Pen & Ink

I recently had someone ask me about my blog and if it was hard at first when I had no followers except friends and family. My answer to the second question was yes. Blogging was, and is, hard, and keeping up with it is even harder. But with faith and persistence (and the four other tips I’m going to talk about in this article 😉 ) you can become a successful blogger. Today I will share with you some things you need to know when starting a blog.

You might say, “Annabelle, you literally only have like twenty followers right now. Why should we listen to you?” That’s a fair question. Why should you listen to me?

Okay, so I won’t say that I’m an expert, because I’m not. But I have been blogging since I was eight years old, and I’ve learned and experienced a lot in the five years between then and now. Plus, I have two parents who were both successful bloggers back in the day, and I’ve gained tons of good advice from them. So I’m not completely inexperienced.

Now, are you ready to hear the four tips that will help lead you onto the path of a successful blogger? Well, here they are:

1. Good Content is King

“Content is king” is what a lot of people will say about blogging, meaning that if you just put a bunch of thrown-together stuff out on the internet, people will start seeing it. All you have to do is write a bunch of things, not caring if it’s well or poorly written.

But the truth is, that statement is part of the past. When the internet was just starting, it was easy to have your website noticed since there was hardly anything out there already. However, now that the internet has been around for years, it’s a lot harder to break through the crowd of articles and websites monopolizing the search engines. Everyone is trying to get their articles to the top, including you.

So it’s true; content is king, but not just any content. It has to be good content. How else are you going to break through all the other content out there? When starting a blog, you have to make what you write better than what’s already out there.

So keep writing, and get lots of good content out there, and your blog will likely be noticed.

2. Find the Niches

We’ve already decided that you need to have content on your blog, but now the question is, how do you find that content?

The answer is: to find the niches. What I mean by that is to find something that people want, but hasn’t been written about before.

The best way to do this is by using tools like UberSuggest or Google Analytics. Another way you can do it is by, when you search the web, noticing if there isn’t much helpful information out there on a certain topic. Then you can write about it. Chances are if you searched for something other people will probably search for it too.

Doing this is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You are trying to optimize your website for search engines to pick it up.

3. Stay Consistent

Staying consistent is a vital part of first starting your blog. Even if you’re not always posting something new, it’s still good to update your past articles every once in a while.

It’s important to develop writing habits of any kind, especially in blogging. If you start posting once a month, once a week, or once a day, then you’ll get a lot more traffic to your website. So try to build those habits. Set aside an hour every day to write your next weekly blog article.

Also, make sure to put things like this on your calendar or to-do list so you remember to do them. Set notifications on your phone or another device, and hold yourself accountable. Consistently keeping up with your blog shows people that you care about what you write, and you put a lot of time into giving them good information.

4. Don’t Give Up

This last point is so, so important. Never give up on your blog! Even when no one looks at what you write besides your friends and family, don’t give up!

You might think, “No one is reading my content, therefore my blog isn’t good enough,” and you’ll give up, thinking all your efforts were worthless. But that’s not true.

As long as you invested your time into it and tried your best to do a good job, your blog is valuable. If people aren’t reading your content, it probably doesn’t mean it’s worthless. You just haven’t been getting in front of the right people.

Try advertising your blog more. Comment on forums where people might be looking for things like that. Put a link to your blog in your email signature. There are lots of ways to spread the word about your blog!

Conclusion

So those are my four blogging tips for this week! Always remember when starting a blog to write lots, find the niches, stay consistent, and never give up.

I have a couple of challenges for you this week. If you haven’t done this already, I encourage you to start your own blog. Just try setting it up and getting a few posts out there and see how you do.

If you already have a blog, then try to create some new blogging habits. Write one post a week, and set aside specific times to work on it.

If you’ve already done all these things, then great! Keep writing, and don’t give up!

Was this post helpful to you? Are there any tips you would like to add to this article? Have any of these things helped you in your blogging journey? Share your thoughts in the comments below!