Are You a Blogger?

This is a post that started on my new Tumblr blog – “The Road Ahead.” I feel like it’s pretty relevant to a lot of you who are reading this and wanted to share a bit more on the subject. Since my article, “3 Money-Making Magazine Strategies for Blogging Success,” posted at Problogger.net, I’ve been getting a lot of questions from new bloggers on blog strategies and the like. If you want to be successful at blogging there are 5 main things you’ve got to do;

1. Define Your Niche – There are literally, millions of blogs out there. Carve your own slice of the pie and make yourself stand out. For The Success Center, I’m focusing on subject matter that will help Christian entrepreneurs. Why? Christians face more intimate struggles that hit spiritual nerves so problems cut deeper. And Entrepreneurs have many roads to success but finding the right path is critical to staying on it. Put the two together and you’ve got plenty of topics to write about!

Update: A great way to define your niche is by defining what you’re passionate about. I read a book on writing and the author said, “write what you know and not what you think you know.” When people pick up that you actually love what you’re writing about that increases your authority in your niche.

2. Post Consistently – There’s an eternal war raging between bloggers about post frequency, but honestly … it doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent with it. Seriously, it doesn’t matter if you post every day or once a week. Just do it on a constant basis so people can judge accurately when you’re going to post. I post 3 times a week at The Success Center. But, with the debut of “Inside the Success,” my radio & web show I’m seeing now that the postings will definitely increase on a regular basis.

Update: Consistency is key in establishing reader relationship and “conditioning” blog surfers to become regular blog readers. They expect something from you and when you deliver it on a consistent basis they’ll reward you with their loyalty. I try to write a post on Monday and Wednesday, start a poll on Tuesday, end it on Thursday, and post a video on Friday. It seems like a lot, but the polls and videos are the shortest post, but still give readers something to interact with. And when I post on Monday and Wednesday, that’s when I give them something really to “think about.”

3. Create an Editorial Calendar – If you’re trying to blog for money then take it seriously. It doesn’t get any more serious than planning out your posts. Trust me, it helps to be organized. I try to plan out my posts at least a week in advance. Do I always stick to the calendar, absolutely not, but it helps me to stay organized and to give my readers something fresh every week.

Update: Here’s a 17 minute video showing you exactly how I create an editorial calendar for my blog.

4. Find a partner – For some of you this may work and for others you’ll want to fly solo. I’ve found it so useful to partner up with different people on many projects. I’m particularly grateful to have a partner in, Yolanda who writes news/success profiles for me here. She’s great and I’m lucky to have her. Partnering is a good idea to lessen the load for one thing and to give readers a different style and voice for another. Here at the Success Center, it works well. She has been teaching me a lot about people I really didn’t know, such as, the article she did on Valerie Daniels-Carter.

Update: Yolanda doesn’t work with me too much lately. We’re friends and I see her often, but she really doesn’t have time to help as much as she would like. And that’s ok. It’s important when finding partners that you come to a middle ground of what’s expected and what’s not. I wasn’t paying her so I didn’t expect her to write for me every day or even every week. However, when she did, I was grateful and she produced great content.

5. Stay Dedicated! – There are going to be times when you’re not going to get a lot of traffic. When you’ll wonder if anyone is reading your blog at all. But, you have to stay dedicated. You’ve got to keep at it. If no one reads your articles, keep churning out “grade A” quality posts so you’ll be ready when they do read them.  Barack Obama once said,

“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”

This is the exact kind of attitude you’ve got to have when starting any endeavor. (Especially blogging)

6. Network! – You’ve got to network with other bloggers, read, comment, and share other people’s information if you want to get looked at yourself. Share information on twitter, connect with people on facebook, and engage in the comments section of your favorite blogs. That’s the true key to blogging success!

7. Join a Secret Blogging Alliance – Darren Rowse picked up on this trend in his post, Let me Show You Inside a Secret Blogging Alliance. The idea is to get together with a couple of your blogging buddies, comment, and share each other’s posts. This idea is very good for beginning bloggers without a support system in place.

This list is not all-inclusive. What other advice can we come up with to help anyone become a successful at blogging? What things do you do to get your blog noticed? Please share your comments below!

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