Category: Blogging

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How to Create a Content Calendar for your Blog

If you are a blogger or content creator, then you must have come across the term – Content Calendar. This term refers to a blogging tool that is very useful for creating quality blog post ideas for your blog on demand. A content calendar makes your blogging journey easy and less stressful. In the post, I will be showing how to create a content calendar for your blog.

Every writer experiences difficulty in generating content ideas from time to time. This phenomenon also known as a ‘writer’s block’ can affect anybody at any time irrespective of your level of training or experience in writing.

A  content calendar saves you from this difficulty by presenting you with a pre-planned content plan to follow to ensure your blog is constantly updated.

Are you planning to start a blog or do you already have one? Check out the following tips on how to create a content calendar for your blog without breaking your head.

READ: ONLINE BUSINESSES TO CONSIDER AFTER GRADUATION

Focus on your audience/niche

If you plan to blog, then you must be focused on your niche or audience. Your blogging activity should have a target. Without focus on your audience, you are bound to always forget content ideas to create.

Understanding your audience will help you find topics of interest and create it for them. When planning your content calendar, put your audience in perspective to help you generate content ideas.

In my opinion, knowing your target audience is the first step on learning how to create a content calendar for your blog. Without this knowledge, every other thing you are doing on your blog is left to chance.

 

Set up structured proper blog post categories

With blog post categories, you give your blogging effort an element of variety. Blog categories give you more content ideas to create and post on your blog.

Let’s say you have a Football blog, you can create categories on English football, Spanish football, Nigeria football, Italian football and others. The more specific your blog categories are to your audience the more interesting and engaging they will find your content.

If you are planning to post frequently on your blog without running out of content ideas, consider setting up structured post categories when learning how to create a content calendar for your blog.

 

Flow and think of possible content ideas

The best way to generate content ideas for your blog while creating a content calendar is by being intentionally spontaneous. What do I mean by this?

Being intentionally spontaneous means deliberately brainstorming on possible content ideas and writing them down as they occur to you. It can also refer to going with the flow of your daily life activity to generate content ideas as it pops into your head.

Going with the flow concerns being able to realize content ideas when thoughts come to you regardless of the activity you are involved in. Whether you are bathing, working, shopping, or resting, you can stay conscious of your thoughts to filter out post ideas that jump at you.

As a matter of fact, the general rule of thumb when learning how to create a content calendar for your blog is to write or note down any thought that comes to you immediately. Delaying to another time might lead to you forgetting the content idea.

You may also need to take out time to brainstorm and think of possible content ideas and write down for future use on your blog.

 

Follow a specified schedule

Without a posting schedule, you may not be able to meet up with your posting deadlines. It’s always better in the long run if your website has regularly updated posts on it.

It will show your subscribers that you mean business and it will also improve your SEO ranking if your posts are keyword optimized for search engines. Choose a posting schedule that will fit your type of blog.

If you have an authority blog, you may not need to post everyday but if you have a viral blog, then frequent posting is required to keep the blog updated. When you have a specific schedule to follow, creating a content calendar becomes easy.  A posting schedule helps you with know when you need to post and when you don’t need to do so thereby saving your time and content ideas.

READ: How To Start Earning Money Through Blogging

Be consistent and intentional in your content idea creation

Consistency and intentionality are attributes you must take up in the game of content creation and posting on your blog. If you really hope to learn how to create a content calendar for your blog, then you must be very intentional about it.

You will have to stay on it and ensure you follow through as always. This ties into the post above concerning following a specified schedule. Anybody can create a content calendar but it takes willpower to carry on with it because it’s a never-ending activity as long as your blog is alive.

 

Final words

Learning how to create a content calendar for your blog is only one of the first steps to managing your blog and optimizing it for your subscribers. Remember you are not blogging for yourself but for your audience.

Therefore, it’s important to know your audience first before creating a content calendar. An effective way to generate blog post ideas is to deliberate create time for brainstorming and writing down ideas that come to you.

In addition, you can intentionally force your sub-conscious mind to realize content ideas while going about your life’s activities. Content topics can come upon you while running, working, driving or even on a date or meeting.

Are you interested in setting up a content calendar for your blog? How have you been doing it?

