped you).

Love for the topic will enable you to work on your blog every day even when you don’t encounter success in the beginning. The ongoing effort can be daunting especially when you don’t see any improvement in your blog traffic.

Most of the people who started a successful blog are passionate about the topic. Every day I write on content writing copywriting, and blogging, because I am interested in these topics. I have learned a lot. I like to share. Also, my website is my bread-and-butter and this keeps me motivated enough to stay put and work on successive blog.

Even if you’re not passionate about the topic but still you want to start a successful blog on your chosen topic, and if you have the budget, the next best option is to hire a blog writer or a professional content writer.

Since he or she is a trained writer, and since he or she will be paid, which is a good incentive, you will get a regular supply of high-quality blog posts.

3. Choose the right blogging platform

Currently my favorites are WordPress and Medium. WordPress gives you independence (I’m talking about WordPress.org). You can install it under your domain name either as a subdomain or a directory. Your design, your layout, your images, and all your blogging content belong to you.

A good thing about WordPress is that it gives you complete customization. You can have custom themes. You can search engine optimize your blog. You can install plugins to achieve various tasks and get different features.

If you want to move to another host all you need to do is take backup of your entire content (images, themes and blog posts) and take it to the new host.

I have been using WordPress for more than 15 years and I believe it has been an excellent choice.

There are many more content management system but WordPress is the best, both for managing website as well as blog.

Medium is a third-party blogging platform. Which means, all the blog posts that you publish belong to Medium. It is basically a content publishing platform that can generate lots of traffic for you. It already has a great following. You don’t have to build everything from scratch. There is a standard template and people are accustomed to the template. Medium allows you to take backup. There is also provision for publishing Medium blog posts appearing under a custom domain but you will need to figure out how to do that.

Both WordPress and Medium have their individual advantages and you will need to weigh your pros and cons. The only problem with Medium is that a third party owns your content and the traffic that comes to Medium may remain on medium and not come to your website. It is good for branding though.

You should also keep an open mind towards LinkedIn blogs. Just like Medium you can use the LinkedIn platform to publish blogs. Again, the content that you publish will remain on LinkedIn and the traffic that you generate will be secondary, but just like Medium, you can increase your visibility faster.

My personal take: Install the blog on your own website through WordPress and keep Medium and LinkedIn secondary options for additional visibility.

4. Publish blog post with greater frequency in the beginning

This will help you get your content crawled and indexed faster by Google. How fast Google crawler crawls your content depends on how often you publish. If your publishing frequency is quite low, the crawling frequency too is quite low.

For example, if you publish just one blog post every week it may take you anywhere between 5 to 6 months to get some traffic and visibility. On the other hand, if you publish a blog post every day, at least for the next two months, your content will get indexed faster and your search engine rankings will improve quicker.

Even if every day is not possible, keep your target 2-3 blog posts every week.

5. Pay close attention to the search intent of your visitors

Why you want people to come and read your particular blog post? What should they get out of it? This can be gauged by knowing their search intent.

Although search intent is SEO specific it can also help you write and publish targeted blog posts to help you start a successful blog without wasting much time.

Are your visitors looking for humor? Are they looking for a specific solution to a particular problem? Do they want to read a review so that they can say something based on your decision or based on the information that you have presented?

Paying close attention to search intent will help you generate highly targeted traffic faster.

6. Create great, high-quality content

The quality of your blog posts is going to be the backbone of your successful blog. No matter how great your template is, no matter what blogging platform you use, no matter what is your frequency, unless the content is great, unless it serves a strong purpose, it is of no use.

I advise my clients to focus on quality at the cost of quantity. Yes, quantity does matter but it is of no use if it is not backed by quality. If you need to compromise based on budget or effort, compromise on quantity, but not on quality.

What does quality mean in terms of starting a successful blog? Here are a few things you should keep in mind:

Write for your readers.
Provide applicable solutions and advice.
Satisfy their search intent.
Make it easier to read your content by using appropriate formatting.
Do enough research and find credible data to back up your claims.
Always be accurate when you are presenting statistics.
Try to write mostly on searcher’s query.
Make your content readable on all devices.
Write in a simple language people can easily understand.
Add your own perspective to trending topics.
Whenever possible, use your own experience and anecdotes to explain concepts.
Write on niche subtopics.
Create a knowledge wealth.

7. Don’t ignore promotion and marketing

Your blog is just another business venture, or a subset of a business venture. To start a successful blog, you need to promote it regularly. Simply publishing blog posts won’t do. How can you market your blog?

