How to Achieve Success as a Beginner Blogger – Chapter 2

Welcome back to part 2 of our guide to achieving success as a beginner blogger! If you missed part 1, don’t forget to have a read of it first.
So, to recap, once you have nailed your blog design, SEO, content and images then it’s time to turn your attention to promoting your blog and encouraging readership.

9. Study your analytics

You’ll learn so much from looking at where your traffic is coming from, what is leading them to you and what they’re searching for.

Set up your Google Analytics tracking for your blog , if you need a hand working out where to start, our beginner’s guide can help. Find out what people are searching for when they land on your site, found out which posts are being read the most, which pages people are staying on the longest and where your visitors are coming from, how did they find you?

Data like this will really help you understand your blog readers and what people are looking for, so you can start to create more content that will really resonate with them.

10. Allow people to subscribe and build an email list

If you want your visitors to come back and keep reading your posts, then you need to give them the opportunity to. With so much content being churned out each minute, it’s difficult to harness a person’s attention for long.

Getting them to subscribe means you can build an email database of readers. You can then write personalised newsletters to your readers and keep them interested in your content.

11. Engage with other bloggers, join a community and build relationships

You won’t get eyeballs on your blog unless you put it out there and promote it. Who is most likely to read it and engage with you (apart from your mum)? Other bloggers!

You’re all in it together! They want to have a look and see what you (and other bloggers) are doing, so they will happily take a peek at your website. Don’t forget that they want you to read their content too, so will expect you to return the favour. So start a bit of mutual back-scratching-  and the big bonus here is that you make new blogger friends, learn about blogging and how others do it, and you get traffic and comments and hopefully shares!

Check Facebook for blogging communities and groups where you can share links – but be sure to always read the rules. Most of these groups will kick you out for just link dropping and self-promotion if you don’t get involved and do the same for others.

12. Guest blogging

Once you’ve built a community – you can look at two-way guest blogging. It’s a great way of getting your writing out there, getting more traffic to your blog, connecting with new readers and keeping your blog populated with content.

If you have made a few good connections, talk to them about guest posting and see if they’d be interested in you writing content for each other’s blogs. If they write for yours, they will promote it to their audience and get you more traffic and more readers, and if you write for theirs, you do the same for them. It’s a win-win.

Approaching big blogs who don’t know you and asking if they’ll take guest posts will be treated like a business transaction however so be prepared for them to ask you to pay them to have content on their site.

We’ve written a comprehensive guide to guest blogging here if you want to learn more.

13. Make sure you know who your audience is

If you understand who you are writing for, you will more easily be able to create content that they will want to read and share. Understanding who your audience is and what they want is key.

Studying your analytics will help you see where they are coming from, what they are searching and which posts are most read and clicked on. This will help you see a pattern and push you to create more of the popular content.

Engaging with your readers is essential too. Answer all comments, ask a question at the end of your posts and engage with everyone who engages with your content, whether that’s on the blog itself or on social media.

14. Promote your stuff

If you don’t share your blog in the right places and promote it, no one will find it. Simple as that. Social media is an excellent tool for promoting your content, so use it!

Set up a Facebook page for your blog and treat it like a business page. Invest in Facebook ads so you can get your posts and content in front of more people and you can target your ads so that your target audience sees your stuff.

Link up all your social media profiles to your blog so that your readers can find you.

Twitter is a fantastic engagement tool, so set aside some time each week for Twitter. Share your posts there, but not just that. Find your main readers, other bloggers and writers and engage with them. Retweet them, take their polls, build Twitter lists, participate in Twitter chats and learn how to use the right hashtags.

It’s a great way to listen to your target audience too. What are they sharing? What are they retweeting? What are they talking about this week? Can you create content around what they’re talking about?

Read our post on turning social media followers into blog readers .

14. Be inspired, not intimidated

When you are still a beginner and you are consuming other people’s blogs and content, it’s so easy to be intimidated by the sheer amount of great content out there.

You might be thinking ‘how will I ever compete?’ ‘my blog will never look as good, my photos aren’t as good, my writing is less concise’ etc but don’t! Remember, there is no one out there exactly like you.

You are not plagiarising content, your writing is unique, even if you’re covering a subject that has been written about a million times. It’s your unique perspective on that subject.

And you are still starting out, so you have plenty of time to brush up those photography skills and get better at writing targeted posts. Just keep going and be inspired by what you read, not put off.

15. Be honest and be yourself

With many spammy, fake blogs out there and people starting low-quality blogs to curate links, it’s important that you are honest and real.

Don’t try and be something you’re not, don’t try and pass opinions and ideas off as your own if they are not. Be honest with your readers and have confidence in what you have to offer.

16. Work hard

Really, this may sound obvious but it’s true. You must put in the hard graft to reap the rewards, it doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t just fall into your lap.

Each post you publish on your blog should be taking you between 2 and 3 hours. If you are hitting publish too often after less than an hour’s work on a piece of content, you need to reevaluate your way of working.

Make sure that you are spending enough time planning and researching your posts. Your copy needs to be sense checked, fact-checked and proofread a few times. You need to find or take good pictures, edit them, upload them, optimise them. You need to optimise your whole post. Make sure the format is good. Make sure all the links are working.

If you only put in an hour a week, you won’t get far. Put some real time aside each day to hone your craft, maintain your blog and write content. Keep working.

17. Look at brand collaborations

Making a success of your blog and of yourself as a blogger, then monetising your blog needs to be an option. You can try using affiliate links, write a downloadable eBook to sell, have ads on your site and look at collaborating with brands you are interested in. We have written a post containing tips to start earning money from your blog, so make sure you have a read.

Working with brands is a great way of turning your blog into a business. By now you’ll have your niche and tone of voice nailed. You know what you want to write about and you know what content works with your audience. So now you can start looking at brands who sell products or services that fit your niche and audience.

You know what we do here at CollectivEdge, we match bloggers like you with awesome brands who are looking for the right influencers to be ambassadors. If you haven’t already signed up, get on with it. It’s free and it will take your blogging journey to the next level!