Whether you run a personal blog, a blog for your business or work as freelancer, blogging has certain rules that are universal. Many bloggers just start writing and hope for the best, this is okay if you’re only writing for yourself. If you intend to gain viewers and have a successful blog, you will have to keep your readers in mind and work accordingly. This is easier said than done as there numerous steps to follow and mistakes to be aware of. Here are 6 steps that you can follow to growth hack your blog for success:
1. Writing
Remember all those basic rules you were thought throughout your academic career – put them to good use. Nothing turns a reader away like bad grammar does. The same goes for spelling, you can use tools to help you out if you’re having too much trouble. The style of your writing is going to differ from academic content. Depending on your niche, you can adapt a formal, semi-casual or casual style. All blogs need to have a personal touch and interesting content.
As far as the writing itself is concerned, write in simple, concise sentences. Avoid using too many adjectives and adverbs. Another important rule is to divide your text into paragraphs. You aren’t writing an essay, create new paragraphs every 4-5 lines but the keep the flow natural. Bullet points and sub-headings are a must. Generally, a 400 word text should have at least 1-2 sub-headings.
Don’t even think about topics until you have your style and basic guidelines figured out. If you need help, look at big sites in your niche and elsewhere for guidance.
2. Niche and Target Audience
Your niche is pretty easy to figure out. If you’re a business blogger, your niche is the product or service you sell/ specialize in. if you’re a personal blogger, you can either write about your day or be proficient in multiple niches like BuzzFeed or Huffington Post. Freelancers don’t usually have niches since they write for their clients.
If you’re just starting out, your target audience are the ideal members you would like to read your blog. If you already have a following, your target audience is personified by the demographics and habits of your most loyal readers. One of these demographics is the social media they use the most..For example, millenials tend to spend most of their time on Facebook and Twitter, professionals prefer the same but also use LinkedIn etc
Both your niche and target decide what you’re writing and whom you’re writing for. As such, you have to put some thought into these. and select wisely.
3. Influencers
Find out who the top bloggers in your niche are. See if you can collaborate with them in any way. You can submit guest posts, mention influencers in your own blog and tell them that you have, use the connect with them on social media and start conversations etc. All of the above will bring recognition to your own blog, and provide good backlinks. Blogging is a community activity and you can use the help of others to excel at it. You could also invite influencers to guest post on your blog. Other blogs that are related to your niche but not directly competing with you also have good material for your to share.
4. SEO
Getting ranked by search engines like Google is one of the best ways to boost traffic. There are multiple steps you can follow for SEO:
- Keywords: The keywords that you select for every blog post have to be relevant. They have to appear once in your title, 3-4 times throughout the article and once in the meta description. Good keywords will automatically boost ranking and consequently, traffic. If you don’t know where to start, you can use Google Adwords and other similar tools.Do not stuff your post with keywords in order to get a higher rank as Google has designed algorithms against this.
- Backlinks: All of your posts must include a link back to one of your pages. The more these clicks are visited, the more your ranking increases. Most guest posts will let you add links in the post or at least in your bio.
These 2 techniques will be sufficient for beginners. Once you get more experience under your belt, you can move on to different methods.
5. Social Media
Social media is critical to your blog’s growth. This will be the medium through which most of your promotion will occur. Figure out which platform works for you the best. Once that’s done, you can promote your blog by following these simple ideas:
- Share every post you write on social media. This opens it up to different audiences, critique and support – all of which are a necessary part of growth.
- Talk to your audience on social media. Don’t be a robot, share a joke, start random conversations and have the occasional promotion.
- Ask your connections to share the post without being too pushy.
- Put social sharing buttons next to each post you submit so users can share the post easily.
There are many other methods you could follow depending on your niche. The ones listed above are the basics and must be covered.
6. Types of Content
The content you create should include a mix of different kinds of content. On social media, you have to strike a balance between text posts and visual posts. Blogs can include promotional content, images, videos, infographics, surveys, polls and lists. You can take a nibble at all of these and see what your audience responds to best..The more a user likes a post, the more likely they are to share it. Visual content is good for this as it captures their attention and keeps them entertained.
No matter how hard it gets in the beginning, once you find the right topics and tools, it will get a lot easier. If you’re facing too many problems, get help from content writing firms until you get comfortable. These firms have experienced writers that can set you on the right path.
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