Let us start today with a basic article for anyone who wants to enter the world of blogging and that in addition to explaining what a blog is and what it is for? In this article, you will find very useful tips to follow, mistakes to avoid, as well as a step by step action plan to make a blog help you or allow you to achieve any goal that you propose during this 2018.
What is a Blog?
I still remember the first time I told my parents that I wanted to be a blogger, they looked with a stupefied face, and I would probably think about what madness I was getting into, I tried to explain that a blog was a learning tool that would allow me to grow professionally as well as personally, but although I did not understand much of the subject, as good parents they have supported me in this new “madness”.
Well for me what is a blog, it is a tool with an almost infinite potential if we know how to use it correctly, to me, a blog changed my life, allowed me to think uniquely and be able to live on what I’m most passionate about.
But a blog does not work alone, it requires a lot of love in the form of many hours of work well invested.
We know that to most of them their first blog may not work well and we all had one or several failures in the creation of a blog, but the good thing about these failures is that they help us learn and grow because we learned to know how to make better decisions in the future.
What is a blog used for?
The creation of a blog can have multiple objectives, these are some of the most important:
- Earn money.
- Get customers.
- Get a job.
- Enhance the brand image.
- Work a personal brand.
- Position an online store or corporate website.
- Create a reading audience close to the brand.
- Loyalty to the readers who follow the blog.
- To do networking with other professionals.
- A continuous learning tool.
1. Earn Money
You can make money with a blog, but what is completely absurd and a mistake is the fact that you can make money with a blog that has just been created.
To be able to monetize a blog you need to position your brand well beforehand, create a good audience and create an affiliation strategy if you succeed, then you will be very close to starting to make money with a blog.
Top 5 ways to earn money online with blogger account
2. Get clients
Fix, every week I receive several proposals from companies that want to hire me as a consultant for a project, to advertise their brands in my website, and note that in my blog anywhere there is no service or product in this regard, but still my work on the blog is a great mechanism attraction of clients and companies.
3. Get a job
When do you need to get the job in the short or long term?
I asked you this question for a very simple reason, if you want to get a job in the short term do not focus on your blog, rather focus on writing blogs of professionals with a large audience and who are specialized in that particular area where you would like to work.
4. Enhance your brand image
Social networks come and go and the only thing that only depends on you and your work is a blog, and it is the channel in capital letters to work on the brand image of any company.
I have it clear, although there are still many suspicious companies to use it thinking that it is a tool where time and money is dispersed.
There are companies that have realized their potential and devote great human and financial resources to give a lot of presence to the blog, an example of this could be perfectly the companies Raiola Networks and SEMrush, both do an excellent job with their blog.
5. Improve the personal brand image
A personal brand is also very important and it is possible with your blog. For example, when people think about AllTop9 they definitely get my name in their mind and when they think about my name, they will think about AllTop9. My personal brand is my blog’s image and vice-versa.
6. Position an online store or corporate website
Now we go to a little bit more on the technical plane, but the truth is that a fantastic blog tool to carry or drive traffic and link juice to any landing page of our business, thus improving its positioning, and therefore there is a chance of getting more customers and sales.
I can not understand today and in 2018 a company or an online store that does not have a blog to help you position it.
7. Create a reading audience and close to the brand
Sometimes you forget that the main function of a blog is to get a reading audience that follows it, and for me, it is one of the most important functions of a blog.
Without readers a blog has no place, it does not exist.
There are different types of readers, and one that I really like are those readers who follow your blog feedly, why? Very simple, is a faithful reader who likes and reads your content, so we are talking about a qualified visit but it is also a reader who shares content on social networks and uses Feedly as a tool for curating content.
8. The loyalty of readers to subscribers
Very important for a blog, and what can have great value both in terms of positioning and monetization of the blog.
We need, therefore:
- Define a strategy for capturing leads.
- Define a loyalty strategy for these leads.
- We will take the step to monetize these subscribers.
9. Networking with other professionals
Since I started my career with a blog I have met many people, some of them have become very close and important friends in my life.
There are people who think that networking is to convince someone to help you spread the word about a product or service, but that is not the case, real quality networking is to leave interests aside and approach a person, just because of the fact to know him/her and thus generate a real and sincere friendship.
