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13
Steps To Successful Blogging
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by:
Ant Onaf
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Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used
correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the
attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In
this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful
blogging.
1) Where to start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as
Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service
allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance
knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus
on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best
benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog
doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left
holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are
organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first.
When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to
your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the
announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your
blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs
visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major
inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you
need to!
2) Niche
A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first
decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an
area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You
can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz
Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic
is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic
is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can
be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how
large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a
niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger
niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about
your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to
build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but
first you must build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)
This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not
only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives
your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to
search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one
day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a
time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog
being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors
interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries.
You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more
daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2
hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may
even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog
each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what
happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or
worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog
for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.
4) Traffic
It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are
numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising,
viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and
word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the
signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any
other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to
search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL
feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and
Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family,
friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it
relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for
this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are
valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like
GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be
picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you
include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What
this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when
someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the
article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included
with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled,
and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular
enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across
the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with
that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in
return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of
writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at
least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your
article to at least 10 article syndicators.
5) Track Your Blog
How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is
leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do
not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds
crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to
say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do
not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a
simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do
the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog
template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service
which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking
information, referral information, and search engine information.
Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard
for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to Your Audience
When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others
are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords
are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being
found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords
to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries
use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible
and interesting.
7) Multiple blogs
Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you
should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com,
Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You
can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog
accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This
enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance
that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your
focused keywords.
8) Short & Concise
Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication
your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help
it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice
but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible.
You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors
like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is
good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include
useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your
topic.
9) Digital Art
Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in
your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can
sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog
is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your
content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice
to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your
entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a
caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.
10) Keep it Personal
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include
personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry.
Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more
personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of
your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and
personal endeavors.
11) Interact With Your Visitors
You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with
your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or
"Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to
each week.
Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic
which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the
President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should
state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the
speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".
Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not
disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal
or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop
before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton
(the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting
Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a
actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort
to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will
possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate
this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals.
Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others
about information they only can find at your blog.
12) Make Money
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is
increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic
into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense
or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the
content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout
is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad
receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to
contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising
such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored
Advertising.
13) You're a Professional
You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog
hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You
need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then
check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use,
such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you
have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time
for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your
last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title
should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old
Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link
for future reference: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way
all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem
finding your new blog domain.
At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1
or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more
powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more
authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will
have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make
it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target
the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.
Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging
experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog
will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least
put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight
experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a
foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not
an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence
you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.
About the Author
Ant Onaf is the owner and founder of
www.JournalHome.com He is an online internet marketer, content writer,
and IT consultant. Ant Onaf has years of IT-related experience and
Internet-related experience. His ingenuity, dedication, and passion for
technology, internet marketing, & writing have made him a
monumental icon in the World Wide Web. His blog can be visited at
http://www.journalhome.com/AntOnaf
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