Kindly leave a comment in the discussion section below and don’t forget to share too as someone out there needs to read this good stuff!

READ: How To Rank Your Blogpost in SEO Quickly

 

 

 

How to Start Earn Money Quickly through Blogging

A common statistic says that most bloggers don’t blog for up to 6 months before giving up on it. Either they run out of content to post or they lose interest because money isn’t coming out of it yet. Now this is quite common and every blogger at one point or the other must have felt this way. Many people don’t think it’s possible to earn money quickly through blogging.

However, if you want better results in blogging then proper research is required to understand what’s involved in blogging.

First, you need to understand that there are two types of blogging. Namely, the authority blogging model (also known as niche blogging) and the viral blogging model (also known as the newspaper blogging).

These two models operate differently and for the purpose of this post, we are going to focus our attention on viral blogging. The reason is this, authority blogging takes a while to gather momentum because you have to build your authority and visibility in that niche first, build a followership, create search engine optimized content as well as use paid traffic.

In addition, you don’t have to create posts often because each content you create ideally should be a masterpiece as an authority in that niche.

For viral blogging, you need consistent posting of viral content in the form of trending news and stories, images and videos.

You may need to always be in the know to follow trends and might have to post at least 5 times each day.

The posts must be interesting, engaging and a hooker.

In viral blogging, there is no such thing as building authority or doing SEO. Your content can just be 250 – 400 word posts or short videos bearing very interesting information to catch and retain the interest of your audience. These short, viral posts are powered by paid traffic and if you have ever heard anyone talking about earning money quickly through blogging, then this is one of the techniques.

The best traffic for this type of blogging is social media traffic, especially heavy paid traffic using Facebook ads. Remember, social media is a viral platform and the plan here is to drive heavy, paid traffic to a viral content blog. You earn income by the impressions and clicks on ads by your blog visitors.

There is no exact figure here I can give you but how much money you make on a daily basis is dependent on different factors like your ad network and its placement on your blog,

There are several elements to consider when planning to go into viral blogging. Below are some of them in no particular order:

Niche of interest

The first point to note when planning to set up a viral blog is to identify the niche you want to focus on. Some niches build audience interest easily while others are more difficult to engage an audience.

By niche, I mean a category of topic your posts will be on. The best thing to do is to consider the different niches that are already winners in driving interest in people. Niches like the following:

– Sex

– Football

– Health

– Trending news

– Politics

– World events

– Scholarship

These are niches that usually have content that drive human interest in the thousands and when combined with a powered traffic source, you will have visitors rushing to your website whenever you boost a post.

So go ahead and choose a niche that you have interest to push viral content on.

Uniqueness of your domain name

One mistake a lot of bloggers make is picking a domain name that has nothing to do with their niche. This is very wrong and if you are just starting out, it is best you avoid it in the first place. This is not to say that your domain name (the name of your website) will determine whether you make money or not but it certainly helps when your domain is relevant or related to your niche of interest.

Whether you are going for an education blog or sports blog, let your domain name be clear about what your blog is about by merely looking at it.

Once you have chosen a domain name, head on to Namecheap or Hostgator to register it on the web.

Blog design, layout and responsiveness

The design and layout of the blog is very important. For me, the best design to go for should be minimalistic and well-structured. You wouldn’t want a blog with a cluttered interface.

If your blog’s user experience and interface is clear and easy to navigate, you already have an advantage. To have a proper blog design, you need to use a proper and premium newspaper theme for your blog design.

In addition, premium newspaper themes are optimized to improve your blog’s CTR so try to get a quality theme. It is important that traffic to your site is utilized as much as possible to generate income for you.

Themes like Newspaper 7 and Divi theme are great themes you can use to set up your blog. You can do this by yourself with a little support from Youtube or visit Fiverr to get a professional web designer to set one up for about $40 – $100 depending on your budget.

Remember, simple designs are best….it doesn’t have to be very technical and can have just about 4 pages like Blog, Resources, About Us, Contact Us.

Once you have set up your blog using a premium theme that optimizes ad network banners like Adsense, it is now time to create content. You will need to fill up your website with short, viral posts before driving traffic to it.

