So you want to start a blog? Personally, I think that’s a great idea. I have a few and if I had more time to write I’d have even more. I like to create blogs for any topic that interests me and that I’m actively learning about. Not only does blogging on the topic document your learnings, but it shares those learnings with others. Blogs in general are a great way to share information, build a business, make money online, and interact with others.
Don’t be mislead though, starting a blogging website is far more than just creating a wordpress.com website and writing every so often. Building a successful blog that has blog reach takes a great deal of work and commitment. Here are just a few of the things you need to have and consider when starting a blogging website:
Passion
Passion is key. If you aren’t passionate about the topic you’ll be writing on, it will reflect in your writing and to your readers. When choosing a topic to blog about, pick a topic that greatly interests you. Pick a topic related to a hobby you really enjoy or something related to the type of work you do (and love). For example, I love blogging so I write here about blogging. I also enjoy saltwater aquariums and write about my hobby over on my saltwater aquarium blog. I also really enjoy model trains and hope to start a blog on models trains some day.
Again, passion is key. If you aren’t passionate, excited and love the subject you’re blogging about, then pick another topic.
Knowledge and Authority
Tightly coupled with passion is knowledge and authority. To have a success blog, you not only need to be passionate, but you also need to exhort knowledge and authority. People will read your blog because they trust you and respect your knowledge and authority on the topic you are writing about. If you don’t provide knowledge, they’ll move on to another blog that does.
Let’s first examine what authority means. According to Dictionary.com an authority in the context we’re using is: an expert on a subject. Through sharing the knowledge that you have, you establish yourself as an expert and therefore an authority on the subject. One of the niches I enjoy writing in is personal finance. PaidTwice from I’ve Paid For This Twice Already doesn’t like to consider herself an authority. She tells more of a personal story that people can relate to, however whether intentional or not, she has established herself as an authority on snow flaking and by doing so gets linked to and receives traffic as a result. She even started something called the Snow Flake Revolution along with an associated blog carnival (see below) to further establish that authority.
What is crucial to understand is that being an expert is all about perception. There is no documented or defined set of criteria that makes someone an expert. A common saying is that: Perception is reality. This is true for being perceived as an expert. If you write like you are an expert, than you’ll be perceived as an expert and thus receive authority in your field.
Marketing ability
In the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, the voice said: “If you build it, they will come“. In the world of blogging, this is only somewhat true. Search engines will eventually find your content and visitors will arrive from organic searches, but unless you are just very lucky and stumble into some traffic rich keywords, this will not be enough to grow your blog.
There are more than 175,000 blogs created everyday according to Technorati. With that amount of “competition”, it’s easy to see that just building a site and expecting thousands of readers to flock to your site is unrealistic. As with most any business, marketing plays a key role in the success (or failure) of your blog.
Fortunately there are more ways to market your blog than I can count and new ways appear daily. Part of your responsibility as a blogger will be to determine which of these work and which don’t. It also involves staying on the leading edge of these new opportunities when they arrive.
Here are just a few of the many ways to market your blog as of the time of this writing. Remember, there are new one’s daily, so keep an eye out:
Commenting – Adding thoughtful and value added comments to blogs related to your blog’s niche will not only expose others to your blog, but will also help to establish your authority. Do not make the mistake of writing thoughtless comments like: “Great article, thanks!” or using it for obvious promotion by adding comments like: “Please come read my blog: http://www.ihavenoclue.com”. These types of comments wont’ help you but hurt you. Instead, add value. Let’s say you read an article about using social media to promote your blog. The article is good and very thorough, but that missed a social media service you’ve found to be very helpful. Add a comment like this:
Very thorough write-up. I’ve been using a few of the one’s you’ve listed and look forward to trying out the one’s I’m not familiar with. Recently, I’ve been using XYZ as well, which you didn’t include. Over the past month, it’s generated an additional 1,000+ unique visits to my blog and increased my number of subscribers. I really like the way they categorize the topics as well. You mentioned the ABC service, one tip I’ve found that really makes a difference is …
Well, you get the picture.
