4 Tips To Start An Engaging Blog

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Starting a blog is often viewed as a very simple task. However, depending on what your desires are, simply putting your thoughts down is very unlikely to lead to much, if any engagement.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t try to create a blog. It just means it won’t be super simple. If the right tips and strategies are used, a blog can be a wonderful investment.

Find Your Niche

One of the biggest problems that blogs run into is not having a strong niche. One way to look at it is through the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In the story, Goldilocks struggles to find the right size, comfort, and temperature of items. These items had to be “just right.” The same goes for a blog. If you are wanting to write about fishing, the niche may be too broad. Without spending thousands of dollars on advertising and mastering SEO, the blog is going to get outperformed by other companies and posts that already have large followings and large advertising budgets.

The same is true about a topic that is too specific. If someone decides to focus on only smallmouth bass fishing in a remote lake in Louisiana, they may get a small audience of readers who are obsessed with that one fish, but overall, they may struggle to grow their audience.

On the other hand, a topic about deep sea fishing might be good because the Galveston/Houston area has more than 2.3 million people, with a significant percentage of them interested in fishing. The topic is specific enough to where general articles written by larger companies won’t outrank it online. 

While the market of Galveston/Houston may seem small and limited, dominating that market could lead to thousands of page views every month. This same idea could be used for local restaurants, travel, sport teams, or lifestyle.

Have Patience

One of the biggest issues that bloggers and other small business owners have is that they aren’t patient. Growing an audience is difficult. Think about it – you are asking a complete stranger to take time out of their day to read your content, and to hopefully like it enough to come back again. In a world where we see over 4,000-10,000 advertisements per day, it isn’t hard to see why this is difficult.

Unless you’ve already got a strong online presence and following, getting readers to click and engage on your blog will take time. However, just like a snowball, once the ball gets rolling, it can grow rapidly.

For example, it may take two months of consistent posting to average 100 views per day. It may only take another month however to get to 200, and then another week to reach 300 views per day. If you are patient, eventually this number can grow to thousands of views per day. The problem is, most people aren’t patient enough to wait for this to happen and end up giving up.

Have a Clear Strategy

Every blog has a different purpose. Maybe the blog is just for personal musings, almost like a journal or diary. Or maybe the purpose of the blog is to provide a secondary income. Depending on the goal, there needs to be a clear plan. A good general rule to follow is be willing to put money into getting the blog out there. For example:

• Online advertising (such as Google Ads)
• Hiring a graphic designer
• Promoting the blog/business on social media
• Doing giveaways and other perks to get clicks and engagement
• Paying for perks on the blogging website (such as a specific domain)

For other potential costs to look into, click here.

By following these tips and ideas, your blog may achieve the success and engagement that you desire. If these tips do not work, the final recommendation is to be flexible. 

Flexibility

Thomas Edison failed over 1,000 times in creating the lightbulb. With each failure, he learned certain parts that did and did not work. The same can go for a blog. The first angle or topic that is written about might not get any engagement. It may take twenty, fifty, or one hundred different articles to realize what kind of articles readers like. 

The same goes for graphics, advertising (keywords), and social media postings. If intentional and careful with what changes are being made, after a while you will learn what does and does not work well in achieving successful engaging posts.