Content posting strategy

This part is quite important and you must listen carefully.

Remember that the goal here is to create and post viral and interesting content.  This content should be in the form of text, images and videos. You may be wondering where you are going to get such content but it’s not so difficult.

Simply do a search on websites that post viral and engaging content on the web, bookmark them and copy their content.

Here is the formula: Copy, rewrite or respin in your own words, post and give credit at the end of the post to the source. You don’t need to break your head over this one.

It doesn’t get tougher than this so just visit sites like Lifehacker, Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Viranova and some others like them to copy and respin hot topics.

You can then boost the very viral ones with Facebook ad to drive tons of traffic to your website.

Also, you can set up Google Trends and other new notification sites on your phone to get the hottest news on your niche as it happens.

Ad Monetization Network

For monetization, you will need a Google Adsense account for starters. Once you have gained experience and started earning some money, you can get registered on other ad publishing networks like Taboola or Media.net to further improve your earnings.

Of course, if you are using Google Adsense, you would want to make sure you ads are properly placed on your blog to drive clicks from visitors. The best placements involves placing one rectangular, long ad in your header, a column ad in your side bar, another under your post topic and two within the post itself.

If you have traffic coming in from high CPC countries, the bigger your daily earnings will be. You can use an ad optimization plugin like Advanced Ads on your WordPress dashboard to optimize your ads performance.

If you need a Google Adsense account, contact me to help you get one using this email – admin@onlinebusinesshacking.com

 

Paid traffic sources

This one is a no-brainer. The best traffic to use for this is Facebook ad promotions.

You need to create a Facebook page related to your blog niche with probably the same name as your blog. On this page, you can post topics from your blog and boost them to reach more people.

Check out your posts that are likely to have very high engagement and boost them to a general audience of people who are likely to respond to your content.

If you are just starting out, Facebook ad requires some practice and experience to get it right. Whether you plan to target only people who are interested in your niche or to target wide, the key thing here is that you need a large volume of traffic.

Personally, I will advise targeting wide in the mean time then monitoring your ad to see how it performs. You will need to try different tweaks before settling on what work best for you.

Since this is viral blogging and our aim is to drive heavy traffic, you need to have a sizable ad budget. As high as $150. This amount will be about $5 daily ad spend to boost your posts.

The technique to use is this, select your top viral=looking, interesting posts and boost them for two days, after the two days, pick another and repeat. Experiment a little bit until you find your own winning strategy.

Means of collecting payment

To collect your payment through Google Adsense and other ad networks, there are usually options for either a direct bank deposit or Paypal. You can integrate your local bank to your Adsense account or set up your PayPal there.

Contact me for a guide on how to set up your fully functional PayPal account to receive international payments.

Payment is usually on the 21st of every month.

Earning income consistently through viral blogging is possible but of course, it requires work on your part to ensure it works for you.

You will need to be consistent and organized with your work ethics to get the best results out of this. As you get more experienced in this, your results will improve especially when you scale up your ad budget to push even more traffic to your blog.

I hope you found this post useful and don’t forget to use the share button after reading.

 

How You Can Earn Income from Blogging

Life as a blogger can be fun if you know what you are doing. As you well know, blogging is a means of building your authority in your field and connecting with people with like-minds. If you are interested in blogging for a living, then you need to learn how you can earn income from blogging.

Irrespective of the niche your blog is focused on, there are a number of ways you can monetize your blog to earn massive income month on month.

A lot of folks make the mistake of thinking that learning how you can earn more income from blogging is tough. It really isn’t if you have proper guidance. There are a number of ways you will have to consider and check if they are suitable for monetizing your blog.

At this point, it will be worthy to note that your blogging is not a get rich quick scheme and it takes awhile to kick in even if you are doing the right thing. You will need to have the right kind of content that your audience will find valuable, you will also need  visitors who are interested in what you blog about to visit your website and patronize you .

So let’s head on to the meat of it; how you can earn income from blogging. Read on below:

 

Monetize with an Ad Network

You can earn very good income through using an ad network to monetize your account. This involves getting a publisher account with an ad network like Google Adsense, Media.net, Outbrain, Taboola or any of the many others out there.

