How To Create Successful Blogging Strategies: Once you create your blog you must create successful blogging strategies in order to create content that is useful and promote that content to your targeted audience.
The blogging strategies that you will learn about today will help you not only learn how to start a blog but how to create content for a blog. I will also be covering some useful blog marketing strategies that have really helped me take my blog to the next level.
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Determine your purpose
The first step in creating a successful blogging strategy is determining your purpose by defining your goals and your targeted audience.
Ask yourself:
- Why does my blog exist?
- Who does my blog exist for?
Based on your answers to the above questions you should have a better idea of your purpose for your blog. When you start out blogging you will read and hear the pressure of how important it is to create a niche for your blog.
This was very challenging for me when I began blogging. I considered myself a lifestyle blogger. A woman, married with kids who simply love to blog. I honestly had a lot of different topics I was covering on my blog.
It was not until I decided to niched down my blog and began focusing on what my audience wanted to read… when I really began noticing an increase in my views and subscribers.
Considering the needs of your targeted audience is important. While you may think you are blogging for yourself, you really shouldn’t. If you are interested in having someone actually read the hard work you have to blog for your audience.
Niching down your blog may be challenging but keep in mind that it’s best to blog about one thing very well, then multiple topics not so well. Blogging is about being an expert in a specific area. For me, it’s blogging about blogging and social media tips that appeal to my targeted audience.
Perform target research
Performing targeted research on your audience is important. As I mentioned above you are blogging for your audience, not for yourself.
If you are seeking to improve your blogging strategy in 2020 you have to create content with your targeted audience in mind.
Ask Yourself:
- What is it that my audience is seeking?
- Is there something that my audience will learn and take away from this post?
Asking yourself these questions will allow you to focus on your audience. Your audience is what determines your blogging success, so it’s best to focus your attention on your audience.
Performing targeted research on your audience can be done by viewing your followers on social media. Those who are following you are a prospective targeted audience to your blog. What are they looking for on social media?
Pay close attention to what your followers are tweeting about. You want to plan your content around what is relevant within your niche.
Create content
Creating content is the most challenging task of blogging. Coming up with topic ideas can be a challenge. I like to keep track of potential topic ideas in my notes section because blog topics come to me at the weirdest times.
I even use a digital content planner through Google Drive that helps me plan out and track my posts for the month.
You can access your own copy of my FREE digital content planner by subscribing below. Once you subscribe you will be redirected to your own copy of my free digital content planner that is fully customizable to meet your blogging needs. Feel free to make changes and don’t forget to save it to your Google Drive.
My biggest advice for you as a blogger is to create a schedule and stick to it! Consistency is key. Decide on how often you want to post. I would recommend committing to blogging at least 2-3 days per week.
Being consistent and creating a schedule … simply showing up for your audience is what will help your blog grow.
Create “useful” content
Just as much as creating content is important, it’s not nearly as important as creating useful content. Quantity is not over quality in the blogging world. Producing a lot of content is not better than creating quality content.
Focus on the quality of your blog content. This requires you to conduct research on your topic, set clear keywords, utilize SEO on your posts. Also, make sure the content you are producing is relevant.
I found it to be really successful when I started creating evergreen content. Evergreen content is blog posts that remain relevant no matter when they were published.
RELATED: Top 5 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
I highly recommend creating useful content that is relevant and purposeful. This will ensure old posts are driving just as much traffic as your latest post.
This is definitely helpful when including internal blog post links within your latest posts. Which is another good strategy that keeps old posts circulating over the years.
Optimize all posts with SEO
SEO is search engine optimization. This is the process in which the keywords, layout, and phrases of your content are what determines your ranking on search engines. The more optimized your posts are with SEO, this improves your rank on search engines like Google.
SEO is an extremely important strategy to use in order for your audience to find your blog when searching. Prior to creating your content take some time to conduct research on popular keywords and phrases relevant to your topic. Be sure to incorporate those keywords and phrases within your content to improve your SEO for ranking.
Promote your blog content
While you hope that your SEO is good enough to drive traffic by making your content discoverable it does not replace the need for you to promote your blog on other platforms.
The goal is to get your content out there to your targeted audience to find, read, and share.
Platforms that I use to promote my blog content:
Tailwind:
Tailwind is an official partner of both Pinterest and Instagram and offers a complete suite of marketing tools including Smart Scheduling, Analytics & Monitoring, Content Discovery, Promotion, and more.
I use Tailwind tribes to share my pinterest posts to a large community.
If you are interested in joining Tailwinds you can use my referral link to join and begin a FREE trial.
Currently, I am a member in the following tribes on Tailwind:
- Blog Growth and Monetization Tips
- Welcome to Tribes
- Planner Community
- Bloggers Killing It on Pinterest
- The Female Entrepreneur Connection
These are just a few of the amazing tribes available to join on Tailwinds. As a benefit of using Tailwind to schedule and monitor your pins, you can use Tailwind tribes to promote your current posts.
As a tribe member, you can pin relevant pins to your blog posts within the tribe community that best suits your topic and that’s it! Many others will now be able to see your post and are encouraged to share and promote for you. How awesome is that?
Twitter:
Of course, many of you are probably familiar with Twitter but are you familiar with the many ways you can promote your content across twitter?
I have strategized to promote my content on twitter by joining twitter blogging groups.
