How Do You Make Your Blog
Blogging is a great way to share your ideas, opinions, and expertise with the world.
But how do you make your blog stand out from the crowd?
How do you attract and retain loyal readers? How do you turn your passion into
a profitable business?
These are some of the questions that many bloggers
face every day.
In this article, we’ll give you some blogging tips
that’ll help you take your blog to the next level.
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced blogger,
you'll find something useful and inspiring in this guide.
Blogging
Tips for Beginners
1. -Establish clear objectives
2. -Find your blogging niche
3. -Analyze your competitors
4. -Pick a blogging platform
5. -Read other blogs consistently
6. -Build a content strategy
7. -Find topics with high potential
8. -Establish a posting schedule
9. -Rite for your readers first
1 -Use AI the smart way
11 -Make your titles clickable
1 -Make your blogs easy to read
1 -Optimize content for search intent
1 -Share unique research
1 -Collaborate with other bloggers
1 -Include external sources
1 -Edit thoroughly
1 -Distribute and promote on various
channels
1 -Guide blog visitors to take action
2 -Track blog performance
2 -Refresh and repurpose your content
2 -Create a quality control process
1.Establish
Clear Objectives
Whether you run your own blog or grow a
corporate website, setting up objectives should be your priority.
If your company has decided to start a blog, make sure
to create a list of business goals you hope to accomplish.
Here are some examples:
·
“We are starting a company blog to increase brand
awareness and visibility by ranking for high-volume keywords.”
·
“We are launching a blog to generate more conversions
by sharing product-led content.”
If you are building a personal blog, a business model should still be at the forefront of your mind.
You can plan to monetize your blog by running ads or
offering paid courses to help you set a specific course of development for your
blog.
2. Find Your Blogging Niche
Half the fun of blogging is writing about
topics you’re interested in. When you demonstrate your passion for a topic,
your readers will be more invested in what you have to say.
It’s also essential to find out whether there’s demand
for what you have to share.
You can investigate the demand for your topic by:
· -Analyzing the search volume for your topics and
keywords
· -Talking with people in your network
· -Being active on community platforms and forums like
Reddit and Quora
· -Digging into social media platforms, including LinkedIn and Facebook groups.
In reality, it applies to both corporate blogs and
individual bloggers. Always strive to find the spot where your background, your
mission, and your expertise intersect with an actual market gap.
If you’re not entirely
sure which niche to choose, here are some questions
to help you brainstorm which kind of blog to write:
· -What are your interests and passions?
· -What are some areas where you can share real-life
experiences?
· -Are there others talking about your same interests?
· -Which ones have the lowest competition?
· -Do your potential topics get a lot of traffic?
· -What are some ways you can monetize your blog?
In addition to offering an integrated learning
experience for growing your Etsy shop, they run a blog that covers the
trendiest topics in the niche.
3. Analyze Your Competitors
By analyzing your competitors, you can get a deeper understanding of what’s trending in your niche. It’ll also help you see what kind of blog topics and formats resonate with your audience.
·
Identify the key websites creating content in your
niche (even if they’re not your direct competitors)
·
Analyze the content categories they have on their blogs,
the most popular pages, and the keywords they are ranking for
·
Find out what makes each of them unique and what their
differentiation points are.
·
Assess their tone of voice, the visual look, and overall formatting
·
Learn about ways they are monetizing their websites
·
Examine their social media channels
For example, imagine you wanted to see which topics
and keywords perform well for GrowingYourCraft’s competitors.
First, manually inspect their websites to find the
most popular/trending blog section or identify topics they seem to target the
most.
If you are not sure how to find your competitors, you can start by googling the most important keywords related to your business (e.g. “etsy courses") and analyzing the websites ranking on the first pages.
Then, head to the “Competitors” tab to see the
websites in your niche that are competing with yours.
4. Pick a Blogging Platform
Finding the right content management
system (CMS) is important. This is the platform you will use to host and manage
your blog.
Choosing the best one will depend on several factors,
including your budget, your customization needs, customer support, etc.
If you are launching a corporate blog, you will also
need to check whether your existing business website is already being managed
via a CMS. If it’s not, think about ways to connect them.
There are many great blogging platforms with varying
capabilities. But the most popular
ones are:
· -WordPress
· -Webflow
· -Drupal
· -Ghost
If you plan on using WordPress, be sure to check
hosting sites like GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Siteground for their WordPress
website subscriptions.
Oftentimes, they are more affordable than hosting a
website directly from WordPress.
You can also use
drag-and-drop type platforms like Wix and Squarespace, which are easier to use and are good for beginners.
However, their capabilities can be somewhat limited compared to the other CMS
products.
Ensure technical optimization
Once you have your blogging platform set
up, ensure that all potential technical issues are taken care of.
It’s important to make your website crawlable by search engines and to avoid having pages that are loading too slowly.
