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Answers to the Top Five FAQs about Blogging

Blogging can be a tricky monster to face. The relative creativity that is required of the blogger as well as the fact that the posts need to be well written can be a daunting task to most business owners. Focus on what you do best and work to continue and improve the blog as you go. Here are answers to five common questions most have when faced with blogging.

1. What Do I Write About?

When blogging, it is absolutely imperative to stay true to the topic and deliver exactly what you promise to deliver. When establishing your blog, be sure to have a clear mission statement so that not only the readers know what to expect, but also so that you remain focused on the specific topics. When faced with too many options, we all tend to throw our hands up in frustration and overthink things.

If you’re just starting out, ask past customers, friends, relatives or anyone else what questions they may have about your topic; you may be too close to see the glaring missing items. It’s also a great idea to have your first few posts covering the basic ground workings of your topic. How-to’s and glossaries of related terms helps to establish the blog as well as build the site’s keyword usage.

A more established blog should look to their past comments, Google analytics and other data mining features to get a feel for what followers want to read. It is also important to understand what non-followers want to read so that you can hopefully draw them to read. Write about topics that interest you, but don’t forget that you must be posting what the readers want to see.

2. How Do I Make Money From My Blog?

  • Find Sponsors. Plenty of companies look to pay bloggers to have links to their pages or products on blog pages like yours. The idea is that readers don’t expect you to embed advertising, though it is usually viewed as a sneaky tactic.
  • Advertise. If you’ve built up enough viewership, then you may be able to find companies to pay to advertise on your blog. The catch is having enough viewership first!
  • Affiliate Links. This is another one that requires a blog with high traffic. Working with companies such as Amazon, you’ll be paid out a tiny portion of sales for products that you’ve lined up links for on your blog.
  • Demonstrate Value. By providing valuable information on your blog, you’ll inevitably build trust in your word and content. Utilize this trust by selling adjacent products rather than monetizing your blog directly. In this way, you are essentially using the content of your blog to market your product.
  • Re-purpose Content. Many bloggers compile and repurpose their content from their site and switch it up to become an eBook, book, or otherwise utilized content to be sold or published.

3. How Do I Get Started With Blogging?

The best intentions and ideas are completely useless until they are put into action. Posting that first blog post can be the most difficult part of the whole ordeal. As with any overwhelming task, break the process down into smaller pieces and start at the top.

  • Establish your strategy. You’ll never know if all of your work is successful if you are unsure about the reason you have the blog and what it is intended to do for you.
  • Commit to the blog. Don’t even think about starting your blog and winning followers if you don’t plan to completely commit to the project. Failing to deliver what you’ve promised your readers is the quickest way to lose followers.
  • Make a list. Compile a list of about 20 to 25 headlines you want to cover in the near future in your blog. This will drastically reduce the anxiety when you actually sit down to write your posts. Also, this way you’ll be able to choose topics as they most apply to other postings instead of posting completely randomly.
  • Check out the competition. See what others are blogging about and how their pages look. What can you do better?

4. How Often Should I Blog?

No matter what, always keep your blog postings consistent. You may not have time to post multiple times a day or even multiple times a week – that’s fine. Whatever timeframe you do establish, it should be maintained throughout. A basic rule of thumb is to post at least once a month at the very minimum. Set a calendar reminder to begin working on a post on say, Wednesday, so that you’re ready to put it up by Friday. Do this every week.

5. How Do I Promote Traffic To My Blog?

There are two very different beliefs in the blogging world in regard to the best way to drive traffic: either cramming keywords or creativity.

  • Keyword Driven: Some believe that filling content with a handful of specific keywords into postings better drives traffic. By using keywords more frequently in postings, many believe that search engines will rank their site more favorably.
  • Creative Content Driven: This slow but steady route focuses on providing unique, creative and informative content. By doing this, bloggers believe they will draw in zealous readers and continue to keep them coming in.

Try not to overthink the blogging process. You could drive yourself bonkers trying to decide on the perfect headlines, posting times and who knows what else. It’s best to throw your hat into the game and continue to learn and develop how blogging works as you go.

 

 

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