7 Practical Tips on How to Be a Successful Blogger in 2020

7 Practical Tips on How to Be a Successful Blogger in 2020

7 Practical Tips on How to Be a Successful Blogger in 2020

Written by Zac Johnson

Ever wished you could earn at home?

You can with a successful blog. However, there are so many blogs flooding the Internet today. It’s estimated there are well over 600 million blogs live and active right now.

Unfortunately, so many of them go unnoticed. Avoid this by learning how to be a successful blogger, one that grabs people’s attention. Become the authority that people visit regularly.

Not sure where to start? It’s easy!

Check out these 7 tips showcasing how to start a successful blog:

1. Pick a Platform

Before you ever write your first blog post, you’ll need to first pick a platform. Keep in mind that your choice will forever affect how you manage your blog site.

WordPress, for example, has a high learning curve but it offers the most flexibility thanks to all its plugins and themes. Wix, on the other hand, offers fewer plugins or customization features but it has a unique AI-centered website builder.

List down the important features or plugins you’ll need, especially those for SEO purposes, chatbots, and design. Weigh which platform gives you more bang for your buck and which one you’re comfortable working in.

2. Know Your Niche

One of the reasons many blogs go unnoticed is the fact they don’t focus on a specific niche. Avoid this problem early on by identifying your niche and your target audience. Refine this even further later on by studying your visitor metrics — check the age, location, and other important demographics that make up your readers.

Don’t simply write about anything in your niche either. Yes, your blog might be about video game news but this doesn’t mean you should post every bit of gaming news out there. Go to Reddit or Twitter and check which topics people want to discuss and read about.

3. Diversify Content

Yes, your blog will focus primarily on written posts but it shouldn’t stop there.

Break up your paragraphs with images. This prevents monotony and raises the entertainment value of your post. Images can also help educate people more, especially those who rely on visuals to understand the content.

If you can, use videos too.

Videos will account for over 82% of all Internet traffic by 2021, which makes sense since videos are quicker and easier to consume compared to written blog posts. Some companies like Wired feature both a video review and a more in-depth written review of tech gadgets.

Why not step into experimental technology too? Diversify your content by adding VR or AR content? Use polls and fillable forms to encourage interaction from your visitors and readers.

At the end of the day, your blog should have more than walls of text.

4. Invest in SEO

You could have the prettiest site and the most entertaining content in the world but it won’t matter if people can’t find you. Your site will gather dust if it can’t increase traffic and this requires boosting expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

Achieve this through proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Trusted and reliable web platforms recommend using tools like Yoast SEO to audit your blog posts, meta descriptions, alt tags, and titles. Use Google Keyword Planner to identify which keywords to prioritize and create content around. Approach other blog sites for guest posting opportunities and backlinking options.

If you’re on social media, encourage people to share your content. Use proper lead generation tactics and forms on your site to boost your email marketing strategy.

5. Educate and Entertain

Always prioritize two goals: educate your readers and keep them entertained. Reading your blog shouldn’t feel like reading a wall of text from a school textbook. However, as easy and fluid as it is, your post should still pack a punch in terms of content and useful information.

One of the best examples is affiliate marketing. It’s a system where you can earn by educating people about products.

This is all about reviewing products and giving the average reader a good idea of whether or not they should buy. If they click the affiliate link on your review, you’ll earn a commission.

You can check here to learn affiliate marketing basics and tactics.

6. Encourage Interaction

Don’t let your blog be a one-sided platform. Encourage interaction because this can help in terms of SEO, brand awareness, and reader loyalty.

Not sure which one of the five topics you have is interesting? Put up a poll and ask your readers! Now you know for sure which topic is going to get more readers.

Did you post an epic 2,000-word review of the latest hit movie? Ask people to share it with their movie-buff friends and always encourage them to leave comments — keywords in the comment section helps!

7. Market Your Blog

If SEO is the backbone, proper marketing is the rocket that’s going to propel your blog forward.

Get busy sharing your blog posts on social media, forums, and on Reddit. Leave links to your blog site on your social media profiles. If you’re on platforms like Facebook, boost your posts so that people outside your usual followers will discover your content.

Again, encourage people to share your content. Get in touch with other bloggers and ask if you can guest post on their site or if they can mention or link back to your blog the next time they post something.

