Originally posted on https://sunnysweetdays.com/2019/06/how-to-make-sure-your-blog-is-successful.html
Anyone who wants to blog for a living, or even just for a part-time supplementary income, will need to know how they can expect to make it a real, commercial success. You might well have been blogging for a long time and have many great skills and abilities, and you might have a lot of experience. But until you know how to make that into a successful blog in commercial terms, you can’t hope to really earn money from it, however, you might be choosing to monetize it. In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the things that you will want to focus on to make sure that your blog is going to be a huge success. Take care of these, and that should be much easier to be sure of.
Know Your Theme: You will probably be aware that you need to have some kind of a theme to your blog if it is to be a success. But deciding on a theme can be difficult. There are many different ways you can approach this. You can think about using your personality to drive the theme, whether it is your genuine personality or something more like a persona. Or you might want to think about something that you are good at writing about, whether it is something you have a lot of knowledge about or just a strong interest of yours. However you arrive at it, you will find that being clear on what your theme is really makes a difference to how likely the blog is to succeed.
This works for a number of reasons. For one thing, it gives you the ability to focus and hone in more on what you are writing, which keeps you engaged and ensures that you can produce better quality content. It’s also a way to ensure that you can produce more, and as we will see the amount that you write for your blog is one of the most important factors of all. By having a theme that works for you and which you find particularly interesting, you will find this much easier. So one of the first things to do is to make sure that you are happy with the theme you have. As long as you are, you can build on that and you will find that it really makes a huge difference.
The Power Of A Good Domain: Choosing your domain name is hugely important too, and many people struggle with it for a long time before they find one that really works as well as possible for them. You might have the same issue, and find yourself having to spend a long time looking at a number of different domain purchase websites. However, as long as you are happy to put that kind of effort in, you will find that you are much more likely to end up with a strong domain name. Having a strong domain will prove very important, as you want it to be easily memorable and easy to find. You also need it to be in line with your branding and theme, and that is why a lot of bloggers actually start with the domain name first and then work around that in order to bring about the right kind of synthesis.
However long it takes, finding a decent domain will ensure that you can develop a much better blog on the whole and that people can find it much more easily. That will bode well for the future of the blog in a way which you will find beneficial for the blog itself.
Be Part Of The Blogging Community: While it might be tempting to try and be an island in your blogging career, this is not actually the best way to go about it. You need to try and make yourself more and more a part of the blogging community, and if you do so you will certainly find that you can expect much greater things for your blog. So what are some of the ways you should try to get more involved in the blogging community?
One of the easiest and surest ways to get more involved in the blogging community is to write guest posts for other blogs. For that, you need to get in touch with those bloggers, which you can do in a number of ways. Bear in mind that different people have different preferred means of communication, and email is not always the way. You might need to learn how to fax from a computer, or you might need to give someone a call. Whatever it takes, start to get in touch with other bloggers. You will want to make a point of choosing those blogs carefully, as they should ideally be blogs which are similar but not too much of a competition for your blog. You will find that having posts published on those blogs can really help to market your own blog, especially if you have a byline with each post linking back to your blog – which you should absolutely do. All in all, it’s a pretty powerful means of getting the word out about your blog.
As well as that, it’s worth seeking and accepting guest posts from others too. That will ensure that you are giving as much as you are receiving, and that makes you a more appreciated part of the community. It will also mean that you draw in some readers from those other blogs, which helps to add even further to your marketing. With that kind of approach to guest posting, you can make sure that you are helping your blog to be much more successful.
Your Writing Skills: It should go without saying that the most important part of any blog is the writing itself. As long as the writing is of a good quality, you can expect people to enjoy reading it, and to keep coming back for more too. Keeping a loyal readership requires that you are able to write well, and writing well is not something that comes all that easily, even if you have a knack or natural skill for it to some degree. So in order to ensure the best possible future for your blog, you need to spend a lot of time and effort on developing your writing skills as best as you can. As it happens, there are a lot of ways in which you might choose to approach this.
The most important thing to bear in mind is that you need to spend a lot of time writing if you are to get better at it. Just like anything else, it requires that you actually put the time in if you hope to improve. That is important to reiterate for the simple fact that so many people fail to appreciate just how important practice is. If you are not writing regularly, then you simply can’t hope to improve, so this is the main thing you need to think about.
Beyond merely making sure that you show up at the desk, you will also find it helps if you make a point of paying attention to other writers, in particular bloggers who you admire and respect. The more that you analytically read such writers, the more you will get a real sense of what it is that you need to do to improve your own writing. This is hugely important, so make sure that you are reading as much as you are writing. It really will make a difference.
As long as you continually work on improving your writing skills, your blog will improve too, and you will find it a lot easier to have the kind of readers who will stick around. That will mean that your blog is going to be much more commercially successful too, so it is absolutely worth thinking about.
Consistency: You can’t readily expect your blog to be truly successful if it is not putting out posts routinely, so it is necessary to think about some way of developing some genuine consistency with your blog. You need to think about setting up a posting schedule which you can stick to, so that you can make sure you are posting as often as necessary for your audience. You need to be careful here, as you don’t want to overwhelm anyone, but nor do you want to leave it too long in between posts. It might take a while for you to find the balance, but that is a necessary thing to do if you hope to produce consistent work from your blog. As long as you achieve this consistency, you will find that you get many more regular readers in the long run.
Targeting: Finally, remember that it is hugely important to know your target market as best as possible. Knowing who your readers are will mean that you can tailor your blog to their tastes much more keenly, which will result in a more successful blog soon enough. In order to determine your target market, you might find it helpful to think about what kind of person is interested in the topic you are writing about. That, coupled with an analysis of the data of your visitors, will help you to work out who is reading your blog. You can then ensure that you are offering the kind of blog that they want.