10. Learning tool
It is clear that with a blog you do not stop learning, but it is very important that if you decide to start with a blog you do it in an area that you know very well and above all that it fills a lot and that you are passionate about.
We learn every day reading from other colleagues in the blogging sector or from their own experiences, and the truth is that I always say and never miss the desire to learn or grow because it is one of the things I like the most in life.
Types of Blogs that exist
I am not going to focus much on the types of blogs that currently exist, only mentioning them in passing, so that I can go directly to the errors and tips and the plan for launching a blog.
- Personal blog: This blog would be an example of this and is a blog where we try to provide valuable content and always with very close communication with readers.
- Corporate blog: A blog of a company that is looking to make itself known and thereby attract more customers to your business.
- Blog of an online store: A blog that tries to make very educational guides about products or related to their subject.
The choice is important when it comes to specifying what a blog is and above all how you will use it.
How a blog works
We have already talked about what a blog is, the types of blog that there are and what a blog is for, but now we are going to focus on how a blog works.
If you want to make a blog work correctly, this is what you need:
- Digital marketing training: You do not have to become a super expert, but you do have the tools and resources to compete with other professionals in your sector, who surely already have training in the area. If you want to train yourself and guide you through the process of positioning your blog, I recommend you to register for the best courses that are available online.
- Define objectives: You have to define the real objectives you want to achieve, and it does not work or get traffic or visits since these are not an objective but a means to get them. Based on these objectives we will define an action plan.
- Designing the strategy: To design the content strategy, you must carry out a study of channels, keywords, an analysis of the competition in order to prepare a blog editorial calendar and a plan to promote the contents.
- Plan your actions: If you want your blog to function well then you have to plan your work very well, and the first step is to define a work schedule and always comply with it, then define a weekly and monthly work plan.
- The measure, correct and optimize: All our work is useless if we can not analyze and see the conversions and the objectives we are fulfilling.
Would you like to add more sections in the aspect of how a blog works?
Action plan for your blog in the first 12 months of life
This is perhaps one of the most common questions I have received from many readers of the Marketing and Web Blog and perhaps the main mistake of people who start with a lot of enthusiasm a blog project that due to bad decisions or wrong decisions affect in a low result and that you begin to doubt by following the project.
But, how do I want it to not happen to you? Follow this action plan to really make your blog work. Of course, I’m assuming that you have enough knowledge and experience in the content area where your work will reside in it.
If you really want to know what a blog is and how it works, you have to understand very well how to make your first-year action plan.
Month 1: Launch
To be able to launch the blog, we need to write 3 to 4 articles on our blog;
- Choose for example one at a personal level that explains the reasons that led you to start with that blog and where logically add content of value for the user.
- The second article will be a guide to your area of specialization and it has to be a super complete and well-worked content. If we say that you are expert in Google Adsense, you may have to make a Google AdSense approval guide with a complete explanation. Complete this article with a list of professionals to follow and that way you will be able to amplify it and make your new brand known.
- The third article will be one with a very practical cut, it can be a guide to a tool, or a strategy explained image and voice, that is, it will be accompanied by a video tutorial.
In addition to preparing the launch in the first month, you will analyze which are the blogs in your sector with the most traffic and authority, for this use the traffic estimation of a webpage with a free extension mozbar.
The result will be an Excel of 50 or 60 blogs where we will be completed with more information such as contact email or contact URL.
Design the publishing guidelines for your blog, and you can invite other professionals from the beginning.
Inviting other professionals in your sector will be very positive for both to create relationships with other professionals and also your content can be further diversified and can offer your readers very different and high-quality content.
Choose the 3 social channels that you consider that are most suitable for your sector and start publishing content and talking with other professionals.
Be patient that the beginnings of social networks are very hard and the growth is also a bit slow.
Now we are going to a very important part, we are going to design the editorial calendar of the blog, starting with a design with a view to 3 months is enough but if you feel like you can even extend it to 6 months.
The election of these contents of the editorial calendar has to go in consonance with the objectives that we want to achieve.
Suppose one of your blog objectives is to monetize an info product in the future, for this you will need:
- Position your brand on the Internet.
- Create a faithful audience.
