Starting your own blog can be extremely fun, fulfilling, and even financially lucrative if you know what to do. However, there is definitely a lot of competition out there when it comes to blogs—there are believed to be over 500 million blogs on the internet! If you want to run a successful blog, you will need to stand out from the rest of the pack. Here are seven tips for starting and running a blog that brings in readers.
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Choose Your Niche and Audience
While some blogs can cover a broad topic such as “entertainment”, these usually tend to be the biggest blogs with the most funding. Think Buzzfeed for the entertainment/pop culture niche, Pitchfork for music, and TMZ for celebrity gossip. It is extremely hard to compete with these, so why not opt for a more specific niche and audience. For example, instead of just writing about “music”, why not write about a particular genre of music from a particular part of the world—e.g., your local jazz scene? This means less competition and a direct link to your audience. Of course, make sure you know a lot about your chosen niche!
Define the Purpose of Your Blog
Blogs exist for a variety of purposes—some educate people on specific technical skills, some start conversations about societal topics, and others just make people laugh. Broadly speaking, your blog will likely have one of two purposes; to draw in traffic and attention to a business you are running in order to gain customers or to share your writing for its own sake (although many of these blogs also make money through on-site ads). Defining your blog’s purpose helps you stay focused.
Find Your Own Writing Style
If you are running a blog for business purposes, make sure that the writing style and tone of voice matches your brand persona. If you are writing to entertain, you may want to go for a more personal and informal style. Choosing a writing style should also factor in the topic you are writing about.
Choose a Blogging Platform
Although you can design your own site from scratch, many web hosting services such as WordPress and Wix also offer website-building tools which can make this task much easier. Do some research into the different web hosting options before you sign up for anything.
Don’t Neglect SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process of incorporating certain keywords into written website text in order for the site to appear higher on Search Engine Results Pages (or SERPS). You can learn this skill yourself through online tutorials or outsource your SEO to a dedicated SEO agency Birmingham.
Research Before You Write
Before writing anything, always make sure that you do the research on your chosen topic. Making mistakes can negatively affect your reputation as a blogger or even get you into legal trouble if you make inaccurate claims about people!
Network with Other Bloggers
Getting traffic to your blog usually involves the assistance of other bloggers. Internet users often find new blogs through word-of-mouth or from established bloggers sharing them on social media. You can even try out affiliate marketing or guest blogging.
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