Here is a list of my top twitter blogging groups:
These blogging twitter groups allow for an open place to share your blog posts and discover the blogs of many others. Within these blogging twitter communities you can RT and like the blog links of others and are encouraged to in order to support others within the blogging community. This is a great way to utilize twitter in order to not only promote your blog content but to also connect with other bloggers within your niche.
Pinterest:
Similar to Tailwind Tribes, Pinterest has group boards that can be used to connect others within a community. I utilize Pinterest group boards to promote my blog content to a broader audience. The group boards allow you to pin your pin there and encourage others to share and repin. This will surely generate more traffic for your blog and help you reach a greater audience.
Some of the group boards I am currently in:
ChicaBloggers Group Board
The Cosy Bloggers’ Club
Promote your Pins ✿●•٠·
Awesome Bloggers Collaboration Board
Girlcrush Co: Bloggers & Business Babes
While you can self-promote all day. But most importantly you want to share your content in places where others can promote your content for you. Getting your content out there to a greater audience will keep your blog views increasing even when you are asleep. A simple RT or share can circulate to others in different time zones.
I want you to really start creating a successful blogging strategies that works for you. I hope some of the successful strategies that I learned along my blogging jounrey can help you become a more successful blogger.
Please share with me in the comments your most successful blogging strategy. What social media platform do you receive the most traffic from?
If you found this post beneficial please like and share with others.
Talk to you soon!
Luana Spinetti
Twitter is awesome (I actually found you there)! My personal blog is more “me” oriented but I’m trying to include a helpful post here and there to boost traffic and actually share something helpful with fellow readers, while still keeping it personal with anecdotes and examples. My niche blogs tend to be a little too niche maybe, so they hardly get traffic, although when they do they still do from Twitter contacts and communities. I guess I should write some more general niche posts there, to capture more traffic.
Pinterest is difficult to understand for me, I really am not sure how to use it for traffic. Do you have a recommended guide?
Thank you!
– Luana
bloglifewitherica
Hi Luana,
Yes, Twitter one of my favorite social platforms. It’s one of the easiest platforms to connect on. My blog is also more lifestyle-oriented but I am working on transitioning it to be more helpful for others starting their blogging journey. Most of the questions I receive are from other beginner bloggers looking for information on how and where to start with building their blog and social media. So, you will see more posts now surrounding blogging and social media.
I would recommend doing some research. Review your followers, get to know who it is that is following you. Are they women? Moms? Bloggers? What topics are coming across your timeline? Give your followers and audience what they want. In order to do that you have to start with getting to know who it is, that is following you.
Or you can brainstorm more on the direction of your blog and purpose. Based on your answer I would recommend working to connect with an audience that fits that niche.
Pinterest can be hard at first to understand. But, it’s honestly the easiest platform to manage and is the biggest traffic driver for most blogs. I do have a post, How To Use Pinterest to Grow Your Audience.
You have encouraged me to create a Pinterest guide with Pinterest traffic tips. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already. This will be one of my upcoming post topics.
Thank you for stopping by and reading.
xo Erica
bloglifewitherica
Luana,
You shared with me that you found Pinterest difficult to understand. Hearing that inspired me to create a simple guide to Pinterest. You can check out my latest post, The Ultimate Pinterest Guide for Bloggers.
I hope you will learn something new from this guide. If you find it helpful please, like, share, and comment.
Happy blogging!
xo Erica
Lia
Very helpful. I’ve noticed that Twitter has helped boost my blogging career immensely.
bloglifewitherica
Hi Lia,
Thank you so much for reading. I agree. Twitter has also boosted my blogging career. Most importantly, success has been through my connection with other amazing bloggers like yourself! There is definitely a sense of community on Twitter, with other bloggers and that’s very motivating for me.
xo Erica
brittshedhappens
These are great tips! There once was a day when blogging was nothing more than an online journal, but that time is gone. Today, as you mentioned, we need to create content that is USEFUL to our readers. Give them value and a reason to WANT to read our posts. That’s the key to success when creating content!
bloglifewitherica
Hi Britt!
Absolutely! When I started blogging years ago (2007) there was no structure at all to blogging. It’s really amazing to see how much blogging has changed. I couldn’t even imagine how any made money from blogging back then. There is so much required to blog now if you want to be successful and have content that ranks high on search engines.
When I share with people that I blog they really often still think that it’s just a hobby. It requires more than just the skill of writing. I have learned so much since I began blogging full-time. Especially, since I prefer to do my own work and not outsource, it requires me to be willing to learn new techniques outside of simply writing and clicking publish. 🙂
I am focusing more on the importance of creating useful content. You have to give your readers what they want. Definitely the key to success!
Thank you for reading!
xo Erica
Steph Hannam
Such a great blog post, very informative! I really need to sit down and work on my blog, I agree SEO is so important but quite hard to get your head around at first.
Steph | http://www.stephhannam.com
bloglifewitherica
Hi Steph,
Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate your support. I try to sit down and work on my blog throughout the week for at least 1 hour, outside of creating new content. This typically involves going back and trying to SEO older posts.
When I first heard about SEO I had no clue what it even meant. I had to watch several videos and read many articles about it. I really started noticing an improvement in my SEO when I downloaded the tool, Yoast SEO. I don’t think I could have mastered it without the help of Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO is a tool that I invest in for my blog SEO and it’s worth the investment.
xo Erica