Two determining factors about how much income you will make from using an ad network will the volume of traffic you have and where the traffic is come from. You only make money from using an ad network when your blog visitors click on the ad Google Adsense advertises to visitors on your website.

This is called CPC or cost per click advertising and to make the best of it you need high traffic volume and quality clicks from countries with high CPC. Countries like US, UK and other Western countries.

The type of ads shown on your blog is dependent on the type of content you have. If you can get great traffic to your website, you can massively earn income from blogging using Google Adsense.

 

Sell Your Products and Services

You can earn income from blogging through selling your own products and services. While starting out, you might wonder what exactly you hope to sell as products. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds, products could come in the form of knowledge of value which you already know.

There are people out there who will pay to know what you know already. You can package this valuable information in the form of e-books to advertise on your blog to make sales. It could be how-to guides, manuals and other similar materials that your audience will love to have.

You can also earn income from blogging by creating video courses and tutorials for sale. Most individuals have a higher regard for video content and will pay you premium to have access to them.

As for services, you can create a services page where people can contact you for what you do. You could offer a consultancy or coaching service where you guide your target audience in their journey.

If you are creatively skilled, offering freelancing services is also a great way to earn income from blogging. You can promote this services on your blog so that visitors that need the service can contact you.

READ: Check Out Freelancing Websites You Can Join to Earn Money

 

Monetize with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate is the one of the easiest ways of making money online. You can also leverage on it to earn income from blogging when you have affiliate products related to your industry posted on your blog.

The question you might ask is, how does it work? You might be familiar with the concept of marketing as an affiliate where you promote a product , when someone buys through your unique link, the merchant pays you a commission.

Basically, that’s how affiliate marketing works. You sign up with affiliate merchants in your niche; there are many of them out there.

Many digital companies have provision for affiliates who can promote their products. It’s a win-win for everyone.  They make money, you make money when you are paid a commission from the sale and everyone is happy.

As an affiliate, you will be given a unique affiliate link which you will embed on your blog. You earn money when visitors to your blog follow the affiliate link to make a purchase.

 

Sell Sponsored Posts and Ad Spaces

Income can be earned through blogging by selling featured and sponsored posts to businesses who can advertise their products and services on your blog. They will pay you a certain amount for you to do a post for them. It could be a review or a sponsored post.

This can be done with other bloggers too, where you feature their blog or services on your blog and they pay you for it. If you run a website with a lot of traffic, you can make a good deal of money from companies and businesses who are related to your niche of focus who need ad spaces.

Of course, this isn’t a given fact. You will have to do some work by pitching the value you are offering to them if the companies are really big companies. If your blog has gained some level of authority and relevance, you are more likely to get an offer to sell a sponsored post or ad space.

Sell Consulting and Coaching Services

Having a consulting or coaching service on your blog can be another great way for you to earn income from blogging. You can offer advice and information to people in your niche who need support and mentorship.

Fortunately, you don’t need to invest in this financially, you only need offer information you already know people who don’t to earn income as a consultant.

Similarly, you can create coaching programs to offer on your blog in the form of online trainings, one-on-one trainings and phone call sessions. If you have gained enough visibility and exposure, more people will tune into your offers as your credibility and traffic increases.

READ: Learn How to Grow Your Email List to Sell Your Products From Your Blog

Monetize Your Blog with E-commerce

E-commerce is really big now and with the aid or Shopify and Woocommerce, you can massively earn income from blogging while selling products to your audience. Many people prefer to buy products online than visit shops either because advertised products appear finer or because of convenience.

Regardless of their reasons, your business is to sell products that your target audience wants and make money while at it. You can sell products from Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Pressbuy, Aliexpress and Alibaba to make huge profits if you are servicing a large market.

You can arrange with a courier service in your country of origin concerning delivering the products to customers to collect your payment.

READ: Some Top Affiliate Companies You Can Promote their Products

Hope you found this post very useful concerning earning income from blogging?

Hey! Don’t forget to share this post too after reading. You could be helping someone who needs it.

How to Increase Blog Income Using Adsense

As a blogger who is interested in making money from your blogging efforts, your top concern should be learning and mastering how to increase blog income using Adsense. You need to understand that there are certain dynamics involved when it comes to earning more money via Adsense.

