Blogging is changing and becoming more competitive every single day. There are professional bloggers who are struggling to make the ends meet, and there are beginners who are tasting early success and later finding it difficult to expand and grow blogs.
Making money from Blogging is not an issue if you have the readership and traffic. Rather than focusing on making money from Blogging, I think you should create an astounding blog for your readers, money and everything else will follow.
There are a lot of things you can do to create an incredibly successful blog by using this guide as a starting point.
Reading this won’t make you a pro-blogger but practicing will.
I have been blogging for years and mastered the art and science of blogging by learning from professionals, voraciously reading and trying different things.
If you want to speed up your learning process and want to be successful at blogging, you need to read more, and experiment even more.
Trying different things will help you find out what works for you.
Without further ado, here are the skills I think every aspiring blogger need to master to create a blog that is unique as well as worth reading.
Important Skills To Create An Incredibly Successful Blog
1. Master the Niche
First and foremost, you need to master your niche (your blogging topics). No one likes to learn from someone who has a superficial knowledge. Remember that lecturer in your school or college who used to dictate his notes from a book and had poor subject knowledge.
You don’t want to be that, building trust and Authority takes efforts.
You need to deep dive and understand the topics you wish to write about. It takes time and patience to master anything and more you read and experiment, things will become easy and simple for you.
2. Do Consumer Research
What you know is good for you, but what about the readers are they seeking what you know or something else?
You need to understand your readers. Like any other business, they are your valuable customers. If they are coming to your website, try to understand what they are looking for.
If they want reviews, create that, if they want quick news, share that. Understand what different people are looking for and what topics they are interested in.
Also, understand what posts they are not liking and leaving in a hurry and which posts they are spending a lot of time. (Leverage Google Analytics to find this information and use it wisely).
Furthermore, you can dig data to understand the demographics of your audience, age group, and their likes and dislikes.
Solve Your Readers ProblemsÂ
Content is still the king and it will always be. So focus on creating in-depth content that will help your readers genuinely. More helpful your articles are, more user satisfaction, and higher Google rankings you will get.
Remember, Google’s aim is to provide the best information to its searchers. If you are the best no-one can stop you.
3. Create a Website for Readers
A lot of new bloggers tend to create a website for search engines and focus on things which are not very important for readers. Google is getting smart and understand this.
In fact, Google even understands when readers like a website and it is helping to solve user issues.
Also, learn to code a little bit so that you can make some minor adjustments to the site with the help of your theme developer and may take help from a dedicated site developer.
There are a couple of important things that you need to remember when designing a website:
Blazing Fast – It should be fast loading – Use Caching Plugins and a faster-hosting provider, can even add Cloudflare or any other CDN to make sure it is quick. No, you don’t need to go mad in getting the 100/100 page speed score anything above 80 is good.
Readable – Text should be easily readable. Format your posts to make them easy to read and glance through. Use headings, sub-heading, and images to make them interesting.
Interlinking – Make sure you add hyperlinks to your own posts and add external relevant articles wherever needed.
Navigation – Make Navigation as easy as possible. Don’t overuse navigation elements. Your site menus in the header and footer should not be too cluttered and should be easily visible.
Site Structure –Â Don’t overuse tags and categories, this is one of the mistakes people make when they start and later regret it. Structure your site with Tags and Categories for easy discovery of content but keep things simple.
Mobile Friendly – Google recently pushed the mobile first index and over 70% of traffic is going to be mobile which makes optimizing for mobile a top priority for everyone. Make your site is mobile friendly and easy to read on all mobile devices. (Check your site on Chrome, Safari, UC and Opera Mini).
4. Understand SEO
Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to Google and its infinite rules of SEO. Break some and you may be out of favors from the traffic god. I would strongly suggest you read more on SEO no matter which type of website you are creating. Understanding SEO is a must for everyone.
There are several sites like Shoutmeloud, Searchengineland, Semrush Blog, Neil Patel, Wpbeginner and so on that you can read to learn basic and advance SEO. You can also read the official Bible of SEO by Google here.
Like everything else, understanding the rules of the SEO game takes time. It takes years and years to unravel the mysteries and keep pace with the ever-changing environment.
5. Learn to leverage Social Media
Each Social Media Network is different and what works on Facebook doesn’t work on Twitter. You will need to work on each Social Media platform and understand the type of content that does well on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
Should you invest time on an infographic to share on Pinterest or Instagram or create a video on Facebook or Twitter? It depends on the niche and type of work you are doing.
Social media giants have reduced the organic reach in the last couple of years and if you have a new brand you may want to leverage paid campaigns on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to create an initial following.
6. Engage With Readers
A lot of bloggers who found early success tend to ignore the followers who constantly share, tweet or comment on the blog posts. It is utmost important to stay connected with your readers.
Not only it helps you gain more insights but helps you create a community that can expand the readership.
Your followers help you spread the word about your new business, treat them great and be friends with them.
7. Learn Keyword Research
Keyword Research is another important area that you need to master in order to gain an advantage over your competition.
Writing content for readers is paramount, but doing keyword research will help you gain lots of insights about what people are searching in Google. It helps you to create content which answers those search queries.
I am not in favor of writing posts that are purely written to target keywords. But to write meaningful posts and include the right keywords which benefit the searchers as well as the writer.
To learn keyword research you can start with Google Adwords or Semrush.
8. Learn Grammar and Improve Vocabulary
If you are already a Pro at grammar, sentence formation and vocabulary you may just need to brush up. For others who are starting a career in writing, I would suggest to pick up the grammar book or find online resources to learn the basics.
Also, create a Word list with synonyms that you want to remember. I usually write new words in the Google Keep App that is always accessible from mobile or laptop. It is easy to memorize new words if make it a daily habit.
Also, to enhance your writing and make it less prone to mistakes, utilize free software like Grammarly to avoid spelling/grammatical mistakes. Lastly, learn to write in active voice and make shorter and clear sentences.
9. Learn Photoshop
I started learning Photoshop as soon as I began blogging back in 2014. It is one of the most amazing tools to add creativity to your posts. Also, once you learn it you can do things much faster in comparison to other software.
Another big advantage of using photoshop is optimizing your images for the web. Photoshop can reduce the size of images for uploading on your blog using the save for web function which is a life saver.
You don’t want to upload very large size images on your website that drag your page load time or want to upload images that lack detail due to poor optimization by other not so effective Apps.
10. Master the Art of Making Videos
Videos are growing and with a huge number of internet users coming to Youtube, makes it essential for pro-bloggers to learn filmmaking.
Let me tell you it is not easy to make great quality videos. You will have to experiment and learn the basics of filming, voice-overs, audio, lighting, and editing.
All of these come together and take months of practice before you can create that first amazing video. Keep trying and you will get there.
So, these are some of the skills that you can master to begin blogging in 2018 or in the coming years. If you think there is anything else that is essential for success at blogging, share with me in comments below.
Have a Great Day!
I Also, Wrote on – How to Find the Domain Name and Niche For your Blog, Should you Use Google AMP or Not?
