Blogging is awesome, blogging is a privilege, blogging is not only the best way to market, but the most powerful way to connect and get your message to the world…
…but you have to know how to do it right.
It is no piece of cake. It could be a very profitable venture, and at the same time a total waste of time.
And by the way, it is a waste of time for most people… it won’t be for you after you are done with this article.
It’s like everywhere I go (I read a lot about blogging, as I always try to improve and deliver the best), it’s always the same old: “know your audience” advice…
and I was like:
“screw this, I have to tell you something that will actually help you become an awesome blogger, I have to tell you the 5 blogging tips that have helped me create one of the most badass internet marketing blogs online”
Here they are:
Know your audience
LOL
Just kidding… everybody already knows that. Giving you this advice is like telling to buy a keyboard to blog LOL.
Let’s really start now:
1 Blog like you talk to your friends
This is possibly the most important tip I can give you… I had to learn it the hard way by spending a few years wondering why people weren’t reading my articles, although they were gold.
Turns out it is not really about how vital the info in your articles is, but about how fun they are to read.
People are eager to read an article that will make them smile even if it’s totally useless, rather that an article that has vital information (I know you get me but just in case – I’m not saying to write useless articles).
Why it is like that, I can’t really say… and if I hadn’t found this myself through a lot of blogging, I probably wouldn’t believe you if you told me it was so…
…which is why I don’t blame you if this is hard for you to believe.
If I wrote this article like this:
“these 5 blogging tips are vital for you. They are extremely important. they are this and they are that… and do this and do that bla bla bla”
…you wouldn’t probably even read it till the end, cause you would get bored.
But I chose to write it as if we were having a conversation at your favorite coffee house (or wherever you like to go), as if I’ve known you since kids, to make it as easy and fun to read as possible, and I think you are loving it so far (see how I’m communicating with you right here? that’s how you make your articles entertaining and fun, make them look like any regular cool conversation with your friends).
And the biggest advantage of writing like this is when you read my articles you subconsciously already know me better, which is blogging’s main purpose – to connect with your readers the best way you can.
Not a lot of people can write like this, even most of the famous blogs have boring content, because they only care about traffic, popularity gets them readers and not content. If you mange to create friendly and fun content, you will build a powerful blog like you wouldn’t believe.
Don’t try to write perfectly informative articles, try to be fun while talking to your readers.
2 It’s all about the title
People have built empires around catchy headlines, and only because of those headlines.
If I had to give you one blogging tip, it would be to learn how to write clickable titles before all.
When i started blogging I was all about optimizing the article perfectly. My titles were boring as hell, but had the keyword at the right position (at the beginning of the title), were always short and you could tell form a thousand miles I was only about optimization.
Not only did I not rank my articles on the first page of Google, but no one clicked those that I somehow did rank, and I had no traffic, no results, no nothing…
…and those people who came to read, weren’t staying for long.
So I had to change something, and since I’d already been writing solid gold articles, I decided to changes their headlines and started writing them like this:
…even when not so long, my titles are still cool and interesting and suggest a fun read like this:
It’s all about the title, don’t take my word for it… even Spock thinks so LOL.
3 Give it time
You know what?
I’m changing my mind, this is the only advice I would give you if I were to only give you one advice.
Blogging takes time… a lot of time. It takes at least a year to build a powerful blog, though when you build it, you are sorted…
…but even when you start getting results, you have to keep writing fresh content and update the old ones.
It is not for everybody.
I know you think you could just pay someone to write for you, yet I don’t think this will do… everyone has its own style and no one can write like you.
You can pay for articles or accept quest posts to keep your blog going, but if you want to have a community, you need to write a lot of the articles yourself.
Now you know why most blogs suck – cause their authors are lazy and/or are after fast results.
I know this sounds discouraging, but let me tell you one thing:
once you manage to build a powerful blog, you will have an asset for life… not only that, but you will see what it is to have created something really cool, something that helps people, something that makes them email and thank you for your great content.
I remember the first time I got a thank you email, can’t find it but it was something like this:
‘hey Vladi,
thanks for your article,
it really helped and I can’t believe you
give such information for free…
thanks, thanks, thanks
name’
The person was so excited I really felt like I was doing something special. There’s nothing better than helping…
…and don’t be like: “yeah but this is business, it’s no charity fund”, cause when you get emails like that, you will surely sell a lot too… once you learn how to sell by not selling, just click that link and go read the article, you will see what I mean.
4 Get Ideas from your audience
There’ll be times you will run out of topics to blog about… though this is not the main reason to ask your readers what to write. I’m a big believer of Steve Jobs’s ‘people don’t usually know what they want until you give it to them’ (he said something like that when they told him tablets wouldn’t sell), but I still think your readers know the best what they want to read…
…and asking them will help you deliver the right content.
But people don’t usually have the time, or feel like going through all the mishaps to take surveys and getting feedback could be a bit of a challenge, you have to make it as fast and easy as possible for them to give their opinion…
…fortunately, I have the right tool for the purpose – Qeryz (it has a free version that works perfectly), I use it and can say it does wonders, and will not slow your site even a bit, you already know how vital your site speed is.
I personally believe life is pretty short and we have to have as much fun as possible, which is why I try to write interesting and entertaining articles, and use Qeryz to find out if my blog is fun for you.
You can ask you readers whatever you want though and it’s as easy as 1+1 to set the tool up.
5 Read often
The secret to writing a lot is reading… lots of reading. I personally spend about 2-3 hours a day reading other blogs, books, anything related to entrepreneurship that comes from reliable sources (there’s a lot of crap online and you have to be careful what you read).
Don’t read forums though, I have not seen one successful person who hangs out on forums. No one who actually makes money has time for forums, they are usually full of forum marketers who only try to slip you an eBook, that would not only be not worth it, but damaging.
Forum marketers don’t know that much about anything else but forum marketing, which is basically trying to pretend you know everything and acting like a guru all the time to impress newbies (who by the way are the only ones who get impressed for a bit, until they get to know how marketing and making money online actually work).
Some forums offer value, but they are not a lot.
I think you are good to go. These 5 blogging tips are pretty much everything you need to become a classy blogger.
Let me know if you liked this article. Thanks and stay awesome.