Maintain a vibrant presence on social media. Promote your links over there. Start a mailing list. You can promote your links with your mailing list. You can also create shorter versions of your blog posts and then post them on blogging platforms like Medium and LinkedIn with a link back to your original blog post. You can also run paid promotions for certain blog posts on Facebook and Instagram.

8. Maintain a repository of blog post ideas

When people try to start a successful blog, this is one of the biggest challenges they face: how to keep coming up with interesting blogging ideas that would serve their audience? You need to brainstorm constantly. You need to keep your eyes open when browsing the Internet.

You can use apps like OneNote or Google Keep to maintain a list of blogging ideas or you can maintain an Excel sheet.

You can also use Google alerts to come across trending topics and interesting ideas for your blog posts. I have set up Google alerts for content writing, content marketing, online copywriting, and other terms for which I want to get regular blogging ideas.

Here is another trick that I follow: when I start adding blog post ideas to my repository, I don’t use them unless I’m hard pressed against the wall. I keep them when I completely don’t find any new ideas. I keep adding ideas to the repository but then for the upcoming blog post I try to find or come up with a new blogging idea by myself.

9. Publish guest blog posts

Once your blog begins to generate decent traffic, people will approach you to publish guest blog posts for your blog. This is a good way of publishing fresh content and bring in fresh perspective. The only caveat is that they will want backlinks to their own blogs.

Some guest writers will want to publish on your blog to get extra exposure from your blog and some will approach you for backlinks because they want to improve their search engine rankings. You can decide whether you want to use the no-follow tag for your outgoing links but if you do that, do let it be known to the guest bloggers.

I provide do-follow link from the author profile section but not from the main blog body content. Anyway, that’s a different issue.

Make sure when you get guest blog posting ideas you maintain the same quality standards that you maintain for your own blog posts.

10. Prepare for a longer haul to start a successful blog

You will need to be patient. You will need to persevere. There are months of struggle behind overnight successes. No matter how narrow your niche is, someone is already writing on the topic because there are billions of web pages being created and published on the Internet every month.

What the others don’t have his persistence, which you have to start a successful blog. This is where you stand apart. Most of the people give up after a month. Be prepared to continuously publish your blog for at least six months without experiencing any success.

That’s why it is important to choose a topic that is close to your heart so that even if you don’t experience much success in the initial months, at least you enjoy writing about it.

10 Beginners Tips for Business Blogging

Why business blogging is necessary to grow your business on the web

Long gone are the days when blogging was considered an idle person’s pastime. As I have written above, every serious business these days has a blog. Salesforce has a blog. New York Times has multiple blogs. Google has a blog. IBM has multiple blogs. Accenture has multiple blogs. Credible Content has a content writing and content marketing blog.

Every major business and publication on the web has a blog. Is it a fad, or is it a necessity? Or is it just an insatiable desire to reach out to your target audience?

Whether you are a beginner in the realm of business blogging or a seasoned professional, primarily there are 7 reasons why you might be publishing:

A business blog increases content density on your website.
As you cover various topics in your niche, your search engine rankings improve.
You are constantly feeding Google with new content to crawl, index and rank.
People regularly access your website or blog for the valuable content you provide.
You constantly have something new and original to post on social networking websites.
You give yourself and your employees opportunities to share their wisdom and expertise using your business blog.
Eventually, you develop a platform that is independent and doesn’t have to rely on search engines and social networking websites for targeted traffic.

In 2013 New York Times published a negative review of Elon Musk’s Tesla Model’s S car. Elon Musk claimed that the review caused the company almost $100 million.

Musk used his own blog to respond. In the blog he was able to prove what New York Times published was “fake news” and the faults detailed in the New York Times article weren’t actually faults. Consequently New York Times drew lots of flak from Tesla car enthusiasts.

You may say that Elon Musk is one of the most powerful individuals in the world and hence, people would pay attention to his blog.

But the point is, his website has a blog and hence, he has a platform that could be used to counter the New York Times article, the same New York Times that has a well-established publishing platform. In the absence of blogging, Elon Musk would have had to depend on another news publication to carry out his counter argument.

This is just one example of how you can use your business blogging platform to put across your own point in the time of bad PR, and many companies are already doing that.

But that’s just one aspect of business blogging.

Business blogging is good for search engine rankings and creating buzz on social media and social networking websites. As mentioned above, when you start writing about your niche topics, you begin to cover all the important keywords and search terms on your blog. Business blogging is the strongest tool in the hands of small businesses.

