So you have just begun your blogging journey and you’re feeling overwhelmed already? I know, I can understand that you are scared at the thought of maintaining and growing your newly found blog. Blogging will not lead you to overnight success, rather it takes months or even years for you to reach those great heights. Remember that your blog won’t get ranked quickly and start getting thousands of visitors within the first few months after you’ve started blogging. It is a long process of hard work and creating quality content along with adequate marketing.
The number one mistake many new bloggers make is that they look at professional bloggers (people who blog for their living) and wish that it was them. They don’t realize the failures, hardships and hard work behind the success of those bloggers. Not everyone was lucky enough to have enough money to fund their blogs. Most of them started out with their pocket-money of with some meager amount of money they had and then they worked hard, created quality content, earned some decent money and invested it back into their blog to make it grow big.
Now, here are some blogging tips that you need to know right away –
Table of Contents
Show Who You Are to Your Readers
Do not hide who you are from your readers. Not only does it make things look worse but also it makes you look shady. People want to know the face behind the blog – only then will they be able to connect with you on their mind. For example, you are reading an interesting piece of article on a website but when you’re trying to find who the author of the article is, you’re greeted by dead ends or some random generic avatars, how would you feel? It would lead to a sense of incompleteness among the readers.
Try to display your face right below your posts or at least in an about page.
Create Quality Content
Now that you have started blogging try to publish some quality content, that is, content worth reading and sharing. There’s no use of sharing random pieces of stuff on your blog if you truly want to grow it big. More importantly, no one comes to your blog to read quotes and stuff which they can find elsewhere on the web. You need to give them something which they cannot find elsewhere. Instead of sharing someone’s quote, why not try to write down your own motivational story? Keep it real or die to try. An average internet user can differentiate between quality blog posts and random shit. Always try to create content which creates value for your readers and subscribers. If your posts are really worthy enough, people will start sharing it automatically.
Be Consistent
Whatever you do, try to post consistently on your blog. It doesn’t matter whether you post every single day or thrice a week but try to remain consistent. If you’re publishing three posts a week, try to keep up the same for the coming weeks too. Don’t give up your consistency in posting or your traffic will take a dip. According to a study by HubSpot, businesses that published blog entries on a regular basis added subscribers over twice as fast as those companies that added content once a month.
Give it Some Time
Just because you started blogging doesn’t mean people will automatically come and read your posts. Blogging is like a long-term investment plan where you won’t get the returns immediately. Sometimes, you may need to keep up with blogging for years until you can start seeing your results. It can easily take more than a year or two to reach thousands of daily visits on your blog.
And as the exercise motto goes, if there’s no pain then there’s no gain.
Start Building your Email List
Whether you are blogging for time pass or growing your online business, you should start collecting email addresses from your potential readers. Put up a sign-up form on your blog (either on the sidebar or below posts) where readers can subscribe to your newsletters. Make it look attractive and keep it as simple as possible. By the way, don’t ever spam your subscribers by sending them nonsensical shit or junk filled with your affiliate links or advertisement banners. This will make them unsubscribe from your email newsletters right away!
If you’re new to building email lists and campaigns, you should definitely read about AWeber – the number one email marketing platform for bloggers. Click here to get a free 30-days trial of AWeber email marketing platform (exclusive deal just for you).
Make your Headlines Catchy
No matter how much effort you put into creating your blog posts, people won’t open them until they find the headlines catchy. So, it is your prime duty to make your headlines as catchy and crisp as possible – people should be inclined to click on it give it a read. Catchy headlines can also massively increase your click-through rates you can achieve from search engines result pages (SERPs). If headlines of your related posts are catchy, it will lead to an increased time the visitor spends on your blog, which greatly reduces your bounce rate. Lesser the bounce rate, the higher your posts will be ranked by search engines. Higher your posts rank on search engines, more will be the organic traffic to your blog.
Build your Social Media Presence
Other than search engines, social networks are the only place from where you can get free and quality traffic. So, make sure you have a strong presence on these social networking sites. Don’t try to create a profile/page on every social media site over there. Choose a few sites worth concentrating, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. If possible you can boost your presence by spending a few bucks advertising on these sites. Higher the number of fans/followers you’ve got on these sites more will be the user interaction with your posts. Search engines such as Google and Bing take the number of shares you’ve got on your posts in these sites as a factor for ranking. Higher the number of likes, comments & shares you’ve got for your posts on Facebook means more people are interested in your content.