If you have the budget, invest in a PPC campaign. Paid ads can go a long way to spread awareness and build traffic.

However, keep in mind that getting traffic is only the beginning. Keeping people interested in your blog is the more important factor to work on.

Now You Know How to Be a Successful Blogger!

Learning how to be a successful blogger isn’t easy but these 7 tips can give you a good head start. Don’t hesitate to experiment. It’s okay to stumble around a bit since most platforms like WordPress and Wix offer free options to start with.

Of course, there are more advanced tips to follow if you want to get the most out of your blogging career. If you want to learn more, feel free to read all our other guides right here, today!

Meteora Automation Tool to Boost Instagram Engagement and Sales

Meteora Automation Tool to Boost Instagram Engagement and Sales

By now, it’s been clearly proved that Instagram isn’t something of a wet squib. It has exploded on the social media scene like a big bomb, and gone on to become one of the fastest growing social networks. All kinds of product-based businesses and influencers from...

Instagram 5xx Server Error – What is that mean? [Explanation]

Instagram 5xx Server Error – What is that mean? [Explanation]

No website can avoid running into the occasional glitch and problem, and when you consider how vastly complicated many social media websites are, it’s not surprising that their users encounter lots of different errors and difficulties at various times. There are so...

Instagram Live Isn’t Working, Why? [Quick Fix – 2020]

Instagram Live Isn’t Working, Why? [Quick Fix – 2020]

What Is Instagram Live? Social media websites are always looking for new tools and features to appeal to their users, and Instagram is certainly no exception to that rule. Instagram Live panders to the trend of immediacy, and also creates a sense of urgency to be...

Instagram, Reporting A Problem (How can you report?)

Why You Might Need To Report A Problem Instagram is amongst the most popular of social media websites, and enjoys enormous amounts of traffic and users everyday. It has several different facets and functions available to its users, so it’s no surprise that sometimes...

Instagram Hashtags Not Working [Solution – 2020]

Why Use Hashtags? Hashtags are one of the biggest trends on the internet right now. They’re a very useful tool which allows people to collate related data, connecting it across different channels and cutting through some of the noise generated by social media’s...

Instagram Won’t Let Me Log In [How to fix it? – 2020]

Social media is becoming increasingly popular, and Instagram is amongst the top ones, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t run into issues occasionally. These can occur on the browser, the app, or both, but no matter what, they often lead to frustration and time wasted...

Instagram Keeps Crashing When I Open It [Solution – 2020]

If you, like most people, find yourself checking your phone compulsively for updates, new pictures, posts to favourite, and are generally a social media addict, you may find that you do run into the occasional frustrating glitch, even with your favourite programmes....

How to Recover deleted Facebook messages? [Solution – 2020]

If you use Facebook, you know that Messenger is a great way to communicate with friends or family, business associates, and others to send files and photos, videos, links, and other content. It’s a convenient way to share information with specific contacts without...

Subscribe

6 Brilliant Tips To Make You Blog like a Pro-Blogger

6 Brilliant Tips To Make You Blog like a Pro-Blogger

Blog like a Professional Blogger

Would you like to become a renowned blogger? 

The only reason I started blogging because it was fun and it was something I enjoyed doing. Perhaps you are also one of those budding bloggers who is blogging for the passion, or maybe you are trying your luck in the field of blogging to earn money or to make a name for yourself or your brand. Whatever your reason is for blogging, what’s important is how well you are doing.

If you are spending two hours a day on your blog and the results are not up to the mark, it’s time for you to re-think your strategy. If you are not motivated, then you should read this blogger motivation guide which will surely make you feel refreshed and will help you to get your blogging mojo back.

What is important when blogging is to always learn something new and share it with others for whom it is new information. This article will give practical insights and motivate you to leave your amateur seat and blog like a professional blogger. So let’s see what you can do to blog like a professional blogger!

Page Contents

Why should you blog like a professional blogger?

One thing we should always keep in mind while doing anything is to make the most of it – do it to the best of our ability.

If you are just one out of millions of mediocre bloggers, it’s time for you to take action and move forward. In this post I’m sharing tips that I have learned in my 6-year blogging tenure and if you follow these tips, in next 30 days you will become a better blogger than you are today.

