It’s been many years when I chose blogging as my profession, I worked hard to learn things which were new, spent sleepless nights learning about blogging and applying it to my blog, still I was confused that the way in which I was doing things were right or not?
Even after so many years, I feel same because blogging is a process of learning and it never stops. So, if you want to be a blogger and love to learn new things then you are in right path. For me Blogging is synonymous to Learning New Things and applying it.
Many of newbie bloggers are not sure from where they need to start blogging, they will read a lot of articles about blogging and later end up in confused state as the amount of information is huge. I have been through that situation and know how frustrating it is to get basic tips about blogging in simple language for newbie that is why I thought why not to write an article about a few basic blogging tips and tricks which will help you to grow as a blogger and you will find it useful in your blogging career. Here are few tips which every blogger must know:
Know Your Passion :
If you want to get success in any work then you need to have passion for that work, same goes for blogging, therefore I always suggest that go for a niche which you find interesting and keep learning new things. There are a lots of hurdles comes when you start blogging and without passion it’s quite tough to keep giving your 100%.
When you start blogging, you are worried about quality content, traffic, negative comments from readers and such things are enough to provoke to leave blogging but if you have passion for blogging then all such hurdles don’t bother you and helps you to keep going forward.
If you are passionate about blogging you would surely do many things differently than other blogger who just do blogging as a hobby. Like I am always ready to learn new things and no matter how much time it takes to learn. Another thing I love about blogging is that I forget about everything going around me while I am writing articles. I am crazy for each and every process of blogging from writing articles, sharing it on social media, reading new stuff, commenting or doing SEO. Blogging with passion is kind of drug addiction, once you start it’s tough to leave.
Even if you feel just like me for blogging, then that’s the passion you require to get successful and stay motivated.
Plant Your Blogging Strategy :
Whenever a business is started, we have a business plan so why not for blogging? Even blogging is a business and a proper planning is needed for getting successful in blogging. Professional bloggers have a long-term plan for their blogs from starting a blog, managing it and how to earn from it.
Planning the strategy helps you to know exact path you need to follow to get success. Here are few points which you need to keep in mind while preparing blogging strategy.
1. Why do you want to start a blog?
2. What is objective of your blog?
3. What would be your Niche and targeted Keywords?
4. Description about you and your team and their goals.
5. What would be your marketing strategy?
6. What would be your source of earning?
Above are a few questions which you need to ask when you are planning your blog strategy, of course there is no rule to plan a blog, but if you get solution to these questions then you can make a good strategy for your long-term blogging career. You even need to keep a matrix or use an analyzing tool which will let you know that, you are getting positive results from planning or not. A good plan will always help you whenever you are stuck or get demotivated.
Read and Get Information :
As I mentioned earlier that blogging is about sharing your views, but you can share your views effectively when you have sufficient knowledge about any topic. To improve your knowledge you need to read a lot so that you can get enough information and stay updated.
Reading helps you to learn new things and thus you start getting new ideas and new ways to share your views to your targeted readers. It helps you enhance your thinking capabilities and thus you come up with different questions and their solutions which you can include in your articles as your own perception. Reading motivational articles or blogs of same niche helps to motivate yourself and allow your thoughts to flow in your articles. Even the quality of article you read, reflects your thoughts and affects your writing that’s why make sure you read good stuff.
You might be thinking that reading is an easy job and I am sure that every blogger loves to read, but reading takes time and thus it’s important that you have a few basic reading abilities like knowing what exactly what information you want from the article/book or scanning only important highlighted parts instead of reading each and every word unless you don’t understand. This will help you to read faster and grasp more useful information.
Have a Unique Writing Style :
When I tell anyone that I blog, the first thing comes to their mind is that I write articles, they don’t think much about SEO or digital marketing. Everyone knows that content is most important part of blogging. Even if you have average blog design and have good SEO skills then you can easily make the list of subscribers by sending traffic to your blog and providing them quality content. People read blogs because they need some information and if you are providing that information in easy language and without copying from other blogs then they will surely visit your blog frequently.
For writing quality articles, you need to have your own writing style. Never try to copy from other successful bloggers because it will reflect in your articles. While writing articles I always try to keep it in an easy language because I want my readers to understand what information I am trying to deliver. Another thing to keep in mind is to write articles as if you are communicating with your readers, they should feel that you are in front of them and providing required information. This is the best way to connect to your audience.