5. Read Other Blogs
Consistently
Novelists should read more books to be
better authors and bloggers should read more blogs to be better
bloggers.
When we read other work besides ours, we
are exposed to other ideas, other writing styles, other tones of voice. And all
of what we read can influence how we write.
So no matter how much time you have during
the day, whether it’s 30 minutes or two hours, spend some time reading through
online content that interests you or is related to your niche.
Even reading content outside of our
interests or wheelhouse can be beneficial!
If you’re not sure whose content to read,
try reading content by influencers, thought leaders, subject matter experts,
publications, and even your competitors.
6. Build a Content Strategy for
Your Blog
Now that you have a platform and a good
understanding of your niche and audience, it’s time to start building a content
strategy.
Sure, you can aimlessly cover various
blogging topics on the fly and see where they stick. But in the long term, that
isn’t always the best solution.
80%
of marketers felt
their blogs performed better when they had a strategy. With a strategy,
marketers can focus on goals more, find areas for improvement, and create more
measurable progress.
A good strategy also helps you establish your brand
and story more clearly. That way, your audience knows who you are and what
you’re about from the beginning.
Documenting your content
strategy will involve
listing the following items:
·
Your target audience
·
Primary goals for your blog (e.g., building a contact
list and converting those people into paying customers)
·
Metrics you’ll use to track performance (e.g., traffic
and newsletter subscriptions)
·
Resources and budget
Next, you’ll move to
creating a content plan for your blog that will speak to
specific content topics, keywords, dates, promotion tactics, etc.
7. Find Content Topics with High Potential
Now it’s time to find content topics you
can cover on your blog.
It’s important to focus on the high-efficiency topics
that have lower competition and an optimal search volume, especially at the
beginning.
Add making sure you have the relevant experience to
talk about them, and you’ll find your sweet spot!
You can find
high-efficiency topics using the Topic
Research tool. Simply enter
a high-level idea and it’ll generate dozens of related subtopics.
You can then
filter them by topic efficiency. In a nutshell, it means that the tool will
show topics that have the best combination of search volume and ranking
difficulty.
Once you’ve selected your topics, you can
proceed to more detailed keyword research. Ideally, each blog post you plan
would rank for more than one keyword.
So, make sure you have a list of primary
and related keywords for each article. To find them, you can use the Keyword
Magic Tool.
8. Establish a Posting Schedule
You want your customers to rely on you.
You also want them to be repeat readers as your website grows.
Posting consistently shows your readers
you are dedicated to your website and its growth. It also helps you rise in the
rankings much faster.
When you’re setting up your strategy, be
sure to factor in not only a writing schedule but also a posting frequency.
Do you want to post once a week, twice a
week, or four times a week?
Decide which post frequency will work best
for you. If doing four posts a week feels like a lot, start with one or two
posts per week.
There are a few ways to make sure you’re maintaining
your blog post frequency.
You can:
·
Blog from your phone on mobile apps like Notepad,
WordPress, Google Docs, etc.
·
Write a few posts at a time and schedule them weeks in
advance
·
Jot your ideas down as they come to you and expand on
them later if time is limited
Being consistent, having a schedule, and keeping up
with your ideas will help you in the long run. It will also save you more time
than being a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants blogger.
9. Write for Your Readers First
Writing for search engines is important
because you want to rank. But if you write for search engines first, you risk
losing your readers and their attention.
And if you’re writing for yourself, that can also turn
readers away. You can still write about topics you’re passionate about while
meeting your readers’ needs, though.
Recipe bloggers tend to give a lengthy and
detailed history of their simple chicken and dumpling recipe before getting to
the ingredient list.
Because of the way they structure their
blogs, recipe bloggers as a whole have faced criticism.
Keep in mind, the most important thing is
to make sure your reader gets what they came for when they visit your
blog.
They should have something to walk away
with, whether it’s a new product, new information, or a deeper inspiring
message.
10. Use AI the Smart Way
AI can save you hours of work and lead
to better outcomes.
For example, 79% of small businesses and bloggers report an
increase in content quality thanks to AI.
65% of them also see an improvement in SEO
rankings when using AI.
How do they achieve this?
By combining AI with human
oversight.
Remember: Google does not penalize AI
content. What Google really cares
about is your content’s quality.
So, here's how to
use AI writing
tools:
You can use AI to create long-form pieces that will
rank—if you do it right.
· -Leverage AI to brainstorm ideas and analyze your
audience
· -Enrich your AI content with original ideas and
expertise
· -Use specialized tools to find keywords and analyze
search intent
· -Focus on creating a great reader experience
· -Edit, fact-check, and further refine your AI content
Many AI tools like
ChatGPT don't provide real-time data on keywords, search intent and content
optimization.
You can either pair them
with thorough manual research or use specialized content tools like ContentShake AI.
It combines ChatGPT's capabilities with Semrush's SEO
data and a user-friendly blog editor.