1. Confidence

Confidence is perfection

First, remember that people are unlikely to take advice from a non-confident person. If you are sharing information without confidence, nobody is going to believe it. Always remember that you can build credibility by not losing it.

Consider the qualities that give you trust in a person.  When it comes to blogging, your physical presence is not a factor.  It is your words that matter most. The question is – how can you become (and give the impression of) a confident blogger?

  1. Your posts and writing style:  Your ability to communicate in writing is the biggest factor at play as a blogger. When I am writing a blog post, I imagine that my reader is sitting on an empty chair in front of me, and we are having a conversation. If your blogging has a conversational tone, you are more likely to leave a footprint. Notice the number of times I use the word “you” in this article. That is because this article is for you and you only. It is written for just one person, and that is the person who is reading this article – you! Another way to improve your blogging style is by using “I” instead of “we.”   Sometimes writers who continually use the word “we” are showing us that they avoid taking responsibility for their work. If it’s a one man show blog, why do you need to use “we”? Open these articles in a new tab: 10 tips to improve your writing skills and 11 effective tips to boost article writing skills.
  2. Your blog design: I’m sure you must have been to a restaurant where your impression of the waiter was created by what he was wearing. I’m more likely to tip a waiter who is in a uniform than one who is not. When you are working online, it’s your design that is the suit, and you are the waiter. If your blog design is unpleasant and doesn’t leave a good impression, then you are not likely to get a tip, i.e., turning the one-time visitor into a subscriber. So get rid of all mumbo-jumbo from your blog, and have a neat and professional looking design that reflects your personality and that of your blog.  Remember, your blog design is the first point of content, and a first impression lasts forever.
  3. Come out of the closet: How many popular bloggers do you know of? If you know even two or three of them, ask yourself why and how do you know them? It’s because they didn’t hide in the closet like you are! All of these successful bloggers have given a face to their brand along with their name, and you can clearly see that on their blog. Isn’t it easier to connect to a person rather than a brand? It’s time for you to make some changes to your blog and to introduce us to the person behind that awesome blog!Add an author box, add few details about you in your blog’s “About” page, and add your profile to the blog’s sidebar. Add a quality photo and an intriguing bio.  Tell us about yourself in a way that allows people to relate and connect with you.
  4. Be honest, and don’t doubt yourself: Honesty is the best policy” is a “life rule” that we all learned in kindergarten, but with time we all learn that it is not easy to live by that rule. How many times in a day do you lie about little things? When I asked myself this question, I realized that I sometimes lie unintentionally in small and seemingly inconsequential ways. We lie because we want other’s to be happy, or we don’t want to hurt them. But lying always has a consequence. For instance, when we lie to please people, we turn ourselves into people-pleasers. Take this as a challenge, and for the next seven days trying to be completely honest. Be honest in your offline and online life, and let me know how this changes your life. I started this as an experiment myself, and within seven days I started to feel the difference. I have now been doing this for a month, and apart from two or three instances when I lied, my life has improved significantly. As a bonus, being careful not to lie taught me how to say “no,” and my confidence level has gone up ever since. Once you do this, it will also have a positive impact on your writing and your online presence. I invite you to read, how being completely honest for seven days changed my life.

2. Become an Authority in your niche:

No matter how much you know about a subject, your opinion is not respected until you have established yourself as an authority, and your blog as an authoritative blog.

The question is- how can you become an authoritative blogger? 

If you make the changes suggested above, (leading to your increased confidence), then you are more likely to become an authoritative blogger.

Now it’s time to leverage the power of social-media and establish yourself as an authoritative person in your niche. Let’s start by updating your social media profile details, thus improving your social-media presence. Ensure that your social media profile is like your resume and that it also reflects your personality. Use the same profile image everywhere (Twitter, Instagram Quora, Facebook, Google+, Gravatar, etc…) to stand out and make it easier for people to remember you.

Always share your opinion on the hot topics in your niche or trends around the globe. Your opinion may not be as valuable as that of an industry expert, but it will still be more valuable than the opinions of many people who follow you.

3. Put others before you:

One of the most common attributes of a successful person is that they give credit to people for their work. A superficial person will neither talk about the outstanding work that others have done nor share it with others. If you are one of those people who dislike to pay tribute to others for their work, you need to take a look at it and work to change it.

