In our always-on, ever-social digital world, it’s no surprise that everyone wants to share their thoughts, passions, and creative ideas. But sometimes, these great ideas never see the light of day. Maybe some glimmers into the idea are expressed quickly on social media, but some things are incomplete.
At Frasca Digital, we love to blog. We love taking notes on ideas to come to us throughout the day, and we jot down inspiration that follows us while helping clients. Over time, we have found a lot of people are just as passionate and addicted as us when it comes to writing.
As such, we decided to create this helpful article on how to start a successful blog so you can spread your messages and grow your following.
How to Start a Successful Blog
Starting a successful blog is actually a lot work, so keep that in mind as you read this article. There is absolutely no shortcut to content marketing or blogs. To make things easy, we created this short list to help you get started:
1. Update old information consistently
Even if your blog is an evergreen niche such as food recipes, art, or nature, writing content with a new maturity after a year can give old content a new look.
Updating old content is not only good for readers because it can content updated information, but it’s also good for search engine optimization (SEO).
If you want more traffic to your blog, check out our SEO services and we can help.
2. Publish more!
Follow a discipline to be consistent with goals that stretch you.
When I started Frasca Digital, my goal was to product 2 blog posts per week. I ended up writing 1-per-week sometimes, and 2-per-week other times, but I was thrilled that I was just getting it done. These days, I may go a couple weeks without a single post, then go on a copywriting binge and produce 6 in 1 week.
Regardless of whether you meet your publishing cadence goals or not, just keep writing!
But also, if you need a break from all the wonderful post-publishing, take one. Breaks are important.
3. Read more
Find other bloggers or influencers who are in the same industry/niche that you are. Read more about the categories and topics they tend to gravitate towards, and even do an SEO analysis to see where their posts are being distributed. Who knows, maybe you can be distributed in the same places they are.
4. Depth of the article
Even with shorter attention spans, long-form content is in. People are on their phone all day consuming content, and they want to be subject matter experts when they’re finished.
The goal should be making it the best article for the readers no matter if they are coming from offline efforts, search or social media.
5. (Page) Time Spent Reading
Increasing page time should be your goal. Use infographics, Pointers, subheadings and make it easy to read. Also, implementing “Estimated Time To Read” to your blog posts helps users estimate time in mind before investing their own time reading your blog.
6. Original Research
Try including your original research by showing pie charts, graphs or infographics. That’s one of the easiest way to get natural backlinks. In fact, I have a process where one of my designers, Google Image Search all the previous designs to find and outreach the websites using our graphs.
7. Internal Linking
When publishing content, link to your other blog posts and other sections of your website. This helps users navigate to content that is relevant to the post they’re reading.
8. Author Bio
Author Bio matters a lot. Not only for Google EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthy) ranking purposes, but also to show readers that what kind of expertise the person holds while giving advice.
If you’re an expert chef publishing recipe blog posts, let people know you went to MICA in Baltimore and graduated top of class!
Let people know who you are and why they should read your content. And remember, be yourself!
9. Estimated Time To Read
Writing exact time to read the blog (Medium Style) actually helps in increasing page time and holds reader attention for a longer time.
10. Infographics / Visual Marketing
Putting infographics/images/statistics and graphs can actually help you get more backlinks to your blog and holds your readers’ attention for a longer period.
11. Shorter Paragraphs
No one wants to read long paragraphs. Shorter paragraphs and point to point blogs (but in-depth) does much better.
12. Incorporate FAQ’s
Putting FAQ’s (with schema) is the easiest way to get featured in google “People Also Ask” section.
13. Don’t try to be perfect
This one is actually our favorite and most important tip on how to create a successful blog.
Many times, writers find themselves stuck in analysis paralysis. This paralysis can lead to a content draught for weeks or even months. What we have learned is some content creators are trying too hard to be perfect rather than just being themselves.
Remember to be yourself, and have fun along the way! Mistakes will be made, but writing isn’t something that can’t be corrected.
Need help starting a successful blog?
Let us help you create and share ideas together. Contact Frasca Digital today and we’ll help you build a blog built for success.
