Congratulations! You have taken the step and created a blog with your own content, either as a hobby or to feed your brand on the Internet. Now the important thing is that you start writing about different topics related to the world to which it belongs and… that’s it? No. A blog can give you much more than you think but you have to know how to get the most out of it. We have put together some of the most essential tips:
Constancia
Increase the frequency of publication and be consistent. Opening a blog and wanting to publish a quality article a day is complicated unless you dedicate body and soul to it, and even then there are not always enough topics or we are not inspired. So the best thing to do is to be realistic: think that when you start in the blogging world nobody will read you, so you can afford to “rehearse” with one or two weekly posts that serve as the base content for your blog. When you feel comfortable, move on to publishing 3 times a week, which is a frequency that is more than enough and easy to assume with a little planning. But above all, we insist: consistency.
Organization
Plan in advance the contents you are going to cover in your blog and organize your work (if you want to be consistent, this is essential). That way you will have time to search for information, get inspired and write with time. With social networks it is the same, it is better to leave them planned but without fear of spontaneity: respond when people write to you, retweet when you read something interesting, etc.
What do your readers tell you?
Listen to your audience: check what is the most searched for, review the comments and the doubts raised in them, the suggestions they make, etc. It is not that the customer is always right but it helps a lot to know what they want if you are looking for growth.
Professionalize
When user traffic starts to increase, visits grow, followers on social networks grow and your content is of quality, it’s time to “go professional”. How? Buying your own domain. There are many platforms for this and, if not, the easiest option is to acquire it through the CMS you are using. Having your domain changes the image you transmit: a serious, professional, constant and expanding website.
And if the domain is important, when you start getting traffic, the hosting is vital. Server response times when people access your website are very important and even more so now that browsing from mobile devices has become popular, but the access speed is not always the best.
Improved design
It is logical that as soon as you create the blog you opt for one of the free templates offered by the managers. Add a couple of social network plugins and that’s it. After a while, when this growth begins to show, you have to ask yourself if the design you chose fits with the image you are creating, if you have all the plugins you need, etc. In the same way, it is important that you look for a logo that differentiates you from the rest. Take paper and pencil because it is time to start designing. When you have the ideas clear, you can get to it from your content manager or rely on a web design company if your knowledge of HTML is not great.
Offers something more
Discover Mailchimp because you don’t know what you’re missing. From having a list of all the people interested in your blog to being able to send newsletters to all of them, so you will gain more traffic, visibility and you can always offer them something exclusive or the scoop of your content in your mailings.
There are two very useful ways to use an e-mail marketing tool for a blog:
- Automatic sending for subscribers: every time you publish an article, those who have subscribed will receive the posts in their inbox. It’s that convenient and that effective.
- Newsletter: to all those who subscribe, you will be able to send them an email with the information you consider most relevant, not only articles, but any other information you want to highlight, even of a commercial nature.
Remember that it will take you some time to coordinate everything until you start to stand out. The important thing is that you don’t stop learning and looking for a new twist to give to your blog. Look at what others are doing and think how to improve it or how to adapt it. In short: keep growing little by little.
Social networks
It is not necessary to be present in each and every one of the social networks, having a profile in those in which your target audience is present is enough. Of course, if you create a profile, do not abandon it. It gives a very bad image to have your own social networks neglected, with little update or directly stopped. That’s why it’s better to eliminate them. And if you are present, you know what to do: update your blog content, spread the contents of others, respond to users who contact you… In short, be social!
Turn your blog into a real marketing tool
There are a multitude of platforms with which you can start your blog, some simpler and others very advanced: WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, etc. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages. In Reinicia, for example, we usually work with WordPress for projects that do not require very high levels of security and Drupal if it is necessary to improve security.
In either case, you will be able to implement tools that will turn your blog into a real marketing steamroller:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social networks
- E-mail Marketing
- SEM
- Web analytics
But that is a very extensive topic that we will see in successive posts:
Turn your blog into a real marketing tool – Part I