Honouring those who deserve it is another expression of self-confidence and a sign of professional respect.

4. Don’t just create quick connections – get into their inner circle:

You must have heard that networking is the key to success and that it’s important to build a powerful network of people around you. This is one of the most important things you can do in every aspect of your life, online or offline.

When networking, gaining respect and working to become a part of someone’s inner-circle makes a substantial difference in your connections. Some of you may have read a lot about successful people and you may even have some in your social media network, but you are not a part of their inner-circle.

You are just one among thousands of people they have “friended” on Facebook or have met at a blogging event. Your goal should be to establish yourself as part of their inner-circle and become an important connection in their arena. This will only happen when you put some time and energy into working on building a meaningful connection.

5. Smart work rather than hard work :

No matter what niche you are working in, smart work takes you forward. Hard work is important, but working smart is even more important.

If you spend two hours every day writing blog posts and not working to promote your work, you will be in the same situation a year or two later as you are today. Maybe your blog will grow to some extent and you may even get more traffic and earn a little more money, but you will be behind the crowd moving forward at a steady pace and you will never be everything you can be in this area.

There are people who have only recently started working online and are already making million of dollars because of their smart work and great ideas. Without a good idea, no amount of work will pay off optimally.

With regard to starting to work smart, I suggest that you start by choosing the right set of blogging tools,  work on time-management to become more productive. Maintain a good balance between your social and personal life, because if you want to succeed, you have to be a happy person.  That will only happen when you are satisfied with your life in 360* (in all aspects of your life).

6. Value your time and have a team

If you are a regular reader of ShoutMeLoud, I’m sure you must have heard me saying “Time is money”, and I will keep repeating it until you email me and tell me “Yes Harsh, I have learned that time is money!”.

You may have 30-40 great ideas, but implementing these ideas alone takes a lot of time and effort. If you have a team of people who work, you are more likely to turn your good ideas into reality.

You need to upgrade your role from blogger to infopreneur/solopreneur. This will only happen if you have a team and start delegating work to others.

If you are someone who lives in a remote place, all you need to do is create a virtual team of your own. You should check out these two articles from Srikanth, where he has shared everything you need to know about virtual assistance.

Perhaps the most important take-away from this article is this:  Leave the conventional way of working, and work like an “Internetpreneur”. When you are working online you are limitless, and you can achieve anything you want.

In this article I have shared many important points which will help you to grow strong and achieve your dreams. Focus on the points which you believe will improve your blogging career and turn you into a successful professional blogger.

Feel free to let me know which of the above tips you will be working on, and how are you planning to start. If you need help with any of these points, feel free to ask me via the comments section below.

10 Free & Useful Google Tools No Blogger Should Ignore

10 Free & Useful Google Tools No Blogger Should Ignore

10 Free & Useful Google Tools No Blogger Should Ignore

By

Can you call yourself a content marketing expert?

Even if you answer “yes”, there are still lots of ways to enhance your performance.

Even if you’re one of the 42% of B2B marketers that claim to be effective at content marketing, you still have a bunch of room for improvement.

If you desire to make the most out of your content marketing efforts, you must know what strategies to implement, and most of all, what tools to use.

Good keyword research, the perfect social media marketing strategy, and the best search engine optimization skills all can contribute immensely to your success as a content marketing expert.

Unfortunately, when it comes to content marketing tools, a lot of the ones often recommended by the experts are very costly, and the average content marketer can’t afford them.

Now, here’s the good news: There are a bunch of free tools out there that you can also use to get the same results, and many of them are owned by big G (Google).

 

10 Best Free Content Marketing Tools From Google

Interestingly, many people are not utilizing these tools, not because they don’t want to, but because they’re ignorant of them. They still see Google as just a search engine and nothing else.

That brings us to what we’re going to talk about today…

In this post, I will share with you the ten free Google tools you should be using as a content marketer. These are tools you cannot ignore if you’re serious about your business.

Whether you’re a beginner, an intermediate, or a pro, you’ll definitely pick up something from this post.

1. Google Search Console

This is one of the best free tools you’ll ever use as a webmaster. The time you spend on Google Search Console is never a waste.

The more you use the tool, the more you become addicted to it as there’s just so much to learn.

With the Google Search Console SEO tool, you can learn about the overall health of your website and know where to make changes to ensure your site is performing well SEO-wise.

