Blogging is no longer an easy game what you can win without any practice or hard work. So to make your website/blog visible to hundreds of thousand readers you need a clear & strong blogging strategy. Now you have already noticed that it is food related blog, so if you are thinking whatever I am writing here that is totally based experience gained from food blogging and it may not relevant to your blogging niche then you are not absolutely correct because firstly here I will discuss steps to make a plan to run a blog which is relevant not only to food blog but also equally relevant to any other blogging niches, secondly, I also run a blog which is related to another niche.
But the fact is that not every blogger starts a blog to become a pro. Actually, most of the people start blogging to share their thoughts on various things of their interest. So later on when they think to be a pro and monetize their blog that time it becomes very difficult to set a goal and align everything (the past and future blogging activities) towards that goal. So you are interested to start a food blog then you should think again and if you do not find fit yourself to this niche or any other niche then don’t start it immediately rather take more time to think and start something where you have interest..
7 tricks to make effective blogging strategy from the beginning
1. Niche blogging vs Multi-niche blogging
Selecting blogging niche is most important blogging strategy before moving ahead.
Stick to a particular niche is a key to get success earlier. But it needs your tremendous passion for that subject as always remember that BLOGGING IS NOT EASY. It needs hard work, the right strategy, patience and sometimes little luck, so if you are not passionate about the niche then you never can continue it for months or even years to get actual success.
If you are running a multi-niche blog or want to create a multi-niche blog then you need to work harder, write multiple posts daily, encourage more guest authors or have co-owners of your blog.
2. Domain name – tagline – meta description
- How to select a right domain name for your site?
- Is there any trick?
There are so many old rules for selecting a domain name. Like,
- Easy to remember and short name
- Include keywords in your domain name
But if your domain name reflects a particular topic or subject then you may face problems if you want to expand the area for blog posts and start writing on other topics.
So keyword focused domain name may good for search engine point of view but once you change your blogging plan and want to write on other topics then it will be a disadvantage. So domain name selection is most tricky blogging strategy for every blogger and the first blogging strategy what you implement.
3. Target audience
- Who are your target audiences?
- In which country do they reside? or it is not specific to any country
- Age group of your audiences? teenagers, 20-15 years old, 25-35 years old etc
The benefit of having a predefined target audience is, it helps you connect with your readers and maintaining a right tone and style in each article or post.
If you have travel blog for the age group of 25-35 years old or only for men or women, for each group you need to maintain different writing style and tone throughout your website.
So defining target audience is always a key blogging strategy to increase website traffic and grow your blog faster. If you are a food blogger then also you can decide your target audience based on your food cuisine and types of food.
4. Tone of voice in your writing
How much does it actually matter?
- Give me a bottle of water
- Please, give me bottle of water
- Hello bro, give me a bottle of water
- I am telling you, give me bottle of water
- Excuse me, may I have a bottle of water
All these sentences are used to express the same thing but tones are different.
First sentence (give me a bottle of water) is much more straight forward and directly asked for what someone needs.
Second sentence (please, give me a bottle of water) is much softer in tone and said please before asking for what he/she needs.
Third sentence (Hello bro, give me a bottle of water) is more casual and friendly way to ask. Such tone is used when young people or friends talk each other.
Fourth sentence (I am telling you, give me a bottle of water) is a very rude way to ask for something. People only ask this way when he/she do not bother about what others will feel.
Last sentence (Excuse me, may I have a bottle of water) is a most polite way to ask for something. Here, the last one is best option to talk someone whom you do not know personally.
So if you keep all these aspects in mind while selecting right tone of voice for your posts then you can easily connect with your readers. Now you must admit that selection of right tone is an important part of a blogging strategy.
5. Posting frequency
- How many posts should you write in each week?
- Do you have set your own rule of writing posts every week or even day?
Actually, there is no thumb rule for posting frequency, so, if you have just started your blog then no need to set any such rule rather you should only concentrate on creating more and more quality contents. If you do not have enough traffic then how can you think about posting frequency, you are just a soldier, so you can only do work harder. You can not dream about a fixed number of posts in each week. So you should concentrate on ..
Once you reached a certain number of daily visitors to your blog then only you can enjoy such luxury of posting frequency.
But how many posts per week is enough for your blog? Actually, nobody can answer this because if you can twenty quality posts per week then it is definitely better than 5-6 quality posts. But can you really write 20 posts without sacrificing quality? Here is the trick. Based on your ability to produce quality posts every week, you should plan your weekly time table for posting articles. You can also invite others for being guest authors. Being a food blogger I never could freeze a blog posting frequency rather I share food-related content whenever I have done with writing a content on that topic. So having a fixed posting frequency or no posting frequency may be considered as your strong blogging strategy.
6. Promotional game plan
Promotion is important for any business and it is equally important whether your business is online or offline.
Not even for business, any activity, sports, event & incident whatever you want people should know, you have to promote that through every possible and effective channel.
- How to increase website traffic?
- Where to promote to increase blog traffic?
Dependency on social media traffic and other referral traffic are higher during the initial stage of a blog as no search engine will trust you as a valuable source of information.
Actually, it takes time to start getting organic traffic, so till then only social media traffic and other referral traffic will help you to survive and keep you motivated.
Not only that link building through sharing your blog links on social media and other sites also help you in improving page rank.
So from the beginning of your blogging journey you should have a fixed time table for sharing blog links on social media and other sites and critically monitor results of all channel as not all channel will not work equally for every blog or website.
For example, Facebook is not effective for FavCounter till now but it getting a good result from Pinterest and forums as compared to Facebook.
Google Plus promotional trick: Backbencher’s method
So here it is time to take a break to understand what are the issues for a non-performing channel. So promotional game plan can never be a pre-decided blogging strategy because you have to take a decision based on the performance of each platform.
7. Equipped with right technology & software
Select your right blogging platform and software and start blogging. If you are running out of money but still want to create a blog, then start with free blogging tools (Blogger or WordPress) but if you are really passionate and serious blogger then spend some bucks and create a self-hosted blog.
Bloggers may need some more software like photo editing tools (Adobe Light room, Photoshop, Canva, GIMP etc), marketing software (email marketing, social media management tools) MS Office, Google Apps etc. Being a food blogger a photo editing tool is very important and you need to develop skill sets to give your food images a professional touch.
These are all about effective blogging strategy what I learned from my food related blog and fin-tech-job related blog. I am sure if you are a blogger then some of those tricks you have definitely adopted. So share your thought here and also let us know if you realized any particular blogging strategy is missing here what you think also very important and effective.
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