Since you are continuously publishing your blog, Google’s crawlers begin to crawl your website and blog frequently, even multiple times a day. This way, you not just have better search engine rankings, your latest content is also added to the Google index almost immediately.

Sometimes my blog posts and web pages begin to appear in search results within a minute of publishing.

Ready to publish your blog?

Know more about my blog content writing and consulting services.

Beginners tips for business blogging

Be ready to make a long-term commitment: Business blogging, or rather, any sort of blogging, but especially business blogging, is a long-term commitment. You can’t have 10 blog posts and then be satisfied. Depending on your goals, you should publish a weekly blog post or a daily blog post. If you want to improve your search engine rankings and conversion rate within 3-4 months then I suggest you publish daily. Once you have started getting decent traffic, you can switch to alternative days and then, you can even go for once a week publishing schedule with high quality blog posts. But be ready for a long-term commitment.
Decide on a blogging platform: My recommendation is always WordPress because when you use WordPress (WordPress.org), though, it has a learning curve in the beginning, you own your content. Everything is there on your website. Your own search engine rankings improve when you publish on your own blog. It is an uphill task to build an audience, but in the end, when you begin to get the results, you will realize that all that effort was worth it.
In the beginning, you can also focus on Medium: This, I wouldn’t suggest for every other blogging platform, but Medium is a bit different. More than blogging, it’s a publishing platform. It has a thriving audience and even when you haven’t published many blog posts, depending on your quality, any of your blog posts can be picked up and suddenly, you will have thousands of people reading your blog post.
Develop a unique voice: Your writing style for your business blogging should be conversational no matter how serious your niche is. Through your business blog, you are mostly having conversations with your audience. Write the way you speak. Since every person speaks differently, if you write the way you speak, your blog will carry a unique voice.
Write as a human being: Even on a business blog something like “we do this” and “we do that” doesn’t sound very good and friendly. If you are a single person managing your business blog then it’s very easy to write as that person, but if you have multiple employees writing for your blog, you can create their profiles so that they write blog posts as themselves rather than as a company. This way your audience can relate to the people writing your blogs, and it will feel connected.
Refrain from promoting your product or service on your business blog: This is because when people come to your blog, they are not interested in knowing about your product or service unless they want to read reviews. People are looking for information. They want their questions answered. If they have a problem, they want to solve that problem. It is best to create a list of questions and then create many blog posts providing answers to those questions. This will also give you an opportunity to use your keywords.
Don’t over-use your keywords, but do use them: Business blogging is a great way of covering all your primary and longtail keywords, but don’t make it too obvious. People can easily make out if you are providing useful information or simply covering your keywords. And anyway, when you are constantly providing solutions and answers to questions, you will be automatically covering your niche keywords, so, you don’t have to walk an extra mile to use them.
Learn to market your business blog content: There was a time when it was very easy to find websites and blogs. With millions of websites and blogs being created every week, there is a lot to be found. This is where content marketing comes in. You have to market your business blog. You have to make sure that people are able to find it. The best way to market your blog is to create and maintain interactive social media and social networking profiles. Whenever you publish a new blog post on your business blog, share the link using your social media and social networking platforms.
Focus on networking and guest blogging to promote your business blog: This is something I need to do more but I don’t, but I’m gradually inching towards that. Constantly publishing your business blog on your own eventually begins to get you enough traction, but the real boost you will get by networking with other, already established publishers and industry leaders who would occasionally promote your links on their own timelines and blogs. You can also offer to write blog posts for other publications to expand your presence. You will also need quality backlinks to improve your search engine rankings.
Let yourself loose sometimes: Although business blogging is primarily used to improve search engine rankings and engagement, especially by small business owners, you don’t always have to strictly stick to your topics. Sometimes also share interesting and amusing pieces of information with your blog audience. You can share a funny joke. You can share a GIF that makes people laugh. Or maybe there is a video that is going viral and you can publish it with your own take. Don’t dilute the focus of your blog by more regularly posting such material, but you can keep a 19-1 ratio of such posts with 19 of business-related content and 1 of simple entertainment.

Business blogging is a work of love, commitment and passion for your field. You can publish a business blog on an ongoing basis only when you have got lots to say.

If you think you won’t be able to commit the required effort and time on your business blog, it is better to collaborate with the content writer or a content writing service like Credible Content. My content writers routinely provide high-quality content to business blogs from all over the world.

Do let me know if you are looking for a business blog content writer for your business and I will gladly provide you the needed information.