Factors like having a high eCPM, having a higher CPC or cost per click and sensible traffic all tie together to determine the amount of income your blog is going to be making monthly.

If you really need to make money via Adsense, this article is for you as you are going to learn a few tweaks you can apply right away to increase blog income using Adsense.

What a lot of bloggers don’t know is that they need to focus more on CPC before thinking of CTR. A blog that has a high CPC but minimal or average traffic can be on par or even better than one that has a high CTR but low CPC.

You may be asking what CPC and CTR are – CPC is the cost per click of your blog. It also means the cost of each click on an ad on your blog. The CTR is the Click through Rate of your blog and has to do with traffic, the number of people who visit your blog and impressions made.

To increase blog income using Adsense, ensure that your blog fulfills the following parameters:

 

  • Focus on a Hot Niche from the Beginning

The niche your blog is on is going to determine the kind of ads that are shown on it. The CPC of your ads are determined by the type of topics your blog content is on. Certain niches pay far better than others and as a blogger, it is up to you to focus on a niche with high CPC.

Niches in Internet software, Tech devices and equipment, Make money online, Digital solutions, Cars, Health, Insurance, Real estate, Scholarships, Jobs, Entertainment and Dating are all have good CPC with Internet Software having the highest and dating the least.

So in essence, the quality of CPC you get is dependent on your choice. Let your niche be one that has high CPC potential.

READ: 7 Online Businesses You Can Make Money From

  • The Blog Content

How engaging and valuable is your content? If you really hope to increase blog income using Adsense, it is important that you create content that solves problems in your niche. This is the type of content that will resonate and connect with your audience more than ever.

Your content should also contain long-tail keywords preferably so you will have low keyword competition. This will help you rank better on search engines so when people interested in content like yours browse the internet, they can come across your content easily.

Having value-packed content will also help you connect and engage with your readers better to turn them into a loyal audience, eager to hear from you.

 

  • Adsense Ad Format

You need to do this right for you to increase blog income using Adsense. Certain ad formats have better CTR and CPC while others have lower ones. Each of your blog pages needs 3 ad placements at least and their sizes should be 336 X 280 and 468 X 60. Format should be text as they have higher engagement with better CPC and CTR.

READ: Why Affiliate Marketing Is the Easiest Online Business for You

  • Country or Traffic

The worth of your website click is dependent on the country it is coming from. If your traffic is from the US, UK or other Western countries, expect to have a higher CPC. These countries have higher CPC and you will earn better Adsense revenue if you have your traffic coming from there.

One way you can get traffic from these countries is by using Facebook ad targeting which can be highly focused. Once you do this properly, you can expect to see an increase in your blog earnings via Adsense.

 

  • Enable Ad Blocking Feature

Remember that the type of ads you have on your website is going to determine your CPC. Therefore, it is important that your check out the Ad Blocking feature of your Adsense account to know which ads deserve to be blocked.

Your objective for having ads on your blog is to increase blog income using Adsense so it is important your check to see which ads are performing well and which aren’t.

On your Adsense dashboard, scroll to Allow Block Ads then check the niche of the ads showing on your blog and how much they are earning. Ads from irrelevant niches or ads that are not earning enough income can be blocked to increase your Adsense CPC.

READ: 5 Marketing Ideas that Will Promote Your Small Business

  • Ad Placement

A great way to increase blog income using Adsense is to set your ad placements perfectly. You can do this by ensuring you place at least 3 ads on your blog page. One should be outside the blog post, two other ads should be inside the blog post.

Don’t forget that you want these ads to be clicked on and for that to happen, you need to place them where they will be most visible to attract your blog visitors. As stated above, the best ad sizes are 336 X 280 and 468 X 60.

 

  • Responsiveness of Your Blog

A blog or website is said to be responsive when it adjusts to fit appropriately on the screen of any device from which it is viewed from. Your Adsense income will be higher if your blog or website is responsive because it will be easy to be shown to different viewers irrespective of the device used.

Some blogs that aren’t responsive don’t show ads when viewed on a mobile phone and this can lead to a loss in potential Adsense income.