Don’t Steal Others Content
As a new blogger, you might even be tempted to steal content from other websites. This may strike you when you hit the writer’s block, a condition where you are unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing. This might seem easy but you’re hurting yourself in the long run. If people find you’re lifting content off their sites without prior permission or attribution, you are in for trouble. You may get sued or the person may file a complaint against you with your web host and you may get your site suspended without any prior information.
Google is smart enough to detect if your content is an original work or a copy. If Google finds that you’ve copied someone’s content, it will penalize you and push your site down on search engine result pages and in worst case scenarios may even remove your site from their index.
Market Your Content
If you want your content to reach a whole lot of audience, then you need to do some marketing. Blogging doesn’t stop to just creating content. It also involves marketing the content to the right audience. Use a tool like Buffer, Hootsuite or IFTTT to schedule your posts on social media. This will make sure that your content is promoted even when you are sleeping. Though they are mostly premium services, their free plans are as good.
If you’re low on budget or wouldn’t want to spend right now on marketing, you can start out with Crowdfire, a super-smart marketing sidekick. All you need to do is connect your social media accounts and your blog to Crowdfire and its smart algorithm will do the heavy lifting for you. All you will ever need is a mere five minutes per day to schedule your posts to be shared automatically across all platforms.
Tell Your Story
People like reading stories, don’t they? Share your own story on how you started out blogging. Also, try to be yourself – don’t ape the styles of other bloggers or influencers. Moreover, don’t be too professional and use sophisticated English words and phrases in your blog – not everyone can understand what you’re trying to say and they’ll kiss you goodbye. Try to keep it as simple as possible so that people needn’t guess what you’re trying to convey through your posts.
Conclusion
Thus I hope you found this article useful in learning how to improve yourself and grow in the world of blogging. If you liked this article, I’m pretty sure you would like my article on how to growth hack and drive traffic like a pro too!
Great, useful tips!
Glad that you found it useful Kristie! 🙂
Superb Tips👏
Thank you Ulfat!
Most welcome Antony…
All of your post are so helpful, although some go straight over my head. Wish I had been born 40 years later, and would pick it all up so much easier.
Haha… Everyone wishes they knew things earlier. But that’s not how things work. No one knows what’s in store for them until they get it. I myself wish I knew about WordPress and digital marketing earlier because it would’ve made my life more easier.
But there’s nothing we can do about it. Cheers! 🙂
I know that you are my ‘go to guy’ for anything to do with WordPress.
Thank you for the great tips. Very helpful. I am new to blogging and trying to learn the ropes.
You’re welcome Tina! Glad that you found it helpful – it makes me happy to learn that fellow bloggers find my posts useful. Oh by the way, welcome to the blogosphere! 🙂
Thank you so much!
This was very helpful.
Great to hear! 🙂
Interesting tips and sounds simple that I think most of us forget that the basic is all we need and not some magic formula.
Exactly! That’s what many amateur bloggers often forget and make things complicated for themselves.
Hey Anto, I’m new in blogging. When I write on a post, a big time already I have spend on it because my English is so poor. Can you suggest me about some trick how I can improve my language as you…
Hey Kailash, don’t worry man. You can use a free tool like Grammarly to help you make your writing better.
Hey Anto, I noticed you mentioned grammarly. I have a really good tool at checking for common mistakes people make when writing. I don’t want to spam your comment section but I was wondering if you would give it a spin and let me know what your feedback is.
I will reply with an address if you allow me to. Thanks!
Hey Romeo, I checked it out & found it pretty interesting. So, you may go ahead and tell us more about it. Maybe someone who stumbles upon this page one day would find it really useful.
Its good to read this post… I have read many articles before on how start blogging in a good way…tips, guides etc. Most of them are so similar but this post is unique and different… High five to you 🙂
Wow. Thank you so much for the compliment Maryam! 🙂
Descriptive and useful post….
Thank you so much Bhavana.
As usual, your articles are very helpful. I have one question though – you suggested we make headlines catchy. Also I did find on some places to make headlines keyword research. Confused as to how to marry them?
Hey, you should definitely checkout the free Headline Analyzer tool from CoSchedule. It will help you to create better headlines and understand how people would feel about your posts just from looking at the post title. Hope that helps!
Thanks for the tip Anto! I definitely will!
Really liked your blogging tips, reblogged it on my blog.
Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure always.
