Blogging gives a voice to millions of people from all over the world. Check my “Keys to Success When Beginning to Blog”. The “Blogosphere” is full of every type of blogger, from the hobby blogger who just wants to have fun laying down his or her latest rants and raves, to the more serious blogger who writes for an income and makes publishing articles a way to build a large following. Whatever the reason for starting a blog, there are several factors one might consider in order to be successful and gain traction with their readership.
Choose a Quality Blogging Platform
When deciding to start a blog the very first thing is to find a platform that will work for you. WordPress and Blogger are of course the two most popular platforms that will allow you to set up your blog for free. Most advanced bloggers choose WordPress because of the ease of configurability and customization. There are of course other platforms to consider, but these two are the best for beginners.
Choose an Attractive Template
There are literally thousands of custom templates available for WordPress and Blogger. It’s smart to start off building content on a free template and then once you realize your purpose and if you have the knack for the niche, upgrade to a custom look that expresses the essence of your blog. Uploading a custom template is very easy and there are plenty of tutorials available on how to do it.
Name Your Site With Efficacy
The name of your blog is very important because it serves as a beacon of the theme you are trying to express. It also can have a great deal of pull in the search engines if you use targeted keywords about your niche. For example, if you were to write a blog about “earth worms” you might choose a blog name that expresses the theme of your site. (World of Earth Worms)
Buy a Proper Domain name
This is of similar importance to the name in which you choose. You’re going to want to choose a name that is somewhat easy for your audience to remember, and one that uses keywords from your niche if possible. Ex. – www.worldofearthworms.com (which may already be taken, but you get the point) .COM is obviously the best option if your name is available, however this becomes a tad bit less relevant as you build amazing content that gets indexed by the search engines.
Build Quality Content – Avoid small and useless posts
The search algorithms have changed over the years and have gotten more sophisticated. the “algorithm” is the method by which the search engines rank and index your content and find it relevant. Before bloggers could just pump out thousands of posts that had little value and they could get a significant amount of traffic. Today it’s vital to really research your topics and write articles with truly relevant content that will teach and guide your readership and have them return for more and subscribe to your feed. Yes, companies like Google have discovered the technology to know when your content is valuable and can be used as a quality source of information.
Engage Your Readership
The way to build momentum with your site is to effectively engage the readers that lay eyes on your posts. Ask for comments and ask questions to the readers that will prompt them to leave a comment and answer. Run polls and surveys that flow within your content in order to get your readers thinking and participating. When someone comments, always react and respond to those comments so that the reader doesn’t begin to think that their responds is falling on deaf ears.
Use Multiple Forms of Media
Text is obviously very important and especially when wanting to get picked up by the multiple search engines that will provide a large portion of traffic and new visitors to your site. Although text is vital, it’s also very boring if you don’t accompany it with other forms of media. Video content is super powerful and keeps your audience super engaged. Great photography is an obvious form of media that will add attraction to your posts. Choose your font wisely as well, using a small boring font that looks like a typewriter will have first time visitors searching for the fastest door out possible.
Connect Your Content to Social Media
Your blogging platform will have the capability to spread your posts unto the many different social media platforms that you subscribe to. Adjust your settings so that when you post and article it automatically sends a small snippet onto your Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Twitter feeds. This is a very simple way for a blog posts to go viral, especially if people get engaged and re-share your content with their social network.
Post with Regularity and Frequency
This is extremely vital because the search engines like fresh and unique content, but also because it keeps your audience enthusiastic and following. If you can post everyday then pick particular days during the week where you make it a priority to always post. For example, write a quality post on Wednesday’s and Friday’s, but always on those two days. Having consistency is the key here because many people are routine oriented and will give up on your site if they don’t get fresh content on a regular basis. Remember, every post that you write becomes it’s own unique URL to be indexed in the search engines. Each post is a piece of “Internet real estate” or a window into your world and an opportunity to gain new readers and gain more traffic.
Be Cautious Monetizing too Quickly or too Much
If you plan on making money with your published works make sure you do it in a non-intrusive way. Always live by the moniker that what your advertising will help and be of value to your followers. If the ads don’t offer relevance and a way to enrich the lives of your niche readership, then you will not only lose loyal followers, but you will not convert and make money anyways. Be cautious monetizing before your site has become well established. A website that is brand new and tattooed with lots of flashy ads will come across as spam. Implementing ads is a clever and organized fashion once you have a lot of good quality content is the proper method.