I’d like you to think of the most famous blog or blogger you can possibly think of right now. You’ve likely thought of someone like Harvey Levin from TMZ, Timothy Sykes from his eponymous blog or Julie Powell from the movie Julie & Julia; no matter what it is you really think of her second book, you’ve got to admit that she’s pretty famous! They started just where you are. Here’s how these people created their famous blogs and how you can do it too.
Creating Their Readership
First, you should know that when launching a blog, all of these people started at the ground floor: They all began their blogs with a blank template and with no posts, usually just with a great idea that sparked the beginning of the blog. From there, they started creating their readership by finding out what people would like to read and blogging about subjects that both them and their readers enjoy reading about. Hits started going up until they could look back and say they’ve created a blog – literally from the ground up.
Hooking Their Readership
Once you’ve got a reader to visit your blog, you have a reader that you’ve just created. They’re reading, right? But you should know that it’s not enough. Next, you need to hook your reader and turn them into what author Stephen King likes calling a Constant Reader. Of course, this means that they will keeping coming back for more. There’s only one real way to do this, and that’s to make sure that your content remains interesting and that you keep posting it regularly. That’s the only way to get readers to keep coming back. Are your readers hooked?
Increasing Their Readership
Once you’ve finished creating a blog and acquired a couple of regular readers and you’ve managed to hook them with great content, you can work on increasing readership. This means that you have to get people to share your content on social media, and you can boost this by taking out some advertisements or having a very strong social media presence where people are able to share posts from. Once you’ve hooked your basic readership, you have to increase it. That’s how all of the successful bloggers you could possibly think of did it, and that’s the secret to make sure that you can do it too.
Move to Merchandise
If your blog isn’t making money for you, than it’s working against you. Many successful bloggers realized that once they had a readership, there were many more opportunities to make use of the brand they had created, which moved these bloggers to introduce merchandise as an option to their blog. That gives them an opportunity to expand their brand even further, and that means that even more people were clicking their way to the blogs – and the same can work for your blog too, and you can make some money in the process!
With Great Content
Yes, we’ve previously emphasised the importance of producing great and fascinating content, but we’re going to say it again, because this is what makes people click, and this is what makes people come back to the blog. Always make sure that your content has been properly fact-checked before you post it, and make sure that your social media share buttons are right next to the post for easy sharing; once your posts are out there, your content is well on its way to becoming viral. And the only way to do that for real is to ensure that you’re producing great content. Need more help? Read this in-depth guide.