Hi! I’m new here. Please check out my blog and give your reviews 🙂
Hey Shruti, I had a look at your site just now. It looks like it is missing the basic ‘about me’ and ‘contact’ pages. Once you add them, set up a menu on your site. Also, try to add a site tagline and some social media icons. And hey, happy blogging! 🙂
Thank you so much for the feedback! I’m going to update my ‘about me’ and ‘contact’. I don’t really understand the menu thing though, and I’m not aware of the site tagline and the social media icons you’re talking about. ☹️ I’d be glad if you could help me, thank you ❤️
Oh hey, I’ve linked to the related support documents in my previous comment. So, please click through them and read it when you’re free and come back to me if you’ve got any doubts. Or if you’re feeling really lazy, you can send me a message instead and I would be happy to help.
Thanks for sharing, starting an email list is definitely something I need to do. Did you find having a box worked or that you needed to offer something in return such as an ebook for example?
Hey Giles, I hope that found this post useful. I totally agree with you that you must start building your email list because, as a blogger it is one of the most important asset you can have – a place in people’s email inbox. I didn’t see any growth in email subscribers by just placing a subscribe widget in the sidebar or footer section, but I did see growth when I asked people to subscribe to my email newsletters (at the end of my posts) so that they don’t miss out on my latest posts. Please don’t spam their inbox – instead, send out a weekly mail (like a weekly digest). People don’t really care about freebies and gifts if they really like your content and value you much.
If you are low on budget, you can get started with MailChimp Free Plan. Or if you can afford to shell out some money, I would recommend you to get started with GetResponse [30-days free trial].
Oh great, that does sound like a really good way to incorporate it actually. I think I should be including more content at the bottom of posts for people to engage more and sign up for an email newsletter etc. I really appreciate the advice, thank you!
Definitely. Always include a call-to-action before the end of a post asking your readers to subscribe to your blog or follow you on social media if they haven’t yet; it works in most of the cases. You’re welcome by the way!
I’ll definitely have to!
Hi Antony,
I try to do all of these… Thanks for confirmation I’m doing everything right.
Janice
You’re welcome Janice. I checked out your blog and found that you are doing really well. All I can do right now is wonder how you are able to spend that much of time on your blog!
Thank you for the nice compliment. I was hoping we could connect over at Instagram. Can we follow each other there?
We’re already following each other 🎉 It’s @thewpfan, I gave you a follow-back.
Thank you for checking out my blog.
Janice
You’re welcome Janice!
This is such an informative post about blogging for beginners. This will help so many. Thank you for sharing!
You are welcome Natalie. I’m so glad that you found this post informative and yes, it should definitely help many newbie bloggers out there!
Great useful ideas and reaffirming to me I am on the right track.
Hey Sue, if you are already following these tips you are definitely on the right track for becoming a better blogger. Happy Blogging!
As a blogger of some years I agree with your tips here Anto and would probably add to reply to comments that people leave. I’ve found the blogging community a great resource and an unexpected bonus of blogging. Thanks so much for sharing your tips with us at the Blogger’s Pit Stop this week. Debbie from Deb’s World (debs-world.com)
I’m so glad that you agree with my post Debbie. People in the blogosphere are very supportive and helpful of new bloggers. As a way of giving back to the community that helped and shaped me, I am doing my best by sharing such useful tips for people who are just getting started. By the way, you are always welcome!
Great to hear from Anton and I enjoy the supportive nature of blogging very much. You are doing a great job sharing tips to help others.
Thank you very much for the kind words Debbie! 🙂
These are helpful tips for any blogger- after three years I am still trying to improve these aspects of my blog.
You’re welcome Aletha. Don’t worry, growing your blog needs some smart work and persistence. Keep trying and you may succeed one day.
Antony, your helpful post on blogging tips for beginners has been popular on the Blogger’s Pit Stop. We will be featuring this post on Friday. Congratulations.
Kathleen
Blogger’s Pit Stop
WOW. That’s so great to hear Kathleen, I’m excited already! 😀
Hi Anto. Being an inexperienced blogger, most times I feel invisible!! Your post has been most helpful and encouraging, many thanks. Enjoyed everyone’s comments as well, a really great vibe. Cheryl
Hey Cheryl. Don’t worry, every one of us stepped into blogging as an inexperienced and amateur blogger. I struggled a lot too before I could get a good amount of regular traffic to my blog. Just keep trying and do not give up, that’s the only suggestion I’ve got for you. Happy Blogging!
It is really important to allow your reader to get to know you. Share of yourself and others will share with you too.
Hey Elise, your comment is totally on point. If you want to be successful with blogging, do not hide behind the computer screen and stay anonymous unless you post on very sensitive or controversial topics. Set up your Gravatar so that people can see who you are anywhere on the Internet.
Good info.
I’ve been thinking to start a blog soon but not sure yet which area I should go!
That’s awesome Shawn! May be if you can tell me what you like to share about, I can suggest you a related niche.