This is a guest post compiled by Adegboye
Adeniyi for OgbongeBlog
Do you want to become a successful blogger?
If the answer is yes, then read on. If your
answer is no, you may wish to still read on if
only to convince yourself that becoming a great
blogger is much harder than we say and that
you are justified in your wanting to quit
blogging.
If you count the number of blogs that exists
currently, they exceed over 300million
according to Wikipedia and almost 61.8 million
new posts are published every single day.
This means the amount of competition in any
niche is high.
Yet blogging has been known to help brand
people and businesses. When you blog
consistently, it can quickly position you as a go-
to-expert in your niche.
But the million dollar question remains
How do you become a successful blogger?
While passion is an important ingredient, there
are some other spices that you need to help
you become a great blogger.
These secret ingredients are:
1. You have to keep working at it
You just can't give up. Not now and not ever.
When you give up, you are giving someone else
one less spot to compete for. Successful
bloggers have learnt to keep pushing until they
achieve their goal. Life would happen. Anything
that can go wrong will possibly go wrong but it
is only when you are persistent that you can
truly be successful.
2. Learn to promote others but promote
yourself more
As a buddy blogger, you may think the secret
to success is to talk about other people but you
are wrong. When starting out, you need to get
word out about your blog. This means focusing
greatly on promoting your blog because you
need to establish yourself as someone to
reckon with. Granted you need once in a while
to promote others in order to build
relationships with them but do not make it an
obsession or focus more on it. You are building
your own reputation so talk about your stuff
more.
3. Do not ignore all other marketing
channels
One grave mistake most bloggers make is not
leveraging other marketing channels to grow
their blog. Once they push the publish button,
they run off to start writing the next post but
you cannot grow your blog that way. You need
to drive traffic to and through your blog using
various other means. Paid advert eg Facebook
ads, can quickly give your blog post traction.
Social media presence is a necessary evil and
SEO is a must. For SEO, we do not mean all
the advanced stuffs like link building etc but
the most basic stuffs like including your
keyword in your title and naming your images
with the alt tag.You can download the Google
SEO ebook to master the basics.
4. Be yourself
You must understand who you are and learn
how to turn it into an advantage. What do you
know best? Are you better at creating graphics?
When and how do you write best? What kind of
articles comes easily to you to write about? For
examples, blog topics hit me at any time so
immediately this happens, the first thing I do is
to write down my first draft using my smart
phone. When I think I have the skeleton of the
post written only then do I transfer it to my
desktop to complete. This has worked so well
for me that I rarely ever sit down at my
desktop to try to write a new post.
5. Identify your niche
Another grave mistake bloggers make is trying
to be everything to everyone. Just because
entertainment news is hot cake does not mean
you should join the bandwagon. When you do
that you can get lost in the crowd. To truly
make a name for yourself, you need to identify
which niche makes the most sense for you. It
could be because of your passion. It could be
that you are knowledgeable about the niche
but you must pick a particular niche and stay
with it. If you are writing about technology,
write technology. If you want to focus on food,
focus on it. Don't be a jack of all trade and
master of none.
6. Start Collecting emails as soon as you can
Okay, these may sound a little advanced but
from the very first day you start your blog,
start thinking of how you intend to collect
emails from your readers. Eventually these
emails are going to remain the only medium by
which you can build a lasting relationship with
your readers. Not everyone will visit your blog
every day and yet they would not mind hearing
from you. So get into the lead generation game
early. For starters, you can add Feedburner
email subscription form to your blog.
7. Find a mentor or steal one
If you are lucky you may find someone to
mentor you but that may not be the case
especially if you are a newbie. What can you
do? Steal one. Identify two bloggers in your
niche that are successful then make it a point
of duty to study them. Visit their blog every
day. Follow them on social media. Understand
how to write, what they write about and who
their audience is. Then go replicate them only
do it better.
To wrap it up the only difference between a
successful blogger and the average blogger is
the persistence, dedication, amount of time
you put into your blog and the ability to keep
going when everyone else gives up.
This post was written by Adegboye Adeniyi.
He is the Head of Search at VTNS Solutions , a
Search Engine Marketing Firm dedicated to
helping businesses build a better online
presence. You can follow him on twitter
@legendcrest
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