Forums – Forums are a great way to add exposure to your blog and help to establish your authority as well. They key to forums is not just participating to expose your blog. Many forums require you to participate for a while before they will even allow you to add your blogs link to your forums posts. I think this is a good practice. Participate in the forum to learn and share your knowledge. Let the marketing be a secondary focus and I guarantee you’ll get more readers and traffic as a result. People are smart, and they’ll see right through someone just joining to promote their blog.
Blog Carnivals – Blog Carnivals are generally hosted by different sites each week. Carnivals of blog events that include articles submitted to the carnival from many different blogs. Blog Carnivals are generally focused on a particular topic. Blog Carnival has lots of different blog carnivals indexed for pretty much any category or niche you might be trying to fill. You can also create your own. The primary benefit of participating in carnivals is visibility. Submitting your articles to blog carnivals is a great way to expose your writing to other people. Submit early and often when you are first starting out and host as often as you can.
Social Media – Social media is the craze these days with sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, and Twitter just to name a few of the really big one’s. These sites can really bring a significant amount of traffic to your site if your articles become popular. Go read about the Digg Effect if you aren’t familiar with what I mean. These sites can literally bring your web server down due to the amount of traffic they can generate. Social media isn’t just fun, but is a very effective way to market your blog. Recently, I’ve really enjoyed interacting with people on Twitter, so I’d invite you to follow me and let me know you found me via this article!
Social Skills
When I first started blogging, I learned very quickly that blogging is very social. Making friends and developing relationships with other bloggers,especially more seasoned and A-list bloggers can really help you and your blog. Getting a link from Problogger, Get Rich Slowly, Lifehacker, or anyone of the other “big time” blogs on the internet can cause a huge surge in your subscriber base just from the exposure.
Within the first couple of months of starting my Christian personal finance site, I was invited by Pinyo of Moolanomy to start a blogging network with him. Looking back, this is as probably the single most beneficial thing that happened to my blog. Not only did I get links from other very credible personal finance blogs, I also made some great friends that I cherish very much. Friends that I trust to bounce idea off, provide feedback on myblogs, and share ideas with. Finding a group like that early in your blogging career can have a significant positive impact on it’s future. Seek out opportunities like this and maybe even start your own blogging network.
Technical knowledge
Many people start blogs thinking all they need to do is write. They head over to wordpress.com or blogger.com, create a new blog in a few minutes and start writing. This will of course work and get you online, but the trick is to differentiate yourself from others and to personalize your blog to your style. In order to do this, you’ll need some technical knowledge or someone who can fill that niche for you. Typical technologies you’ll need to be familiar with when blogging include: PHP, HTML, Domain Names, FTP, the various browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer (unfortunately they don’t all work the same).
Being from a technical background, I enjoy the technical aspects of blogging; however if this is something you don’t want to do or hassle with, than you’ll need to find a blog consulting and blog coaching service that can take care of the technical details for you.
Time and commitment
Finally, blogging takes time and commitment. Writing authoritative and knowledge based articles require time to write. I average 1 – 2 hour per article depending on how difficult the topic and how long the article is. I write daily on my Christian personal finance blog, and weekly on most of my other blogs. Just writing articles consumes 9 – 18 hours a week. This doesn’t include time for marketing, socializing, managing advertisers, doing my financial book keeping, writing guest articles, fixing technical issues, etc.
I enjoy it, so it’s time well spent, but it’s far more time than most people realize. I wake each weekday morning at 5:00am and work on my blogs until 8:00am where I start my full-time job. I am usually working on them in the evening as well from 8 – 10:00pm or so. I also work on weekends (as I am right now) when not spending time with my family.
Don’t think that starting and running a successful blog will only take an hour or so a week. Blogging takes a considerable time investment, and the more time spent doing it, the greater the reward.
For those of you reading this that are blogging, what have I missed? What would you add?
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