A solution to this is to use a responsive, premium theme from the onset to design your blog. Alternatively, if you already have a blog, you can search for WordPress plugins that have responsiveness functionality to make your blog mobile responsive.

To increase blog income using Adsense isn’t rocket science, you have to try a combination of all these tips together. While you experiment, you will find the right blend of tips that will benefit your blog the most.

Did you find this post useful?

Your suggestions and inquiries are welcome so kindly drop a comment below.

Hey! Don’t forget to share too. You might be helping someone out there.

How You Can Grow Your Blog with Content Marketing

There is a popular cliché that is quite popular in content marketing and website traffic generation circles.  It says ‘content is king and traffic is the general’, what this simply means is that the type of content you have has a strong influence on how fast you can grow your blog. When you add quality traffic to it, you get a BOOM. If you plan to learn how you can grow your blog, then this post is for you.

Content marketing simply refers to an aspect of marketing where you give free but valuable information to your target audience on a regular basis TO EDUCATE, ENGAGE and BUILD A RELATIONSHIP with them so as to increase their perceived authority of you as an expert and brand to come to for services.

The kind of content you create should be of very good value and contain information which your audience might not be able to get easily anywhere else. If this is the case, they will keep coming back to you for services. As a blogger or website owner, you need to keep your audience engaged and one of the ways of doing this is to learn how you can grow your blog using content marketing.

As an online entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant that has been in the online business field for quite some time, I will suggest you do the following to master how you can grow your blog quickly using content marketing.

 

  • Research to Find Your Ideal Audience

A very important aspect of content creation is knowing who your ideal audience is and where you can find them. You can’t afford to make the mistake of creating random content as without having a niche you are focused on. Unless you are blogging on entertainment or maybe news, you need to have a niche your content will be focused on.

Once you know who your ideal audience is, the next thing to do is to find out where they are.

For example, you want to have a blog on football; your ideal audience will be football lover and fans, not movie fans.

In this case, your content will be related to football and footballers and not any sports for that matter. If you hope to master how you can grow your blog using content marketing, knowing your audience is very important.

 

  • Create interesting and engaging content on topics in your niche or around the problems that your audience is facing.

If you can create very interesting, valuable and educative topics in your niche, you will increase your chances of connecting with audience more. Remember that your audience is interested in this niche and will benefit from topics that solve their problems.

Your blog will become their go-to place for solutions when they have problems if you can consistently create informative posts that thrash these problems thoroughly and effectively. People always connect better with content that are interesting and engaging and putting out such content can be very useful in learning how to grow your blog.

 

Click HERE to Learn about How You Can Build an Email List

 

  • Use a Lead Magnet to Build an E-mail list You Will Send Newsletters To from your Blog Posts

To grow your blog’s reach and influence even further, you will need an Email list. An E-mail list is a database of contacts also called subscribers who have signed up to receive your newsletters.

This is how it works – you create a FREE product AKA Lead Magnet which you offer as a giveaway to visitors on your website. This free offer is displayed using an opt-in form showing a name and email sign-up form and is integrated to an automated mail marketing platform that collates subscribers’ emails and delivers the FREE OFFER as a reply.

Click HERE to learn about the best E-mail Marketing platforms you can go for.

Your Lead Magnet or FREE offer should be in the form of a video or E-book guide that has value your audience will need.  Once you have their emails in your list, you can start sending them your blog post links using newsletters as soon as you create a new post.

 

  • Participate in Relevant Forums and Blogs as a Contributor with a Back-link to your Blog

Learning how you can grow your blog using content marketing is basically about strategy. You have to offer valuable content on platforms that have a lot of traffic. One of such platforms are public forums related to your niche or being a contributor on other people’s websites or blogs.

Forums like Nairaland and Quora are very good examples of such platforms. You can join as a member and contribute in discussions by offering solutions and dropping information that is useful while linking back to your blog as your platform of operation.

This will give your blog more visibility and expose you to your audience as an expert and authority in your field.

 

  • Run Paid Promotions using Facebook Ads to Increase Your Visibility

Traffic is what determines whether you will make any income on your blog after having good quality content. If you don’t have a decent traffic of visitors who come to your website on a daily basis to check out your stuff regularly, you will neither grow your blog nor make income from it.

