Starting a blog in hopes of making it a popular Internet hangout with thousands of followers is what most bloggers dream of. However, the process is not exactly as simple as creating a blog, uploading your first post, and waiting for the masses to show up.
You have to know how to market your blog and ensure that it’s something worth reading. Even bloggers with hundreds of thousands and even millions of followers were once in your position: writing without an audience … that is, until they applied the following tips.
1. Write for your audience
Sure, it’s a little confusing. It’s your blog, but you have to write for your audience? Yes. If you want to make money and become popular, you have to write what the readers want.
Maybe they’ll love the fact that your blog is about your own personal opinions and thoughts, but more likely they won’t. If constant complaints and anecdotes about your mother-in-law don’t seem to draw a crowd, consider changing your direction.
Better yet, ask your readers what they want. See what they’re reading by checking out which other blogs they’re following and use that as inspiration.
2. Write for you
Now you’re really confused. While you should write for your audience in terms of topics and interests, your actual words should be your own. Don’t write to people or for people you don’t even know. Write for yourself. Write what you feel and what you think.
Guess what? There’ll be people who don’t agree with you. But that shouldn’t stop you from voicing your own opinion. You can’t make everyone in the world like you or agree with you, but you can like and agree with yourself.
Besides, a little controversy stirs things up and makes the place more interesting.
3. Interact with your readers
It’s important that you interact with those who read your posts. You won’t make them all happy and you’ll probably ruffle a few feathers, but maintaining communication and interaction with people in a polite and respectful manner is worth the effort.
4. What to write about
Whether you write about home security and interior renovations, or you write about planning your wedding on a budget, doesn’t really matter. What you have to write about is what you know. There are always people interested in what you have to say, even if most of them don’t know it until you say it.
Blogging is a great way to reach people you wouldn’t otherwise get to talk to; to potentially help a person here and there and get your thoughts out into the world. If you want to do it casually, by my guest. But if you want to take it a notch higher, employ these blogging tips.
