So you started writing a blog… And your dream is, like most blogger’s, that you want to go far with your blog, to become a popular blogger, write posts that will inspire people, take beautiful, sharp pictures that scream “wow”, all while thousands of followers and daily readers follow along. Well, this doesn’t just happen over night. At least not for the most part of new bloggers, and if anyone ever told you that blogging was simple and easy, they lied. Being a blogger, and especially being and becoming a good, popular and successful blogger takes hard work, commitment and endeavor.
Though, with that being said, there are, naturally, a few shortcuts that will make the way toward success a little easier, it will get you more traffic, make you gain more readers and followers, and these more or less simple tricks is something every striving blogger should know! Read on for my 12 tips that will make you a more successful blogger:
♥ Write good and passionated content. This point is very primary, because the presumption of being a blogger is that you have something to write about. Your own voice so to speak. If your readership hears your voice behind the words of your posts, they feel that you are interested, true and passionated about whatever information you are giving your readers, and passion like that shines through, and your posts become way better.
♥ Use catchy headlines. This one is a little cheater, but yet this is the way most online newspapers, magazines, blogs, websites and so on make us click on their links – by using catchy headlines that make the readers curious. Think about an interesting, catchy, exciting headline every time you make a post. When coming up with a headline; ask yourself the question: “does this sound interesting enough that I would click it myself seeing it somewhere on the internet?”. If yes, post it, if no, come up with a new, even better headline for your post.
♥ Know your basic HTML. Here, I am not saying that you should sit down and study HTML coding until you become so good at this stuff that you could be hired as a fulltime coder, no, I am just saying that by knowing a few very (emphasized) easy HTML-codes, it will make it more simple and fast for you to blog. I found this list with 10 basic HTML codes very helpful and I always keep it in my bookmarks, so I can look it up if I happen to forget a code.
♥ Learn about SEO – this will really help you grow your readership. Ever heard about SEO before? Maybe, maybe not. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Yes, it sounds a little tricky, but if you do a small amount of research, you will learn to master the skill of SEO pretty easily. So, the basic explanation of SEO is that it is a way of using methods, strategy, tactics and techniques to increase the amount of readers to your blog, simply because the more SEO tactics you use, the higher different search engines, Google for example will rank you. This is for example why you will need a good and catchy headline for your posts. Google SEO to learn mor, and if you are looking to try it out on your blog, download a SEO plug in. I use Yoast plug in for WordPress blog. The Yoast plug in allows you, in a few, simple steps to easily optimize your SEO with keywords, meta descriptions and captions for each posts, and the yoast plug in also guides you through every step, so you will learn more about SEO and its advantages. Some simple SEO rules that I can teach you here are; the caption you use as your headline, you should also use at least once in your content, once in your URL, and once in your meta description.
♥ Name your photos. You know when you upload photos from your camera or your phone, they always have titles like IMG953828… Would you ever type in that exact title and search for it on Google? Nope, I don’t think so. What you want to do is to rename your photos that you use on your blog before uploading them, giving them a new, relevant title that lets people find them if they are searching for it. Also remember to name the Alt text which can be found for example in the WordPress picture upload section on each photo.
♥ Use Pinterest to grow your readership. After you started naming all of your photos with relevant titles, Pinterest is the perfect place to expand your blog and get more views this way. Create a Pinterest profile, download the Pinterest pin button and start pinning your every picture from your blog with the right titles. This means, that if you for example wrote a post on “12 tips that will make you a more successful blogger”, and you pinned the photo from this post to Pinterest using the same title, whoever searches for this title will be referred to your blog or website, and Pinterest will create and increase a lot of traffic for you this way.
♥ Take good and high quality photos. This is a rule of thumb for blogging. Study and learn about how to take good pictures and how to edit them afterwards. People love looking at pictures, and I think high quality pictures simply give your blog a more professional look, and it makes readers think that you really know what you are doing.
♥ Put thoughts into your blog design. The same way high quality photos make your blog look more professionel, the same goes for a good looking blog design. Whatever style you have and want for your blog, put some thoughts and mind into eat. Get inspiration from other bloggers and spend some time trying out different things for your blog design in order to find out what looks better. Do you want a sidebar or not? Should it be in the left side or the right side? There are many ways to design your blog. It is simply learning by doing, so just relax and try your best. Eventually you will find the exact design you like, and the good part is, you can change it whenever you want to. Another good way to get a great blog design it is to ask your network or friends (we all have that friend that studies multi-media-design-graphics-coding-website-internet-stuff) that might want to help you as their project.
♥ Be a crowd-pleaser. Sometimes…This point goes a bit against my first point about finding your own voice and personal style in writing posts, but let’s understand this; in order to get more people to find your posts interesting and actually reading them, you got to please the crowd. And how do I do this, you ask. Well, write posts that are relevant for them. Preferably in a list form. People love lists. A crowd pleaser post could be something like the one you are reading now 12 tips that will make you a more successful blogger, or 10 things single people say. Only do those kind of posts if you like to write them, naturally!
♥ Network, network, network and reach out! I can’t emphasize this enough. Your blog won’t magically appear for thousands of people without you knowing someone or somebody or putting it out there in some way, not to forget you reaching out to other bloggers. There are many ways to network – a great way is for example on Instagram. By using hashtags you can find likeminded people. I have used #berlinblogger to find other bloggers in Berlin and then I have gone straight forward and started commenting on their pictures. I have even gone so far to ask some of them for a coffee. This is a great way of networking and finding other bloggers. Another way I have networked is to find photograph groups on Facebook. I did this, joined the group and put up a post on the group asking if anyone would be up for meeting and taking photos of me I could use for my blog. And many people were up for it! Win win situation. You get amazing photos for your blog, the photographer gets work for his portfolio.
♥ Work that social media. For my own blog, I know that it helps more than a lot and gives me so much more traffic if I post something about my blog post on Facebook or Instagram. I don’t do it every day because I don’t want to have my friend and followers feeling like they are going to kill me, but a couple of times a week I do social media posts that say something like “today on the blog”, “visit the blog to see more”-blabla. So – social media is useful for many things – networking, connecting, sharing, and gaining extra traffic…
♥ Blog consistently. Most big bloggers blog once and some even twice a day. Readers will come back to your blog for more, if you caught their attention, but if they check your website daily just to find nothing, they will stop coming back. You don’t want that to happen. Try to blog consistently. That doesn’t have to mean that you blog every single day (though, this is what you should strive for), but blog consistently. Make your own schedule and stick to it. Some bloggers post Monday through out Saturday and are off Sundays, and because they have always done that, the readers are aware of it and won’t be let down. So pick a blogging schedule and rhythm and stick to it, and if you are taking a blog break for a couple of days, make a post about that to let your readers know that you are not gone M.I.A. but you are simply off for a few days.
So… I think these 12 tips that will make you a more successful blogger were my best, basic advice for bloggers that want to gain more readers, more traffic and simply become more successful. Now it is your turn – spill your secrets! Do you have any tips and advice to add? And did you find these tips useful?