The competition, particularly in blogosphere is getting intense and extremely stiff every day. I remember in the early days of blogging, people blog for the purpose of a modern day personal diary or just to keep private notes online.
But it started to evolve when bloggers went out of their box and show off their works. Eventually, they began to gain audiences. Visitors became members of a community; bloggers became business owners of their craft.
Bloggers saw the potential of showcasing their crafts and talents in blogging. However, this rapid growth of blogging along with free blogs site services also increased the numbers of overnight blog sites. Internet became a dump site of spam and second-rated blogs.
In this post, I want to share some of my self-learned tips over the years I do blogging. Here are my 20 powerful tips to become better bloggers.
1. LOVE OF YOUR CRAFT
I placed this at the first position because in my opinion this will keep you blogging no matter what happens. And because you love the things that you do, obstacles will not stop from keeping you going even if you fail along the way. With passion as your fuel to work, you become determined to do whatever it takes.
In addition to that, when you love your work, you seem to be not working at all. In my personal experience, because I love blogging so much, I can stay in front of my laptop for hours upon hours. Even if I’m so tired from my regular job. For me that’s love.
2. DO YOUR HOMEWORK
If you’re serious in becoming a better blogger, simply do your homework. This is not the literal complex Mathematical equations to solve or a 5-paged research paper in biology. Do what a normal blogger tends to do – write.
Of course, it not always sufficient to start typing on your keyboard and leave it to fate whatever words will come out. Doing your homework includes but does not restrict to researching, reading and application in the topic you are sharing.
3. CREATE YOUR IDENTITY
Each one of us is unique and has a different taste on things. I call this individualism.
However, blogging is blogging and is the same for all. It’s your personal style that will make you different and will stand out from the crowd, this is called personal branding. If you’re the humor type person, or the professional, you do it your way. Just do it.
Don’t ever try to copy someone else’s style. You’ll soon burn out from losing your own identity because in reality, you can’t really be that super star blogger you imitate. Having your own identity is freedom, and that’s what blogging is all about.
4. GET ENGAGED
As soon as you establish your own identity, immerse yourself in a community. Not just any type of forum, okay? Choose a community that accepts you and fit you well. Establish relationship by helping others them with their questions and tasks. Don’t hold yourself in supplying needs if it’s abundant to you. If there’s one thing to be a trigger happy of, that’s when you give help tips and ideas to your community.
Carefully pick your community and stick to it. If you’re new to it, be polite and follow the rules all the time. In the long run, you will eventually earn respect and they will follow the things you’ll say.
5. ACKNOWLEDGE AUTHORITY
Start small by humbling yourself and acknowledging authorities. We are on the same road called blogging where everyone begins with a single step. You can’t say you invented everything and every process you take wherein the things you do is just an enhancement of practices by the people who went ahead of us. There’s nothing new, it’s just re-invention.
What I’m trying to suggest is, if you want to become successful, follow successful people. Be acquainted with them. Follow them in twitter or like their Facebook page. Get their RSS feeds and regularly comment on their posts.
6. SET UP YOUR GOALS
It is useless to aim arrows in the dark because you will hit nothing. Setting up your goals is the first step to success. If your goal is to out run your competitors, what are the things you need to do? My suggestion, if your competitor posts 5 blogs a day, set up your goal to post 10 blogs per day. If your competitor has 50 active backlinks, find a way to make 100 backlinks to your site.
Now that’s exaggerated, I know. But my bottom line is – to plan your goals and be specific in it.
7. SUCCESS IS MEASURABLE
Yes, you can measure your success. If your success is determined by monetary value, obviously, your success parameter is money or your income from blogging. But that’s not all. I know some bloggers who doesn’t care much about monetizing their blogs even if they have a colossal traffic.
You can measure your success depending on the goals you set up. Is it the number of page views? Or your subscribers? Or the number of comments in your site? Whatever it is, measure it with your planned goals.
My suggestion is to segment your goals into bits to make it easier to fulfill. One step at a time to your success
8. BE CONSISTENT
Consistency plays a vital role to your success in blogging. This does not limit to the schedule of your article posting. Instead, it includes the quality of content, article topics, and your writing style, the theme you use in your site and a lot more.
Your consistency will gain you credibility and integrity from your readers as well.
9. AIM FOR QUALITY AND QUANTITY
I mentioned quality and quantity on this point because I believe this should go along together. This tasty recipe will cook the best menu in your blogging career. I will be honest that this is not easy, but it is achievable. If others can write better blogs posts in large numbers, you can do too, right?
Start with one really good post per day until you develop your own pace and feel comfortable in the number of articles you publish in a day.
