I’m always taking notes and writing down insights. I believe it’s the way forward for new bloggers to learn and generate ideas from. It also gives the article that you’re reading a more meaningful purpose. It comes out as a story that had some idea behind it. I hope this post will deliver the same value to you, so better grab that notebook and a pen!
The way I see it is simple. There are thousands of lists that offer advice, and there are thousands of different personalities to choose from. We find the one that we like best, and then we try it for ourselves. I’ve always done it this way, and it seems to work the best. I try to be open minded about everything, taking things for granted can often lead to misunderstandings and failure that should instead have been a learning experience.
This post is meant for people who know what blogging is and perhaps are looking for ways to enhance their career with refreshing tips and advice from someone who’s been blogging for years, and have read every single influential blog on the web. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve learned a lot.
I’m often very optimistic, but I do understand how important it is to follow the rules. This advice might seem familiar to you, but I promise that there is definitely going to be something you haven’t thought of before, and perhaps it’s time to give it a go?
Once a Day, Once a Week?
Full-time or part-time, you need to have boundaries. Overworking or trying to do more than required can lead to distress and confusion about your path. It’s better to have a strategy set in place that you can look up to whenever you feel stuck. I’m only a self-acclaimed expert, but not having goals in life is really going to make it difficult to thrive and do more.
Figure out how many post per day and/or week you want to publish and stick to it. It takes away so much stress and thinking to be done.
Only Two Social Shares?
I’m guessing that it was because you only promoted the post once? You can increase your traffic by up-to 75% from social media if you’re sharing your content more than one time. The most recent expert who discusses this issue is Neil, here is his post.
Make Time for It
New idea? The urge to blog? Just make time for it. Seriously. I create my ideas days before I actually publish them, it gives them time to sink in – and by the end of it I can actually make a decision whether I want to post this or not, as I’ve got option to choose from. Every once in a while though, comes around an idea that is so good – I want to publish it within the next 24 hours. What do I do? I make time for it.
Like I Said: Notes
51% of my content ideas have come from notes in the past three weeks. That is an incredible number, and it gives you something to think about.. if you’re not taking notes already. If you’re – good!
Respond to Every Comment
3Why not? You can easily leave a ‘Thank you!’ if you don’t have anything more to say. What you’re after is the proof of engagement that the community wants to see. This is why I ‘hate’ a couple of big brands who’ve forgotten what it’s like to interact with their visitors (&customers) in the comment sections on their blogs. Will you respond to this post with a comment? I’ll make sure I respond back.
Visual Content is Appealing & Engaging
I’ve posted two infographics about visual content, one is here and the other here. I also created a post for visual content creation tools a little while ago. I think I’ve given enough information and advice to bloggers to understand that visual content is really engaging and even important to succeed and improve our blogging careers.
Try not to go overboard, but a couple of images for a 2,000+ word post is more than necessary.
Acknowledge Tiny Successes
Because if you won’t, how withat many readers for their blog posts..you must be doing at least something right to attract that many real people. This is called success and it should be taken into account when you think about bigger goals and dreams.
Read, Learn, Watch Videos & Guides
Promote Older Content
This means giving some of your old content credit or recognition through something that you’re about to publish. This is called internal linking. It has so happened that I do not have a post about internal linking on my blog, but I’ll gladly redirect you to Orbit Media, where Andy has put together a post about internal linking and the best practices for it.
In short: add links to your older content in new posts to help promote them and make it easier for search engines to find them.
Are You Motivated Enough?
It’s kind of hard to do something – work – when there is no real motivation involved. I motivate myself through the means of learning and being able to help others. I’m super excited when I get new comments and people leave good AND bad feedback on my blog or social media platforms. It gives me joy when I’ve solved a problem for someone, or encouraged to take the leap.
What are the things that motivate you to do something? Why not do everything through the same spirit?
It Gets Easier…
I’ve thought of giving up multiple times in the past two months. It’s kind of silly, because I think to myself – why did I start this in the first place. I don’t really want to look back at this time in my life and think to myself how stupid of a decision I had made by giving up, before seeing any good results.
As bloggers, we write a lot. I can tell you right now that writing and blogging itself becomes much more easy after a few short months. The first posts are the most important ones to get out of the way. Later on, you’re learning how to structure and put together a well organized post. That’s where the magic happens and exposure begins to grow.
Understand Quality & Quantity
If you’re not experienced enough to publish multiple blog posts per day that have and deliver some sort of value to the user; don’t try and prove yourself otherwise. Instead, focus on creating a few really good posts that will be of benefit for the long-term success. It’s obvious that quality is always going to come before quantity, but never underestimate the supply and demand that online blogging presents to the different niches that people want to find information about.
Share Real Experiences
I love to read real stuff. It’s why I try so often to bring out the real stuff to my readers myself. There is nothing better than learning about something from direct experience. It often involves the whole road laid out for us, and we can see where we should try and avoid making the same mistakes as others. The term blogging is very broad, and there are a ton of advice that comes with it. (as I mentioned in the beginning of the post)
I’ve also noticed that posts that relate to users from real experience have much higher engagement rate.
Thought Communities
Besides social media platforms that we all already know about, there are specific niche oriented communities that we can signup to, for learning and engaging new people. It has been a great way to generate new traffic to my blog, and I cannot encourage this tip enough. Here are some of my favorite communities I currently use:
- Inbound.org
- BizSugar.com
- Triberr.com
Are you a member of any of these communities? Let me know and we can connect!
Actually Listen to This Advice
This is the last tip I want to leave you with, if you’re serious about improving your blogging career – you’ll take this advice for granted and try and implement it in your daily blogging routine.
The stereotype that experts have cast upon the bloggers and the community as a whole was not hard to figure out, in fact – I had it figured out back in 2007, when I had spent my first year online. If you really think that a lot of stuff has changed as far as publishing content goes – you don’t know what the web was like back in the day.
We didn’t have all the fancy tools that blind peoples vision and the ability to think for themselves, but we did have WordPress and Blogger, and hardcore programmers who’d create amazing static websites to share content from.
