For countless people, being a successful blogger is the dream. If you’ve got a passion for writing, then what could be better than getting up every morning, taking an easy commute over to your desk, and then sitting down to spend the whole day writing about something you’re passionate about? While getting paid to blog is great, it’s not easy to get there with all the competition! Here are some of my best tips for starting a successful blog.
Operating a blog is a business like any other, and like any business model you need to ensure that you’re fulfilling the needs of a specific market. The first step in your journey towards being a successful blogger needs to be defining your target market, and a strategy for catering to that audience. You can write for anyone you like, but the one thing you shouldn’t do is choose an audience that’s too broad. Look at any successful blog, like The Electric Rider for example, and you’ll see that their focus is narrowed down on a very specific audience. If you try to start a blog that’s meant to attract everyone, then you’ll struggle to attract anyone!
Find a Unique Twist
Whatever audience you choose, it’s likely that you’re going to have at least one direct competitor; a blog that’s aimed at the exact same people, and covers the exact same topics. This makes it even more important that you take steps to set yourself apart from the crowd. If you want your blog to be as successful as possible, it’s also very important that you put a unique twist on all the content you post. You, the blogger, are a unique individual. It may not feel like it, but there are all kinds of little differences in the way you view things, the way you articulate your thoughts, and so on. You’ve got a whole wealth of knowledge and experience that’s going to be filtered through your personality in a way that no one can really imitate. Once you can capture that and spin it into a style of writing that’s interesting and accessible to your audience, you won’t have much more to worry about!
Set a Schedule and Stick to It
This is probably the toughest piece of advice I can give to the aspiring blogger, but it’s also one of the most important. If you want to attract and retain a steady audience, you need to be adding new content in a regular schedule, and keeping this up indefinitely. This will not only have an impact on the SEO ranking of your site, but will also reduce the chances of people losing interest and dropping off as followers. Set a schedule that you can keep to realistically; one post a week is usually good enough to start with. You can always up this later on, but reducing it is another matter! As soon as you publish one post, start coming up with ideas for the next one as soon as possible.