- Get an important network of affiliates of your info product.
- Create a good list of subscribers.
Logically, your content must be related to the future info product so that users consider you as a professional who is very knowledgeable about that topic.
Month 2: Work more outside than inside your blog
This month you have to work hard on your personal brand and you have to create 2 to 4 completely spectacular articles to publish on blogs that are references to your sector.
There are people who still think that there is not much complication when we publish an article in another blog, but they do not realize the tremendous error since we are presenting ourselves to a very important community of people and we must cause the best possible impact.
Attend online and offline events, more than 1 per month. If you have more time schedule it accordingly.
The best way to connect and meet other professionals is in person at events, and it is also a fantastic space to publish our content in other blogs because these things get a better result when we treat them in a good way.
It is very important to increase the authority of your blog, so in addition to doing guest blogging, you have to find other ways to help you get links faster.
Month 3: Analysis of results
After 3 months of hard work, we will analyze the results obtained and we will see what actions are having better results.
In month 3 I always like to launch a very powerful guide that I present to the best professionals in my sector, do not be afraid and take the leap, and know your blog and the great work you are doing, so prepare a super guide where you mention 100 best professionals in the sector.
We will continue with a weekly post publishing plan for both on our blog and outside of it.
Look at the results of this blog with only 3 months of life, impressive, no? Well, the same can be achieved if you do things right.
If you think that increasing the authority of your domain will cost you a lot and logically you need years, then you are wrong. A good content page on our blog will increase our authority to more than you expect.
Also, you should not worry too much about the authority of your domain, worry about the quality of the content and how you will publish it and promote it.
Month 4, 5 and 6: Positioning the Brand
If you have worked well on the blog at this point you will already be seeing your brand more and more and people get to know it, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Analyze what offline and online actions you can start to perform to position your brand, such as:
- Submit the blog to all the prizes and contests.
- Attend all online events in your sector.
- Attend face-to-face events.
Start inviting other professionals to participate in post collaborative where x professionals answer one or two questions you decide. This aspect is very important because we will achieve great branding, just as we can get to position a competing keyword despite the fact that our blog does not have much authority.
Month 7 to 12: Road to monetization
Each time you are closer to start the monetization of your blog that we have placed at month 12 or what is the same when we turn one year, but before this, it is highly recommended that you design a first course or free event with the goal of making your brand known to a lot of people, also to strengthen the relationship with other professionals and especially to get a large number of well-segmented leads that we can then monetize.
In this stage, you have to intensify the trips and attend the events because you need to get an affiliate network wide enough so that the launch of your future product is a success.
If you have worked well on your blog, the domain authority should be over 20, and your blog would have traffic between 10,000 and 30,000 visits per month.
It should reach the figure of 3,000 subscribers. You would start to receive all kinds of proposals and collaborations from other blogs, this is an indicator that your brand is already coming out and is known in the sector when other professionals start to take an interest in you and your work.
Logically I have told you in a summary about how to start the first 12 months of your blog, if I went into detail I would never end this article, however, if you have any doubt in this process, you can leave a comment at the end of the article, and I will answer them as soon as possible.
10 Tips to create a Success blog
1. Create a blog if you have sufficient knowledge and experience
Few people used to choose the topic of what others have chosen though they do not have much knowledge in that sector. This is what I call the beginning of the end of a blog.
If you want to create a blog, answer these questions before doing it:
- Are you able to write the content of value for the user?
- Will you still have interesting topics to write after several months?
- Does writing put you in a bad mood?
- Do you find it hard to read the articles of other bloggers?
- Do you have little time to dedicate to the blog?
Notice that these are very simple questions and that it can bring you closer or further away from the blogging world, don’t you think?
2. Do not get obsessed with the Publishing content
Think for a moment the following, how much time will you spend writing blog articles? 50%? 60%? 70%?
What would you say if I told you that 30% is more than enough?
If more than half of the time you dedicate to work on your blog on writing articles, believe me, that your project will not work. The writing part is basic and necessary but you must combine it with many other actions of relationship work, dissemination, brand work, etc.
3. Define objective and design an effective strategy
At the beginning of this article, we have seen some of the most common objectives when creating a blog, so it is necessary to define your goals and then start designing your digital marketing strategy.