There are also lots of other amazing things you can do with GSC.

Some of the features I regularly use are listed under the “Search Traffic” drop-down:

Search Traffic

For instance, the “Search Analytics” link lets me quickly analyze my site’s performance on Google Search:

Search Analytics

If I want to know how my keywords are performing, I’ll just click on the Position button to learn more. This will bring up the average position for all my keywords that appear in Google Search:

Position

As a content marketer, you should really get used to the Google Search Console tool; you stand to gain a lot from it. Even if you’re only tracking a few key metrics, the time you spend on it will be well worth it in the end.

2. Google Keyword Planner

Are you still looking for an excellent tool to help you uncover the best keywords in your industry?

While there are a lot of tools that can do this, Google’s free Keyword Planner remains the godfather and one of the best.

Even though it’s incredibly simple to use, the more you experiment with it and the more searches you perform, the better you’ll understand how to utilize it for your success.

Using the keyword of “content marketing” as an example, one of the toughest keywords to rank for in Google, the competition is incredibly fierce.

But you don’t have to target that exact keyword. With Google Keyword Planner, you can easily dig up related long-tail keywords that will be easier to rank:

Dig up related long-tail keywords

Once you’ve gotten these seed keywords, you can now enter them into your favorite keyword research tool (like SEMRUSHLong Tail Pro) to uncover even more long tail ideas.

As a content marketer, there is a lot you can do with this free tool. Why not start making use of it today?

3. Google Sheets

As a content marketer, you need a good system for recording and keeping track of data. There are also times when you might need to share this data with your team.

You can actually use Microsoft Office Excel to do this, but it does not have an intuitive shareable feature, and it can take up a lot of space when it contains so much data. And what if you needed to check something immediately, but you’re not with your laptop where you saved the MS Excel sheet?

That’s a problem.

Fortunately, with the robust Google Sheets, this can be easily taken care of. It’s one of the most efficient, and easy-to-use tools to track changes, record data, and collaborate with others.

4. Google Analytics

This is arguably the best of all the analytical tools on the internet.

Let me ask you a few questions:

  • Do you know how many of your website visitors are new versus returning?
  • Do you know where these people are coming from?
  • What about the total amount of time they’re spending on your site?
  • What’s your website’s bounce rate?

All of these vital analytical questions and more are the things that Google Analytics will provide you answers to.

Google Analytics

It’s a free analytics product from Google that will easily track and report all the important metrics from your website.

Google Analytics can give you clever insight into your site’s traffic and enable you to understand how people are discovering and navigating your site, so you’ll know which areas to give more of your attention to.

5. Google Alerts

Google Alerts lets you monitor the web for mentions of specific phrases or keywords. Once you set it up, you’ll always get email alerts whenever these keywords are mentioned online.

For example, you can register to get notified whenever someone mentions your brand, product, company, executives, or even your competition.

As you can see on the screenshot below, I’ve requested to get notified whenever someone mentions “Shout Me Loud Blog” on the web:

Google Alerts

This fantastic tool is an excellent way to adequately manage your business’s online reputation and always react to mentions of your brand promptly.

6. Google Trends

If you’ve been finding it difficult to continuously generate content ideas for your blog, Google Trends can help you with that.

Although Google Keyword Planner and other popular keyword research tools out there can help you in getting ideas, when it comes to creating high-quality content, you can get more from Google Trends.

It might interest you to know that Google Trends is one of the places I often hang out, especially when I’m planning for fresh content on my blogs.

This tool will enable you to easily see what’s trending on any topic.

For example, when I checked the topic “hair loss”, I got:

Google Trends

If you scroll down the page, you will also see more “related topics” and “related queries” you can check out:

Related topics & related queries

Furthermore, apart from researching on your niche, you can also use the Stories trending now section to check if there’s anything that’s relevant to your industry:

Stories trending now

If anything in this section matches your niche, then you’ve identified a hot, trending topic that you could talk about.

You don’t need any experience to use the free Google Trends tool. Just enter your chosen topic in the search box and review the results that comes up.

7. Google My Business

This is one of the tools you don’t want to overlook, especially if you run a local business.

With this tool, you can easily get free advertising from Google.

