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And you recognize that there will always be more to learn. Practice — you write and rewrite until your work is as good as your current skills allow.
You create a writing habit and commit to a daily target. You write when friends are out having fun because you said to them: Feedback — you seek comments and criticism from other writers, friends, teachers, perhaps a mentor. You know these people are an imperfect stand-in for your real audience, but understand that feedback is the fuel that drives your advancement.
And when the feedback suggests that your writing falls short, you return to study and to practice.
This learning cycle is essential because it helps you to hone your writing instincts. It trains the internal critic that guides the hundreds of tiny decisions you make each time you sit down and write. While study, practice and feedback will improve your technical skills as a writer, some of the essential qualities of good writing are more elusive:.
Surprisingly, the habits that give you the best chance of becoming a good writer have little to do with writing. Always remember, this is YOUR blog. This means you say who comes into your house and stays. Delete and carry on. I read over the comment and if I feel it brings value then I keep, if not I delete it. Delete, let it go, and move on. Even when you experience huge failures because it will happen you still need to believe in yourself and see the long-term vision. Speaking of failure — you need to accept failure as part of the process. Fall down 8 times and get up 9. Most successful bloggers have been at it for years.
Every successful venture starts with a plan. Without a plan a vision simply stays in your head as a dream. You need to have plans in place to keep your blog moving forward. What specific steps are you going to take to reach those goals? You need to plan out content. What topics are you going to write about and when will they be scheduled. What will your social media strategy look like? How often will you share content on social media? Which platform will you focus on?
Will you make videos?
How will you create images? What is your traffic strategy? What are your monthly goals for traffic?
Are you manual scheduling social media or using a scheduler. A little of her bio: Grow your blog by learning from other bloggers. You know these people are an imperfect stand-in for your real audience, but understand that feedback is the fuel that drives your advancement. Delete and carry on.
How will you reach those goals? These are just examples of the types of things you can find in a blogging plan. Basically, create a plan for each of your goals and then take daily focused action to get there. Systems make it easier to take daily action on your goals. For example, you need to write blog posts.
Instead of just waking up and trying to figure out what to write about putting together an editorial calendar would be helpful. Same with marketing and promotion — how are you promoting your blog posts? Are you manual scheduling social media or using a scheduler. Are you sharing in Facebook groups on specific days? What email service provider are you using to send emails? How often are you sending emails? Can you write them ahead of time?
What are you going to write about? Having systems in place keep all these blog tasks moving forward. A system can be as easy as an excel spreadsheet or a paid service. These are the services I use to create some of my blog systems. Producing quality content and consistently has been essential to our growth. Like they say, if content is king, consistency is queen!
Brittany Watson Jepsen found consistency a key to achieving success when she created her blog. The next best thing to focus on the main message I was trying to convey. Once I focused on crafts and DIY making, I became known for that and people started to see me as a trusted voice. If you wanted to be the authority, the go-to on a certain topic, your readership needs to trust that your blog will have content they need.
Your quality content, consistently posted, will draw a following. The two Cs really are inseparably connected. My team uses CoSchedule for our calendar, and we love it. It helps keep us super organized and on the same page even when we all work remotely. A couple of other things we love are Slack for messaging, and Wunderlist for making to-do lists. There a host of useful tools available online for planning posts and establishing a schedule.
To nail down a consistent blogging schedule, try an online calendar or one of a variety of templates worksheets available. When you want to have a successful blog, you really should put yourself in a new pair of shoes — the shoes of your reader, that is. The team at The Penny Hoarder made their content more functional to readers by breaking down complex and jargon-heavy financial information into useful, readable packages. We write in a friendly, conversational manner, and try to showcase that tone across all media. But remembering your reader as you produce will help you to create attractive, useful content that draws a crowd.
Prep your post for publishing by working through a checklist or a WP plugin to help you optimize the content — a tool like Naytev works well — and make it appealing to search engines 48 percent of consumers start mobile research with a search engine and readers. This extra time is a worthwhile investment. We interviewed experts to answer 10 legal questions about online content. It may seem like a silly thing, but talking about yourself on your blog is important.
And by this, we mean: This page is crucial for helping readers to get to know you, your purpose, and what they can expect to find on your site. Keep it fun and personable. Let your readers know who you are!
Instead of listing random facts about yourself, have a purposeful statement that answers the following questions. Karsten clearly identifies the intended audience of his blog. To keep your audience engaged, you have to bring value to your users. Share why your content can be trusted. A little of her bio: I grew up teething on the seaweed of Southern California though I preferred reading and creating in the great indoors.
Well-written, purposeful statements connect Jepsen to her readers, and them to the purpose of the blog. After all, more clicks equal more traffic. Ever happened upon a website that seems like it never left the dial-up, over-animated era of the early internet? A smart design sets your reader up for a good experience that will entice them to visit again. Never neglect a user-friendly design. Be flexible and willing to alter your blog design based on what works best for your readers.
Have a friend or outsider look at your blog and consider a few questions: Utilize themes on WordPress for tried-and-true designs, consult experts , or outsource to a designer to ensure your design is aesthetically pleasing. Trust us, no one wants spinning graphics or animated mouse icons. DreamHost makes professional web design easy! Often, this means choosing a responsive template, but you can also utilize plugins to optimize a WordPress theme. In addition, you should consider the following: And really, the only sure way you have to analyze your site for effectiveness across devices is to test it.
Use this handy Google tool. However, as the site started taking off and he was pulled in different directions as CEO, we dropped the personalization in favor of a simpler format.
We turned things around this year: So start an email list early, and keep working to improve it for your readers. Why not capitalize on the habit? Just like playing the piano, painting, or running sprints, honing your blogging skills requires lots of work. Be original and adaptable and authentic. Focus on what makes you unique and tell your story in a way that people can relate to what you have to say. And of course, keep your mission statement close by.
Sometimes all it takes is to remember why you started in the first place. How do you get people to see it? If you have social media platforms, then you have multiple channels to market your content. The Penny Hoarder team is right.