4. Design a 90-day editorial calendar
It is the basis of working correctly on a blog, define well an editorial calendar with at least 3 months view.
You decide the tool with which you are going to store this calendar, Excel is usually the most usual but do not start your blog work before having this calendar finished.
5. Invite other professionals to write on your blog from the first moment
I understand that it costs a little and more if we have just started but do not be afraid, go to invite other professionals and assign them a theme of your editorial calendar.
We will enrich our blog much more and our readers will have content with greater diversification.
Yes, avoid exchanges, I personally do not like them, if you want to invite someone, just do it.
6. Create a small lead magnet that allows you to get leads
Ok, it is true that a lead magnet will help us to get subscribers to our blog, but if you just started and you have little traffic, the most normal thing is to convert few subscribers, so in this initial phase I recommend you use a template Like lead magnet that will not cost too many hours.
So start with a small lead magnet that can enrich your blog content.
7. Create strong relationships with other professionals
It is one of the keys to the monetization of a blog, if you think you can go in solo, you are very wrong, since a key factor in the monetization of a blog is to get a large number of professionals of the sector make diffusion of your products.
But to create relationships looking for interest, believe me, they do not work, you have to generate a real friendship with other professionals in your sector but without putting any personal or professional interest first.
The best way to do networking is face to face and in a personal way, so I recommend you to attend all the face-to-face events that you can.
8. Attend all online and face-to-face events that you can
It is true that in the events we can learn many of the speakers who attend but I think it should not be the main purpose of attending them, but rather it should be a space to talk and connect with other professionals in the sector, that is, it should be always a networking space.
It is also very interesting to interact with other professionals who participate in an online event, such as chatting on Twitter.
9. Plan your actions very well
Any professional in the world of blogging has to start planning and thinking of how many hours of the day he/she will dedicate to working on his blog. Once the hours are defined, the next step is to specify the work schedule.
After this, what we have to do is divide that time into the actions that we are going to carry out each day and each week.
10. Work, effort, talent and passion; the key to the success of a blog
I have always believed that all people have talent in something specific and when that talent matches your true passion, you may only need to work hard and strive to achieve any goal you set for yourself.
What is it that you are most passionate about?
10 errors that you should avoid
You could say that mistake number 0 would be not knowing well what a blog is and what a blog is for.
1. Create an ebook with the launch of a blog
Think for a moment about the hours it can take you to write an ebook and now think how many leads you are going to convert to your blog that hardly generates web traffic, the truth is that it does not make any sense and for the only thing that will serve is for Demotivate you for the lack of results.
Instead of creating an ebook it starts with a small lead magnet such as a template.
2. Expect to get a job in the short term
If you are looking for a short-term job, then you do not need to create your own blog at all, instead, spend your time writing content on blogs that are very relevant to your sector.
One’s own can help you get a job but always looking at the long term.
3. Monetize a blog from the beginning
I’m not at all in agreement and I find many bloggers who come to me to ask doubts, with very negative experience because they thought that they could monetize their blog from the beginning and some of them had spent thousands of dollars on advertising with a result quite far of the desired.
I’ve been blogging for many years and do not know anyone who has monetized their blog since the beginning.
A blog requires a process of maturation from 6 to 12 months to begin its monetization phase, so it is essential to know the stages of maturation of a blog.
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4. The day-to-day strategy
This is a classic, I write articles about topics that occur to me and without having taken into account any analysis of the competition or study of keywords.
I also call it the NO strategy, that is, we write and share the contents that we publish on the blog and that is how our actions end, but the result is that we do not get results.
5. Wanting to compete without the necessary tools and resources
To compete in a race we need a good vehicle as well as a good team of mechanics, so if you want to position a business on the Internet you have to compete with other highly trained professionals in the world of digital marketing, so you have to train very well to be able to compete on equal terms.
Many times we have so much information on the Internet that we do not know what are the best decisions we should make, in those cases, it is essential to have a person to guide you on the right path of the blog.
If you work on something that you do not like or if you dedicate many hours to your project and you do not get results, in your hand is the decision to change this situation.
6. Not having a blog editorial calendar
A blog without an editorial calendar is like a ship without a compass, we do not know in which direction we are going or where we will end up.