10. LISTEN TO YOUR AUDIENCE
The purpose of you writing posts is for somebody else to read it. Write with your readers in mind. Take care of your content first, and then do your SEO thing afterwards.
Listening to your audience is not letting your readers dictate your style or your pace. It’s letting them say what they need and how to solve problem or where you can help. Make it easy for your readers to comment of your posts. Although you know that you’re the expert in your craft, learn from the feedback that they offer as well.
I am not yet a full time blogger, so I still trade my hours for dollars. But I discipline myself to become one someday. My greatest goal in blogging is make money from it and to achieve financial freedom from this online business.
So how do I discipline myself?
* First, commitment. Every day, after my 9-5 job, I commit myself to update all my blogs. Even if I feel tired, I treat blogging as my own business.
* Second, avoiding distractions. Once I lock the door of my room, its game time! I make sure that I finish my daily tasks in 4 hours. Distractions also includes excessive irrelevant Internet surfing. So I make sure, Facebook is off and no other browser and tabs are open except my WordPress dashboard.
There’s so much more to talk about in disciplining yourself in blogging, those are just my two’s.
12. LEARN SEO
I’m serious, you need to learn SEO if you want to survive blogging. Even if you don’t monetize your blog, it is vital to learn SEO. Learn the basics until you become comfortable in your campaign. Part of a blog’s life is traffic and SEO can be your lifeline in survival.
Why is SEO or Search Engine Optimization important?
> SEO is making your site known to the World Wide Web. You should recognize that no one knows your website or your blog exists when it started except you, your host and a couple of friend maybe. So the method of making other people hit upon it is by getting it indexed or discovered by search engines. – SEO Guide for beginners
13. DON’T GET ADDICTED TO YOUR STATS AND DESIGN
It is possible to get addicted on your site’s stats at the time you start to gain good amount of traffic or get to much attention on your sites architectural design. There is a potential danger in this.
First of all, you should monitor your website stats and have a theme design that really fits your style, but like I warned you, you can get addicted to this that will lead you tend to exert less effort on more important things like quality content and SEO.
In my opinion, part of setting up you blog is choosing the theme that you will use for the longest time possible. Few tweaks and widget movement every month perhaps or only if it’s really needed. In monitoring stats, I limit myself in viewing no more than once a day.
14. SEEK HELP, HELP THE SEEKERS
This is simply the golden rule:
> “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”
Ask help if you need one, everybody needs a helping hand somethimes. More so, you don’t need to be an expert to extend help, right?
15. INVEST IN TIME AND MONEY
Time is the most expensive treasure that everyone has. Spend it wisely and it will return more than a blessing to you. What’s good about blogging is the ability to leverage time. Once you spend time in publishing quality posts, you can leave it as is and will be there forever as your asset.
Blogging for me is a real business. And like any other business, you will need to invest money for some time to gain money. Try to spend some cash on your theme design, or an excellent plugin, or outsourcing SEO campaign instead of you doing the base job and more. Come to think of it… Little cash spent for a great benefit.
16. BE OPEN ON CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS
One of the hardest facts in life is to accept is change. But for me, change is good if you do it to improve something.
Technology for example. In the world of technology, change can happen overnight. One day you bought the most high end laptop, next day something new and better comes out.
We can talk all day about software updates, process improvements, new platform development, up trending social site and still scratching the surface of “change”. On the other hand, don’t be too much attached on things that can quickly change.
17. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
The greatest tool in blogging is not a piece of hardware nor an automated software to do stuff for you, it’s yourself! Success begins in your mind and having the right mindset will determine if you’ll be in the losing side or the winner side.
If you did something you believe worth to talk about, share it with someone else, and talk about it more often, talk about it all the time. Always be proud of your craft. Believe in yourself that you can achieve your goals.
18. DON’T BE AFRAID TO FAIL
Failing for me means to prove something that does not work. If you failed ones on your way to success, try the other way around, or you can continue with your way but trying harder the next time.
Successful people had a failure at least once. But no matter or how many time you fail in your journey to blogging, what will matter most is how you pick up yourself and stand for another chance.
19. REST FOR A WHILE AND ENJOY YOUR WORK
Don’t stop, rather rest for a while. Everybody needs a day off after a job well done. Celebrate and reward yourself by enjoying your work. By all means, you have all the rights in the world to grab a coffee and just stare at you site once you achieve your goals.
20. FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS
Lastly, follow you dreams. If you plan to have a career in blogging or pursuing an online business from blog, let it be. Remember that, the only person stopping you from following your dreams is you.
There you go! I hope you liked my tips. If you have other tips you wish to add, feel free to leave your message at the comments section. Have a nice day!