Just claim your Google My Business listing, and you’re ready to go. If done well, whenever someone performs a search on Google for a phrase related to your business, your business will show up in the search results.

For example, the screenshot below is what came up when I searched for “restaurants in Texas”:

Restaurants in Texas

From the screenshot, all these businesses are Google My Business results for the keyword “restaurants in Texas”. And if you click on the More places button, you will see more.

None of these businesses paid to occupy these results.

If you haven’t created your own Google My Business account, you have to do that immediately, so you won’t lose out on the benefits that come with it

8. Gmail

There are a lot of email clients on the internet – Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, etc.

However, Gmail has always remained my favorite, and that’s because of its many helpful built-in functionalities.

With this tool, there are lots of plugins that will help you ensure that your email account does exactly what you want.

Gmail

There are lots of other really cool things available for Gmail.

With several plugins that will let you customize your email based on your needs as a content marketer, I’m sure you will fall in love immediately.

9. Google Calendar

Let me ask you:

  • How do you usually stay focused on your business?
  • How do you stay organized and productive?

Google Calendar is one of the tools top marketing experts use to stay organized. Even though it does not have all the features that most paid tools have, it gives you more than you need to stay on track all the time.

Google Calendar

Below are some of the ways you can leverage this wonderful tool:

  • Let your team members know when you’ll be available.
  • Create events for the most critical tasks.
  • Find out when you’re most free during the day.

If you’re really serious about your content marketing business, I suggest you check out what Google Calendar has in store, especially if you’re not yet using any better alternative.

This will definitely help you to improve the way you operate.

Best Free Tools For Marketers From Google 

With less than 50 percent of B2B marketers saying they’re effective at content marketing, it shows there’s always room for improvement.

Here, I’ve given you all the free Google tools that you should be paying attention to as a content marketer.

There are still other helpful tools owned by Google, but you should start with the ones I’ve mentioned here first.

It’s now time for you to take action.

How many of these tools are you currently using? Which other Google tools do you think are great for content marketers? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Like this post? Share it with your friends!

Meteora Automation Tool to Boost Instagram Engagement and Sales

Meteora Automation Tool to Boost Instagram Engagement and Sales

By now, it’s been clearly proved that Instagram isn’t something of a wet squib. It has exploded on the social media scene like a big bomb, and gone on to become one of the fastest growing social networks. All kinds of product-based businesses and influencers from...

Instagram 5xx Server Error – What is that mean? [Explanation]

Instagram 5xx Server Error – What is that mean? [Explanation]

No website can avoid running into the occasional glitch and problem, and when you consider how vastly complicated many social media websites are, it’s not surprising that their users encounter lots of different errors and difficulties at various times. There are so...

Instagram Live Isn’t Working, Why? [Quick Fix – 2020]

Instagram Live Isn’t Working, Why? [Quick Fix – 2020]

What Is Instagram Live? Social media websites are always looking for new tools and features to appeal to their users, and Instagram is certainly no exception to that rule. Instagram Live panders to the trend of immediacy, and also creates a sense of urgency to be...

Instagram, Reporting A Problem (How can you report?)

Why You Might Need To Report A Problem Instagram is amongst the most popular of social media websites, and enjoys enormous amounts of traffic and users everyday. It has several different facets and functions available to its users, so it’s no surprise that sometimes...

Instagram Hashtags Not Working [Solution – 2020]

Why Use Hashtags? Hashtags are one of the biggest trends on the internet right now. They’re a very useful tool which allows people to collate related data, connecting it across different channels and cutting through some of the noise generated by social media’s...

Instagram Won’t Let Me Log In [How to fix it? – 2020]

Social media is becoming increasingly popular, and Instagram is amongst the top ones, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t run into issues occasionally. These can occur on the browser, the app, or both, but no matter what, they often lead to frustration and time wasted...

Instagram Keeps Crashing When I Open It [Solution – 2020]

If you, like most people, find yourself checking your phone compulsively for updates, new pictures, posts to favourite, and are generally a social media addict, you may find that you do run into the occasional frustrating glitch, even with your favourite programmes....

How to Recover deleted Facebook messages? [Solution – 2020]

If you use Facebook, you know that Messenger is a great way to communicate with friends or family, business associates, and others to send files and photos, videos, links, and other content. It’s a convenient way to share information with specific contacts without...

Subscribe