One more thing to remember is to proofread your articles before publishing for grammatical mistakes. English is my second language, thus I do make a few silly mistakes and therefore I always prefer to proofread my article at least twice.
Whenever I finish writing my article, I take a break and then as a reader I read out my article to find mistake. I also use proofreading tools like Ginger or PolishMyWriting to improve grammar in my article. For me proofreading is the only task I hate to do in blogging, but I never skip that part.
When we are done with writing article, proofreading it then comes the fun part to make our article presentable with help of images, interlinks, references to other similar articles, etc. A formatted article is easy to read, especially if it is break up in highlighted points and text because it makes easy for readers to scan the article in one go. Interlinking of another similar blog posts helps reader to move to next similar article and thus it effects positively on your website’s bounce rate.
Your work never stops after writing article, to connect with your traffic you need to reply to comment and solve their queries. Of course you don’t have to reply to all the comments like “nice written”, but you should reply to all genuine comments and it might help others bloggers to get into conversation and share their views.
Social Media Marketing :
Social media is increasing day by day and helping bloggers to build community and drive traffic to your blog for free. You need to be active on all popular social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin etc. Staying active on social media means you need to share useful articles, reply to comments, track follow blogger and pro-bloggers and all this is totally time-consuming.
First thing to do to get traffic from social media is to add social buttons on your blog. If you are a newbie on social media then first analysis how your co-bloggers are sharing, replying or retweeting articles. You need to be on active on every social networking and this way you will start knowing which time is good to share your articles, so that you can drive targeted audience on your blog. You can even run a contest on your blog and give away free goodies to reader who give you maximum likes or share your articles on social networks.
Once you get frequent with your blog posts, you can even start with guest posts. Guest posts are blog posts which you write for other blogs, there are many successful blogs out there who allows guest bloggers to write quality blog posts for their blogs. Guest post is useful for both you and blog owner like it helps you to get exposure to new readers and thus you get more shares and targeted traffic to your blog. Apart from traffic, it also helps you to make contacts with co-bloggers and learn new blogging tips and tricks. Guest blogging provides you benefits of backlinks, which is loved by search engines. Gradually you will start building a community where you can share information and get noticed by other bloggers on larger platform.
Good Design :
I mentioned earlier that content is key for blogging, but design of your blog is also important to attract your readers. If your blog design is too colorful or fonts are not readable then it might repel your readers. Your blog design must be user-friendly, easy to navigate, soothing to eyes and the searched information should be easy to find.
I always prefer to read from blogs which have good navigation and fonts and where I can easily search the information I am looking for. If you are a WordPress blogger, you will get a lots of widgets/ plugins to improve your blog design and navigation, but make sure that plugins are not making your blog loading time slow. You should also add social sharing buttons and subscribe buttons to your blog, so that readers can share your article instantly.
Use categories, popular and archives list which will help readers to know which are more interesting topics to read, but either make it drop-down list or list down only a few of them (like 5-6 articles). Footer should not be messy, you can add “About Me”, archives or contact information widgets. Try not to use too many advertisements on your blogs, especially inline text and between articles, it is quite frustrating for a reader when he/she is reading any article and pop-up ads get clicked.
Earning Should Be Secondary :
There are millions of blog, but only a few of them are making decent money and getting successful because most of the bloggers start blogging to earn instant money, while other successful bloggers are passionate about their work.
For pro-bloggers, money is secondary and for maximum newbie bloggers, money is primary goal and that’s the reason they quit blogging at an early stage. People start blogging because they need income of other probloggers and think that it is an easy task to earn via blogging, but the reality is different.
Just like other business, blogging also needs hard work, patience and dedication. You can’t make money in a day, you need to be passionate for your work and money will gradually follow.
If you want to be a pro-blogger then you need to start blogging as a hobby, keep learning new blogging tips and tricks, grasp a lot of information, avoid mistakes and share wisely with your readers. I am sure that above points will help you to grow in blogging industry and get passionate about your work. If you have any useful tips for blogging then we would love to know from you, don’t forget to drop a comment.
First of all thanks Harmandeep Singh
Great point. I still have to tell myself that silence in a remote session is okay. I try to “University Teachers” around that by making sure there’s something obvious happening on screen.
Regards
Katya
I am glad that you like it !!