The fastest way to build massive traffic to your blog is by using a paid means of promotion. Google ads, Facebook ads and more recently Instagram ads are super-effective ways of driving massive, targeted to your blog.

You can have a budget of about $3-5 a day when starting out and subsequently increase it when you start earning more income.

Alternatively, if you can’t afford paid promotion, you can post on large social media groups, forums and websites to draw people to visit your website. This method is slower when using it as a means of promoting your blog but who knows, if you are consistent and dedicated you effort might just pay off.

 

  • Build your social media following by consistently posting content related to your niche

If you just starting out on how you can grow your blog to become an authority site, you gain a lot visibility and reach by building a large following on social media. You can create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google plus and LinkedIn to post relevant, valuable content out there.

You will have to do this consistently with a call-to-action for your audience to like, re-post, share and invite their friends. If your content adds value and is relevant to your audience, with time your blog will gain authority and more people will engage with it without regular promotions from you like when you started out.

 

  • Do Guestposts for Other Bloggers in Your Niche

An effective strategy that can help you grow your blog authority and visibility is Guest Posting. It involves creating and posting content on other websites with the permission of the website owner. It is a simple yet effective means of promoting your blog.

Different bloggers can use this means to exchange guest posting services among themselves to enhance their blog’s domain authority and back-linking. Blogs with higher domain authority will definitely rank higher in search engines than those that have low ones.

READ: Effective Targeted Traffic Sources to Focus On

In my experience, growing your blog authority will be quick if you can follow through with this content marketing strategy. It is proven and very effective to work when implemented properly.

Hope you learnt something new? If you have any comments or questions, kindly drop them in the comment section below.

Hey! Don’t forget to share too if this post has been helpful and informative for you.

Basic Requirements You Need before Setting up a Blog

If you plan to have a website or a blog, you must know that there are certain basic requirements you need before setting up a blog. Having a website or blog is beneficial in several ways and your business or personal life will benefit from any of these ways.

For one, a website or blog helps you create a presence on the internet. This is important if you want to reach a lot of people and create a lasting impact. If you are an entrepreneur or you have a business or service, your blog or website is like your office address on the internet.

Setting up a blog should be considered as one of the best ways to reach out to a large number of people and in this article you will be learning how you can create a quality blog or website.

If you have noticed, all corporate brands have websites where they have created a presence for their products and services. Their blogs is where they tell their target audience what they do and how they can have access to their products and services.

As it is, small and personal brands have also taken up the baton in this regard.

Apart from helping you create visibility for your business or brand, setting up a blog or website can be a source of income either through advertising and selling your services or monetizing through an advertisers network.

Are you interested in blogging or having a website?

Read on to find out the best requirements you need to before setting up your blog or website.

 

Decide on a Niche

Before setting up a blog, you have to first consider the type of content you want to focus on. It is important that you determine who your audience is and the type of content that you have interest and passion for.

Failure to do this will lead to you running out of content ideas for creating blog posts and articles. You might also experience what is called ‘Writer’s block’ which happens when you seem to have no idea or inspiration about what to create content on.

Learn Why Your Business Needs a Website

To decide on a niche, you have to research on what you love talking or discussing about and you are sure that a lot of other people also have an interest in. You wouldn’t want to go into a niche where you have little real interest and barely enough people in it.

Examples of hot niches to decide on include Health, Relationship, Making money, Insurance, Religion, Sports, Technology

 

Choose a Domain Name

NOTE: Your domain name is the name of your website. For examples: www.onlinebusinesshacking.com

The domain name here is ONLINEBUSINESSHACKING

Imagine setting up a blog in the sports niche and choosing a domain name like HEALTHYLIVING.COM. As you can see, it doesn’t relate to what your niche is about.

Now consider choosing a domain name like HEALTHYSPORTS.COM.

Though not perfect, it is a bit closer to what your niche is about than the first one and a lot more relevant. Therefore, your domain name is very important when setting up a blog. You need to pick not only a relevant name but one that can be remembered easily.

