WHAT IS A BLOG AND BLOGGING:
A blog is the accumulation of the ideas, information that interests writer and attract readers. It can be a video, an article, an excerpts from writer’s personal diary. A blog can also be an awareness topic, political content, travel story, health and safety topics, kids and pet care issues etc.
Blogging is defined as the process of writing or updating a blog. It is an easiest way to build an effective relationship between your readers and you so they would come to your blog more often.
RESEARCH & STATISTICS OF BLOGGING:
- According to some sources, about 152 million blogs existed in 2013. Since then, a number of blogs have continued to grow.
- One research company reported that one third of total global blog posts come from US only and that 16 percent of the population read blogs.
- In 2015, 28.3 million internet users updated a blog at least once per month.
- The number of bloggers in the United States is set to reach 31.7 million users in 2020.
- In 2016, blogs are viewed as one of the most valuable and credible sources of information.
- Around 22.6% of the selected population earned up to $ 10,000 from blogs per year.
BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL BLOGGER:
Like we said, it is only your personal interests, passion or drive to write something that can make you a blogger and can earn you a decent amount in addition to your current income. Besides, you can also choose to adopt this career as your full time job depending upon how much time you can give to the blogging and how many quality contents blogs you can deliver. This requires a great deal of skills, knowledge of the topics and sufficient time to turn blogging profession into your full time job. The Blogging world has become so massive now that you need to be really well-equipped in order to be able to keep yourself in the competition.
Good Writing Skills:
As mentioned earlier, blogging starts with the passion to write something. You have to be a good writer. Attract your audience through your choices of topics, select topics that interests them more. Pick social issues, health related topics, current political scenarios.
You also need to be focused on a particular area you are more interested in like cooking, health, parenting, health and nutrition, etc. You would be able to get a focused audience by choosing this strategy.
You can also include content about the certain businesses needs like customer safety, how to use a certain product/ service.
Give your blogs quality time:
Writing content might be easy, but writing quality content that is original, authentic might be time consuming. Blogging is not that simple job. It requires a lot of time in formatting, content selection, theme selection. Prefer quality over quantity. Be specific and analytic in your approach toward writing.
Research your contents:
Invest quality time in researching your contents so that you would be able to support your writing with authentic fact based data. People like to take an interest in statistics and real life examples. Research on what and why you want to write, what is your targeted audience and most importantly, how many bloggers have already written about that particular topic?
Promote your blogs:
Use social media platform as much to promote your blogs. Attract as many audiences as you can through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social interaction sites. The best thing about social media advertising is that it is low cost and easy to share. Write interesting content if you want your articles to be shared by others on social platforms.
Search Engine Optimization:
In order to attract a lot of audience and traffic on a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Ask.com, you will need to stay on top of the Search engine optimization trend that is rapidly changing. SEO is predetermined set of rules that a blogger can follow in order to optimize their blogs for search engines and thus improve their search engine rankings.
Further, it is a very effective mean of increasing the quality of your blogs by making it user friendly, faster and easier to search. Since 2014, the popularity of this promotion channel has increased by 34%.
TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS OF STARTING BLOGGING AS A PROFESSION:
Get a Domain name:
Your domain name is your identity on the Web-host. It gives you a professional outlook. You can choose your name (or try to pick an eye catching name), your blog topic or anything by which people can access you easily on the web.
Select a Web-host or Blogging website:
Choose web host like WordPress, blogger, Tumblr, medium, Squarespace, LiveJournal, Weebly to publish your blogs, they provide you different options to make your blogs look more professional and presentable. Try to choose the one which is more Search engine Optimization friendly.
Design A Theme For Your Blog:
A good theme and layout helps your blog get a specific look. It’s a very important part of your blog. Any design which readers can access comfortably is a plus for your blog. You can also get thousands of free and paid themes from blog hosting sites like Wordpress, Tumblr, squarespace.
Market/ Advertise Your Blog:
The great thing about advertising on social networks like Facebook is that it’s low cost and there is a chance that people will share it of their own free will, once they’ve seen your advert. You can also look into option of spending a little amount of money on advertising as it can make a big positive difference in getting you audience.
Finally, Be Yourself:
A lot of keyword and competition research leaves you thinking more about ranking and less about writing. So just stick with writing with whatever you like and know, ranking will work for itself in the long run.
Blogging is a great industry to start a career and earn decent compensation. It is highly recommended for every business to apply this function effectively to increase the length of your targeted audience which ultimately increase revenues.
