So, you’ve taken the plunge, jumped on the bandwagon, and started a blog! Good for you! The only trouble is, after a few weeks or months, you’re struggling to keep it up, it doesn’t seem to be working, and you’re getting frustrated and demotivated.
In the interests of making your blogging career a little easier, here are my top tips to make the process of starting and running a blog a little easier.
- Find the Right Platform – There are many, many blog platforms out there. Some are free, some are paid for. They vary from the technical, to the super simple, with some requiring more knowledge of how the internet works, and others using simple drag and drop interfaces. If you’re not using the right platform to run your blog, then you could be spending a lot more time than necessary just trying to figure things out.
- Write About Something You Love – When you start looking at blogging as an alternative to having a full time job, it’s tempting to look only at niches that seem to be making the big money. However, if you try to launch a financial blog, and the thought of financial management nearly puts you into a coma, you’re not going to set the world on fire with your blog! Rather pick a topic that you love, and you’ll be able to bring the best information to your readers, and still have fun doing it!
- You Can’t Write – What most people don’t realize about blogging is that you don’t have to be a potentially Pulitzer Prize winner to write great content. In fact, if you tried to write stiff and starchy, academic style posts (unless yours is an academic blog) you’d probably find that you don’t get all that many visitors. As long as you can write in a conversational style, and you know how to use spell check, you should be fine.
- You Don’t Have Time to Create Content – I always find this claim amusing. With all the time people waste every day, can you really, honestly say that you can’t find fifteen minutes to write one or two posts, and upload them? The truth is, while the initial setup may take some time, keeping your blog content fresh and interesting really only takes a few minutes every day, and everyone can do that!
- No One Is Visiting Your Blog – When you first start out with blogging, chances are you struggle to gain visitors – that’s the way it goes for most people. The trick is to devote a little of your time to marketing your blog too. You could try any one of the following:
- Joining forums that your readers are likely to frequent, and including your blog URL in your signature.
- Social media marketing
- Posting answers on Yahoo Answers, including your link
- PPC campaigns, whether on Google, Yahoo or one of the social networks
- Guest posts on other popular blogs in your niche
- It All Just Seems So Much! – Starting a blog can be daunting. You have to choose a niche, get set up, create content, find images, market your blog and more. However, I find a good idea is to treat your blog like a business, and write a business plan for it – even if it’s a very rough one. Itemizing everything that needs to be done, in the form of a checklist, can also work, and the more things you tick off that list, the less daunting it becomes.
Those are just a few of the blog marketing ideas you could try – I’ll write about them in some more detail sometime. The trick is to pick a combination that works for you, and to stick to it.
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to blogging, and, like the internet in general, things keep changing. New marketing strategies emerge, blog trends change, and what works today might not tomorrow. However, you have to start somewhere, and if you just relax, breathe, concentrate on learning as much as you can, and have a little fun with it, you will find that over time it becomes easier.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a blog, but it can be done – if you put your mind to it!