10 Steps to Becoming a Successful Blogger

So you’ve decided (quite rightly) that setting up a blog is the best way to communicate with would-be customers and articulate what you and your business are about.

You’ve recognised that this is the best way for visitors to your site to identify with you and the ideas, products and solutions you are promoting.

How can you be sure that you are taking the right steps in order to make the most of your efforts so far?

1. Establish a theme.
This provides a framework around which to blog and helps to both attract readers in the first place and encourage readers to RSS your blog and come back.
Obviously my blog centres on making money online and, apart from writing about tips and techniques I can advertise my primary product, Income Elite. Everything I do on my blog is themed so readers know what to expect when they arrive on the site.

2. Once you decide to blog, you gotta keep blogging.
It is just like writing a newspaper column. If you have a lot of people reading your blog, they expect to see new material. You want people to get as familiar as possible with you and the best way to do this is to give them something new (and relevant) to read on a regular basis.

3. Blogging is a two-way street.
You must respond to the comments you will get. The larger the blog following, the more comments you will get. It can be a lot of work but these are your potential customers and you need to be responsive and reactive.

4. Blogging takes time.
You need to take this seriously and allocate a certain amount of time every day either to write your blog posts, plan your blog posts or react to comments and answer questions.

Lots of people blog online and, regardless of your niche, you will have some competition. Make sure you establish your reputation as one of the better ones.

5. Make sure you stay legal and ethical.
This sounds obvious but as well as being legal and ethical you need to be careful of giving away information that could be considered to be business confidential.

6. Keep a file of blog ideas.
Do you have days when you just don’t feel that inspired and you find it difficult to blog? I certainly do. To get around this, I keep a file of ideas and prepared blog posts to dip into so I can keep the content flowing on my blog.

7. Provide links from your blog.
People who read blogs are used to being able to click on interesting topics and going right to the web page with the information. After all, this is the internet. Don’t always assume the links on your site have to be to affiliate products (although you should have them, of course). Link to sites you think your readers will find interesting or useful.

This can help to establish you as a consultative blogger and you will be taken just a bit more seriously as an expert in your chosen niche.

8. Only start blogging if you like to write.
Even though I like to write, I do often find it to be a bit of a challenge. I work with guys at Income Elite that are better and more prolific than I am but I learn from these guys and aspire to reach their high standards. It is a skill, though.

9. Be authentic.
I think the readers appreciate it. Make sure you give plenty of original content and really let your readers get to know you.
It’s absolutely fine to rewrite reports and provide you readers with well-proven information, tips, techniques and resources but make sure there is plenty of you and your material on the site as well. Also, steer clear of ghost writers if at all possible.

10. Be patient.
Don’t expect 10,000 readers in the first month. Readership grows over time. Also, your readership will vary between week days and weekends, etc. Keep an eye on your stats and watch your readership grow over time. You’ll get quite a buzz from this.

By: Steve Peirce