How to Start a Successful Blog

How to start planning a successful blog

1. Chose your Niche
2. Outline the blog
3. Set goals and milestones
4. Understand your target audience
5. Schedule a posting calendar
6. Maintain your voice
7. Be consistent

1. Chose your Niche

One of the most common problems that bloggers face is choosing the wrong niche. So much time, money, and effort is spent on the wrong niche, and when it doesn’t yield returns, it leads the blogger to give up or realize very late down the line that they have been working on the wrong niche. This can be avoided by taking a look at the bigger picture and realizing that if the topic that you are blogging about is not your passion, it is going to show and it won’t work for you down the line.

The first question that I ask my clients to bypass this is “what is your passion?” The answer determines the potential of success of the blog. Passion is the key factor for success in everything that you want to do, whether it’s blogging or otherwise. If you aren’t passionate about the topic that you’re blogging about, your readers are quickly going to lose interest, and if you don’t really care about what you’re talking about, all the content in the world will not make your reader care either. As you can see where this is leading, do yourself a favor and ditch the niche if it isn’t something that you yourself are not interested in.

The 2nd question that I ask my clients is “what are your strengths?“. If you are passionate about a niche and it’s a profitable one, blogging is an opportunity that you are missing on because it helps if your strengths and passion are linked to the niche that you’re blogging about.

Here are some niche research tools that you can use to explore your blogging potential:

SEMrush (Paid) – this is the first tool I turn to for niche research. It allows me to research my competitors, find out the keywords that they are ranking for, and use the ones that are searched for the most.

Google Keyword Planner (Free) – A Google Adwords tool that allows you to do keyword research easily.

Google Trends (Free) – Lean more about trends for particular keywords is important to get an idea of whether or not your niche is on the decline, or increasing in popularity.

Visualize your chain of thoughts

Put these tools in play to help you produce a clear chain of thoughts document. A few that I’ve used in the past are:

• Mindmeister – online based mind mapping tool with advanced features
• Bubble.us – basic online based mind mapping tool, no need to sign up for an account

2. Outline your blog

Always create an outline and plan your blog. Doing so saves you time and helps you maintain a smooth flow—it can even help you be a better writer. This outline will help you train your thought process and keep you from wandering. If you don’t outline, you’ll be susceptible to the most common obstacles that bloggers face and you’ll risk

• Abandoning your blog
• Running out of ideas
• Losing rank in search engines
• Waste time and effort on your blog

3. Set Goals and Milestones

You must set goals and milestones for your blog the same way you do so for a brick-and-mortar business. This works whether you have simple goals like attracting readers and engaging visitors, or big goals, like increasing conversion rates. Milestones show you that you are going in the right direction. One person who has personally helped me set goals is Tony Robbins. In his 5 Principles of goal setting, Robbins encourages people to set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and are executed within a particular time frame.

Tony Robbins’ 5 Principles of Goal Setting

• Specific: The more detailed you can be, the better.
• Measurable: Here precision is your friend. When you can measure, you’ll actually see your progress and know when you achieve it. Concrete criteria helps everyone stay on track.
• Achievable: If you can’t actually attain your goal it will only serve to frustrate and dishearten you. You’re not going to create a billion-dollar business or become a world-class concert pianist overnight. Many times when we’re creating big goals we get too lofty, making them seem impossible.
• Realistic: Perhaps in an ideal world you’d have six hours a day to work on your golf swing or tennis game. You live in the real world, not an ideal one, so make sure you’re setting goals that match up with reality.
• (in a) Time Frame: Having a clear idea of your timeline creates a sense of urgency. You’ll be working towards what you want more quickly.

4. Understand your target audience

Niches are smaller and more specific groups within a target audience. It is important to have a target audience because the language, channels, and information you use to communicate with and appeal to one demographic is specific to them. Here is a list of elements that will help you create a complete description of your prospect.

Choose specific demographics to target.

• Age
• Club memberships
• Education
• Geographic area
• Hobbies
• Income level
• Marital status
• Occupation
• Religion
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

Consider the psychographics of your target, such as:

• Personality
• Attitudes
• Values
• Interests/hobbies
• Lifestyles
• Behavior

You might even want to identify problems and needs of your targeted audience, through Google analytics. Additionally, check your competition. Who are your competitors targeting? Who are their current customers? What is your competitor’s concern toward his target audience, and vise-versa.

Once you have compiled all the information needed on your targeted audience, you should have a solid base to build on.

5. Schedule a Posting Calendar

“Content calendars”, “editorial calendars,” “marketing calendars,” or “social media calendars,” are the same thing. Maintaining a successful blog means that you should always be ahead of the curve. Managing a blog without a posting calendar is difficult. To stay organized around the year and maintain consistent blog releases on weekly basis, you will definitely need a calendar. You can use the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin to help you organize your posting structure. Working on an Editorial Calendar is time consuming, but this process will help you save time in the future, and highlights important dates. Editorial calendars will help you stay consistent. Consider major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, and Instagram to create a weekly cycle to post your content.

6. Maintain your voice

Develop a unique voice that will always be identified by the value you bring to the table as your brand identity, and finally keep the blog’s look, overall design and content professional will add to your overall impression by the reader.

7. Be consistent

Being consistent isn’t just posting new content based on a calendar. Now that you have responsibility towards your followers, you need to be consistent in providing the value, because your followers will develop expectations. In order to establish trust with your readers and develop a real relationship with them, your brand needs to be consistent in order for you to build a loyal readership for your blog.