Top Tips For Aspiring Bloggers

new blogging tips

There are many benefits associated with launching your own blog. For example, it gives you the chance to cultivate an online community, share your opinions with others, save money, and it can even be a great way to travel and still advance your career. However, the growing popularity of blogs means that competition is fierce from the get-go – meaning you have to find a way to stand out if you want to build a readership and succeed.

With that in mind, here are some top tips for aspiring bloggers.

Brush up on your writing skills.

The first step to running a successful blog is learning how to write the perfect blog post. This means far more than finding a suitable topic to discuss – you’ve also got to think about the tone and style of your writing and the audience you are writing for. Then, you’ve got to think about spelling and grammar too! 

Get technical.

If you really want your blog to succeed, then you’re also going to need to brush up on your technical knowledge, too. For example, if you’re going to be using certain software, such as Photoshop, to curate content for your blogs then you’ll need a bit of program-specific know-how. For example, Photoshop often takes up a great deal of virtual memory – which is often taken from your ‘scratch disk’ (SSD or disk drive). When an error occurs here, it’s important that you know simple ways to solve it so that you do not lose any critical data or spend hours pouring over a problem that has a simple solution. 

Choose a niche.

As mentioned previously, the world of blogging is one of fierce competition – which means you must build a readership sooner rather than later. After all, if you’re going to be putting a lot of time and effort into writing your blog, then it deserves to be read and enjoyed. One way in which you can achieve this goal (and build a readership) is by choosing a specific niche for your blog. For example, if you spend a lot of time vacationing you could write a travel blog. This way, you’ll be able to carve out a name for yourself within a certain community or industry – making it easier for others to find you. 

Post consistently.

The key to succeeding on any online venture – whether that be blogging or posting Instagram picks is consistency. After all, if you do not post on a regular basis then readers will lose interest, or may even forget about your content entirely. However, on the other end of the spectrum, you should also avoid oversaturation and do not post too much – as this could again turn readers away. While posting every single day may seem like a good idea to begin with, it likely demonstrates that you aren’t putting a great deal of time, energy or thought into the content you produce. As a result, you should aim to post on your blog a few times a week – on the same day or time. This way, readers know when to check in! 

Collaborate with other bloggers.

Another easy way to extend your readership (and even make new friends) is by collaborating with other bloggers. Keep an eye out for bloggers you admire or whose content is similar to your own and reach out to see if they will be willing to collaborate on a project. For example, you could write a guest post on their page. This will increase the amount of exposure both your writing and your blog gets and is often a mutually beneficial endeavor. 

Learn about SEO. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices are a great way to drive traffic towards your blog and increase your visibility. While this may sound a little confusing – don’t worry – it is much more straightforward than you think. SEO simply refers to a series of keywords and phrases that you can use that will increase your blog’s online ranking. When applied correctly, they will place your page at the top of Google (and similar platforms) searches as opposed to your competitors. There are plenty of SEO tips and tricks that bloggers can use – such as using free software to identify the keywords you need to be using in the first place.  Ideally, you should determine which keywords or phrases you are going to use before you start writing the blog so that you can ensure they are incorporated organically – otherwise it may feel as though they were ‘forced’ into the text and disrupt the flow. 

What are plugins and how do they help with digital marketing?

For digital marketing purposes – as well as an all-round website design tool – you really can’t beat WordPress. In excess of 74 million websites on the Internet are built using WordPress. This makes it by far the most popular content management system (CMS) that is available to anyone (check this WordPress review for more insights).

One really striking benefit that’s made WordPress the clear choice for most website developers is that Google favours website which are built using WordPress as this platform makes use of exceptionally clean, easy-to-read code. This fact makes it simple for Google to index and crawl WordPress-built websites.

WordPress also includes a number of plugins which assist you with optimising your website yourself. For example, the Yoast SEO Plugin can be seen as the gold standard for search engine optimisation as it allows you to do the following: 

  • Customise your website title, 
  • Insert your own meta description, title tag as well as keywords.

After you’ve inputted all of this information, Yoast then gives you an idea of how well that page will rank on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

So, we can see that plugins are incredibly valuable. However, what are they exactly?

The definition of a plugin

A WordPress plugin is a software package that contains a group of functions that can be included on a WordPress site. These plugins can expand the functionality of, or add new features to, your WordPress websites. 

WordPress plugins are written using the PHP programming language. These integrate effortlessly with WordPress. In the WordPress community, there is a maxim which goes something like this: “There’s a plugin for that”. 

If the theme that you choose for your site doesn’t have a particular function, have a look at the list of plugins which are available and there will probably be one which does what you want it to. This makes it simpler for users to add features to their website without knowing a single line of code. 

What plugins are available for digital marketing 

Some of the main, common concerns of every owners of website owner include the following:

  • Speed, 
  • Security, 
  • SEO as well as other features of digital marketing.

It’s not possible to simply ignore them – period. 

 

In the era of digital marketing, competitiveness is incredibly strong. The market is continually changing. This means that there are so many things that modern digital marketers must keep in mind so that they can remain on top of what they need to. Luckily, there are many of quite useful tools and plugins that should assist with making the life of any digital marketer much simpler.

WordPress remains one of the most-used and -popular CMS systems you can find. Some studies have shown that more than one-quarter of the Internet is driven by WordPress. The variety of themes, plugins as well as templates – in addition to the regular updates – all assist you with effecting improvements on your website. 

WordPress offers many useful plugins which reduce a great deal of digital marketing workload on your part. Some of the best that we’ve seen in 2019 include the following:

Google XML Sitemaps

With the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, you are ensuring that search engines get an optimal understanding of your site. This plugin creates an XML Sitemap for your website, which is make use of in order to better index your website.

Broken Link Checker

Broken links are extremely bad for both your website’s traffic as well as your reputation. Your digital marketing campaign can significantly suffer if you launch it prior to making sure all that the links on your website are working as they should be. Broken Link Checker assists you with pinpointing all the broken links or missing images on your website. This plugin also helps you to replace them. 

SFDC Lead Generation

If you’re making use of WordPress and Salesforce, this plugin can be really useful. This plugin connects these two platforms by directly registering users from your website as leads in your Salesforce platform. SFCD also assist you with a set of small analytic tools which can give you a comprehensive insight into some of the data and traffic generated by your users. 

WordPress is virtually a household name with respect to CMS. These plugins are merely drop in the seemingly endless sea of plugins. Making use of these plugins – without any concrete plan or digital marketing strategy – won’t help you. However, with some planning as well as organisation, you may find some of these extremely helpful. Try to make a solid marketing campaign, and plan on using the proper tools right from the start.