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So you’ve been blogging awhile. That’s great! I’m right there with you. I am always aware though that there is more to learn and new things to try. When it comes to this crazy fast moving world of blogging. If you are at the point where you either don’t want to learn or don’t think you need to learn anymore then honestly blogging might not be for you. So let’s talk about how you can start being a better blogger. 

 

Especially if your goal is to be a full-time blogger and to earn an income through your blog. If you want to have your job be as a blogger then you need to be willing to constantly be learning and working on improving and growing your blog.

So here are a few of the most important blogging lessons I’ve learned and have helped make a huge difference in my blog growth and quality over the recent year or so. I want to help you all grow and improve so I am sharing some of what I have tried and what has worked as well as what hasn’t worked as well for me.

 You need to get honest about your blog goals

If you want your blog to be your hobby and it’s just fun for you to do that is great. Blogging can be a lot of fun and if that’s what your goal for your blog is. To just be fun, own it. If you want your blog to be a career and something that you can monetize down the road that is also fantastic.

There is no wrong way to do this. The only thing is you need, to be honest about what your goals are at least to yourself. You don’t have to explain your desire for a hobby blog or for a blog to make money to anyone else. Just know what you want out of your blog so you can set your blog up for potentially making money or not. Also, don’t expect to put in four hours of work a week or one blog post a month if what you really want is to be making an income.

 Start spending more time on your blog  titles

This is so important and something I wish I had realized earlier in my blogging journey. It makes sense the title is often the one thing that determines whether or not someone will click and open your post to read it. If they don’t open it up and read it then it doesn’t matter how amazing your post really is because it’s not getting read.

So the title matters. So you want your title to be relevant to your post and contain the keywords your audience wants to read about. Also, I find keeping the title not too long and somewhat simple is best. You want to catch the readers attention so keep it simple and quick. Don’t be afraid to play around with titles a little bit. Make your title sound interesting enough that people will want to see what the post is about.

Get to know your audience 

One thing about blogging is that your blog isn’t for everyone and that’s ok. It doesn’t need to be. Even if you aren’t heavily niched and write about many topics you still need to have an idea of who your audience is. The reason being that if you are writing posts on the same topic for teenage girls and for middle-aged men then the style of your writing and what you include in your posts will be different.

So you need to figure out who exactly your audience is. There are a few ways to do this. First, check out your stats. On many platforms, your stats will show you gender, age, and the location of your followers which can give you an idea of who is following you. Another way is to check out who is leaving comments and go find out more about them.

The best way, though, in my opinion, is to just ask. Ask questions on your social media or put together a survey and ask your readers to take it. I do surveys occasionally and it’s always interesting to read the answers that you get. I’ve also learned a lot about my readers and what they want through surveys. I usually do surveys through SurveyMonkey though there are other options out there.

 

Give, give, and give some more 

This is so important to do as a blogger and really all throughout your life both in blogging and really everywhere. If you want to build relationships with other bloggers and your readers you want to give them a lot. The more that you give the more that you will receive in return.

It’s also important to give a lot to your readers. Especially if you want to start selling products. You need to give, give, give so that your readers know how valuable your content is before they decide to purchase your products. Even if you don’t sell though you want to give a lot so your readers know they have to come back to your blog because of how valuable it is.

Some ideas of what you can give. Content upgrades, like the free worksheet that comes with this post. Also, email courses are a great thing to share with your readers. I’ve created two free email courses to give to my readers. I love to share as much information as I can with my readers both on my blog and on social media. 

  Try new things and take risks 

If you want to be successful and I’m sure you do then this is so super important. I know taking risks and trying new things isn’t easy. I can be introverted and putting myself out there is scary but almost always when I do it I’m glad that I did and it works out better than expected. So it’s worth it.

Plus you want to try new things so that you can figure out what works for you and your blog and also what doesn’t work as well. So do your research, learn some new things and then actually try those new things out. I’m doing it as well. I’m launching a free email course and then working on paid programs. It’s scary and I don’t know if anyone will want any of the things I’m working on but I’m forcing myself to try.

 Start working on some epic and shareable content 

This is one of the areas that I’ve really started putting time and effort into over the past year on my blog. In the first two years of blogging, I wrote more personal and shorter posts. I built up a lot of content on my blog but it wasn’t bringing me in traffic month to month and year to year which I needed it to. Other than a few posts.

So this past year I started focusing more on creating epic and shareable content. What I mean by that is I have started writing longer and more detailed posts. Like this one that you are reading. I did research on epic content which says that posts that are over 1,000 words tend to get shared more often. Not all my posts are going to be that long but I aim for one epic post a month at least. Usually, I try to do 3 or 4 epic posts a month. The more lengthy and quality posts I can post the better. 

I’ve really been working on ways to make my content more valuable so that it is shared more often. That is one thing I’m continuously working on and hopefully, I will get better at over the next few months.

Keep a running list of post ideas and plan posts

I really love doing this and it’s so helpful to having ideas when you sit down to write. I will have blog post ideas but if I don’t put them down somewhere when I sit down to actually create posts my mind is a big blank.

So I have started putting my ideas down in Evernote. That way I can add it on my phone or iPad or computer whatever I’m near when the idea comes to me. There are lots of ways to keep your list you can just write them down on paper or use any list system on your phone or computer.

It has been so helpful when it comes time to actually write my content to not have to try and come up with a post idea right then. I just open Evernote and read through all my ideas and choose which one stands out to me as what I’d like to start working on.

It doesn’t take very long to build up a list of ideas. I am constantly having ideas pop into my head at random times. Before I started keeping track most of them disappeared from my mind and I probably forgot many good post topics. So if you aren’t doing this yet start doing this today. Don’t forget any good post ideas.

Want another way to grow your blog?: Sign up for my Pinterest Course