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Successful Blogging:
5 Steps to Planning a Successful Blog
Annabel Candy
Annabel Candy is a serial expat woman and a blogger who, as a result of her blog, has: had her writing featured on some of the biggest blogs on the Internet; made money through affiliate marketing and having her blog posts syndicated; and was unexpectedly flown recently to Shanghai by Coca-Cola to offer her advice on social media.
Your Blog: An Experiment?
Like most bloggers, I set up my blog as an experiment. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to write about and a secret goal for my blogging (which I confess, was to both kick-start my travel writing career and to emulate the success of the blog-turned-movie Julie and Julia).
I had a few other goals too, which were:
• To cover the general topic of 'settling into a new country and lifestyle', so that family and friends could follow our adventures – as Brits who had recently moved from Costa Rica to Australia;
• To inspire and inform women that it was possible to travel more and/or live abroad (having lived in eight countries myself and travelled to many more); and
• To make my blog a fun, creative outlet which was separate from my web design and web copywriting business.
Can you see any problems here?
Looking back, it is obvious now that there were a few flaws to my strategy, but at the time I was so determined to start my blog, update it and read everything ever written about blogging, that I hardly had time to think straight.
One of the main problems with blogging is that there is so much contradictory information out there, that it is easy to become overwhelmed, confused, caught up in the excitement and urgency of it all, and to lose your focus. Despite being a qualified web designer and knowing how important planning an online project is to make it effective, I ignored the planning stages I work through with my clients and jumped straight into the fun bit of publishing blog posts. With no clear focus or plan in place, I burned through several blogs, changed topics and domain names three times and lost countless readers in the process.
Step 1: The Importance of One, Clear Goal
The main problem was that I did not have one, clear goal. If a client came to me with four separate goals for their blog and four separate types of people who would be reading it, I would be wary. In fact, I would tell them to rethink the whole thing and come up with one main goal and one ideal reader so that they could really focus on achieving that goal.
Get In the Hot Spot is my third blog and slowly but surely it has become successful because it is the only one of my blogs that has had one, clear goal, which is "to empower people to succeed in all areas of life".
If your blog's goal is to entertain friends and family with your adventures, make sure your family travels are the only topic you cover. Write about the family, the kids, put up photos, add videos or audio but keep the focus on your family. You can talk about the food, the weather, the local culture or even politics, as long as you keep relating it back to the one topic your readers are really interested in – you and your family.
Step 2: Branding
Even if your blog is not a business blog, you still need to be aware of branding and what first impression people will form after visiting your blog.
If you want your blog to be fun, make it look fun.
If you want your blog to be informative, work out how you can showcase the information you have on there and make sure people can find it fast.
If you want your blog to boost your professional credibility, make sure it looks professional.
If you want people to keep coming back to your blog, think about how you can reward them for visiting it.
Step 3: Focus on Your Readers
Contrary to what you might have been taught, if you are writing with the hope of growing your readership, then your blog is not about you, it is about the people who read it.
If your blog is about your readers, then it needs to give people the information they want in a format they can easily read.
If you want your readers to tell other people about your blog (and this is the key to growing a blog), you need to help them by making it easy for them to share it with their friends on Facebook, by email, on Twitter, or whatever form of social media sharing or tagging that they prefer.
Step 4: Use WordPress
There are many blog platforms out there, but my personal recommendation is to use WordPress because it is the biggest and best blog publishing platform that I have seen.
If you are writing a blog as a hobby, you can get set up immediately with free hosting on the WordPress site.
If you are serious about blogging and would like to turn your blog into a business, make money from it and/or get discovered by a book agent or movie director, I suggest you get your own domain name and host your blog there. It shows the world that you have invested in your blog and that they should too. Plus, it gives you the flexibility to adapt your blog as it grows and evolves.
Step 5: Get Started
Having recently returned from BlogWorld (the world's largest blogging and social media conference, held in Las Vegas in October 2010), I am convinced that almost every successful blogger has been through some of the same experiences and false starts as me. Many bloggers have changed blog topics several times before hitting on a topic that stuck.
You may begin with one goal in mind and find that it evolves over time, based on your own changing interests, circumstances or on feedback from your blog's audience. As long as you stick to one goal/focus at a time, you are ready to get started.
So, take that first step on your journey to successful blogging – start a blog, share your voice, listen and respond to your readers, and if you persevere and stick with it, you can find blogging success, however you might define success.
It is possible.
All the very best!
Annabel Candy is a writer and teacher with an MA in Design for Interactive Media who has used all of her skills to create the new e-book Successful Blogging in 12 Simple Steps.
Annabel also teaches people how to win business online on her blog Get In the Hot Spot and hopes to set up a new blog next year to promote her travel stories… and maybe even hook that big book and movie deal.
If you would like to learn more from Annabel, she is offering Expat Women readers a 35% discount on her excellent new e-book, but only from 1 – 13 November 2010 (please use the discount code EXPATWOMEN before processing your payment), so get in quick!
Disclaimer: Expat Women is receiving no financial compensation for this offer, nor any commission on sales. |