Put remedy and design an editorial calendar with at least 3 months view.
7. Practice the pseudo-networking
If you add a component of interest in a relationship with another person, that relationship has its days counted, but now on the Internet that is much sought, to get a person to do something in particular and ready, and we think we are networking but in reality, it is not.
The networking is to generate a real friendship with another professional in your sector, it takes time, there are many conversations, but when you get that friendship, you will achieve a great ally for your brand.
8. Obsessing with increasing traffic
Traffic without conversion does not make any sense, so when someone brags about the amount of traffic he/she has, then ask him/her about how many conversions he/she has.
9. Do not give importance to the conversion
The conversion should be one of the most important aspects of any project on the Internet.
There are many forms of conversion and the design of our actions should always aim to obtain them.
I always recommend defining these conversion goals in Google Analytics since you start working on a project on the Internet.
10. Lack of patience and persistence
Another way to define what a blog is, it could be a long-term career, and sadly more than 90% does not pass the first year, because of that lack of patience in seeing results.
Essential tools for your blog
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is much more than a tool to see the traffic we have and therefore, we must know how to use it correctly, I recommend that you define objectives to see what actions are giving you the best result.
2. Search Console
If I have to synthesize the benefits of using Search Control I would do it in these three points:
- Diagnose possible problems on my website from the Google point of view: indexing, tracking, penalties, etc.
- Know the origin and find the most effective way to expand organic traffic to the web.
- Provide information to Google about our website: how we want our URLs to appear (for example with or without www), send our sitemap to facilitate the tracking and indexing of our website and report the relevance of each page (according to our criteria) among others things.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an authentic tool and one of the best that has evolved in the last 2 years. For me, it is a key tool if you want to improve your visibility and traffic of a project on the Internet.
4. Twitter Analytics
Twitter Analytics is a powerful tool. It is available to everyone, which has been a considerable advance in the measurement of our results in the actions we undertake.
Twitter is the social network that brings more traffic to a blog if you use it correctly.
5. SEMrush
Undoubtedly my favourite tool for competitive analysis and that I also use almost daily for my content strategy.
The functionality “keyword magic tool” I love and facilitates the creation of my editorial calendar.
6. Buffer
Thanks to this tool we can enjoy more of the weekend and of our vacations since it allows us to program our publishings in Social Networks.
7. Similar web
A tool that I like very much and with which we can analyze very interesting data for any project.
It is the tool that comes closest to the calculation of real traffic of a web page, what I do is my own formula, the data that I am given by dividing it by 2 and rounded it down.
8. Tinypng
An essential tool to compress the images of our articles before uploading them to the blog.
It is very easy to use, yes, please do not upload images of several megabytes, xddd.
9. Feedly
This tool for reading and curating content is gold for SEO since it will bring you highly qualified traffic to your blog.
10. Excel
A basic tool in digital marketing and blogging with which we make reports, analyzes, studies, etc.
50 Free and Best Tools to Position Our Blog on Number 1 Place
11. Snovio
This tool is perfect for automated outreach, email list management, and onboarding with which you can increase engagement with effective nurturing, and build a healthy link profile or a sales strategy.
To continue with your blog with different SEO extensions, tools, etc follow the Blogging category here.
Conclusion
For a long time I did not write such a long article, I hope that in these 5,000 words the article has learned what a blog is and what it is for, what are the characteristics of a blog, but especially how you should start working on a blog so that One day you can monetize it, and why not, even being able to live on it, it will not be easy or simple, I can assure you, but if you succeed, you have made a magnificent investment.
Of course, a blog is useful for many more things but in my personal experience it allowed me to create my marketing platform, to set something virtual that does not physically exist but that is laying stone by stone the foundations of future business.
Starting a blog is difficult, and especially when you do it alone and surrounded by lack of information of what to do and how to do it in thousands of blogs, that’s why I am writing these articles to help you take the better decisions, and so that all your efforts are rewarded with the results you deserve.
I hope this article will help you to learn more about blogging. If you have any queries, let us know them in the below comment section and we will get back to you as soon as possible to solve all your queries.
Would you like to discuss anything regarding blogging? Then comment below and start your discussion.