You wouldn’t want your audience to crack their head thinking of the correct spelling of your website name. Simply pick a simple name that relates to your business. If you must pick a name that sounds different from your niche, it should be an abstract name.

For example: Neil Patel has a website called www.crazyegg.com and another called www.quicksprout.com. These two sites sound somewhat absurd but are both related to internet marketing.

If you are no expert yet in building your website’s authority, please go with a domain name that is related to your niche so you can reach a wide audience easily.

 

Content Management System

Setting up a blog will require choosing a CMS or Content Management System to manage your web content. There are several content management systems like WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, and Joomla. However, the two most popular ones are WordPress and Blogger and you have to decide which one to go for.

On a personal level, I prefer WordPress because it is more robust and there thousands of themes, plugins and functionalities that can be integrated into your website without having to code. WordPress is easier to set up and Blogger is good as well.

The final decision is yours to make on whether WordPress or Blogger.

Choose a Hosting Account

You will need a hosting account before you can set up your blog or website. A hosting account can be likened to the land on which your house is standing.

In this case, your house or address is the domain name while the land on which it sits is the hosting account. Your web hosting is where your domain name or website is hosted on the internet. It is what makes it possible for your website to appear on the web.

There are different web hosting account providers available both locally and internationally. They all have different service packages and hosting plans. Depending on the specific needs your blog or website requires to be hosted properly like traffic volume, site protection, and payment renewal options, you can choose a web hosting plan that is affordable for your pocket and suitable for your website.

Web hosting providers include Hostgator, Whogohost, Bluehost, Godaddy, Siteground, Domainking and others. The choice of picking a hosting provider depends entirely on you as each provider has their areas of strength and weakness.

 

Set Up the Blog or Website

Here comes the major step in the setting up a blog process. You need to have your blog or website created for you. If you are using WordPress or Blogger, there are tutorials online where you can learn how to quickly set up a blog with no trouble.

You also wish to have a professional web designer handle the task for you. This will save you time, effort and energy if you are not trained in web design. There are freelancing websites like Fiverr, Upwork and Peopleperhour where you can get the best designers to set up your website for you.

A basic blog or website will have a Home Page, Services, About Us, Contact Us pages in it for easy navigation.

 

Create a Content Calendar for Your Blog

Now you have a blog and it’s time to get to more work. You need to start creating quality content that your audience will find useful on your blog. You need your audience and readers engaged whenever they visit your blog.

To effectively connect with your readers and blog visitors, you need amazing content.  To create this and ensure you don’t run out of content ideas and topics, you will need to plan before hand by creating a content calendar.

A content calendar is like a schedule planner for selecting and arranging how you want to dish out your topic ideas. It will save you time and help you avoid the ‘writer’s block’ which is a phenomenon where you seem to have run out of useful content to create.

You might use Google Trends to pick topics that are trending or do some research on your niche to find evergreen topics and create posts from the sub-topics under them. Having a content calendar is a great way of planning for your blog’s success.

 

Set Up a Lead Magnet for Email List Building

One of the ways you can make your blog an effective marketing medium is by creating what is called an email list. Simply put, an email list is a list of people from your site visitors who subscribed to be getting regular information from your website.

You would have noticed that certain websites have FREE OFFERS also known as LEAD MAGNETS available on their websites. For you to get this FREE OFFERS, you will need to fill a short form bearing spaces for name and email and/or phone number.

Read this article on how you can generate leads(sign-ups) for your business

This form is known as an Opt-in form or Squeeze page used to draw in visitors to your website into becoming subscribers to your posts. Normally, some of your website visitors might want to take a look and be gone but with a tempting FREE OFFER shown at them, they will likely sign into your list.

You will need a marketing platform like MailChimp or Getresponse to integrate it to the opt-in form on your website. When this is done, upon signing into your list, the FREE OFFER gets delivered to their inbox.

Click here to read more about the BEST Email Marketing Platforms you can choose when setting up your blog.

 

Monetizing your Blog or Website

This is where this gets interesting. Monetizing your blog or website means making money from your website. Apart from being your online shop where you display the products and services you sell to make money, there other ways you can make money from your blog.

You can register under an ad network like Google adsense, Media.net or Taboola to display ads and get paid when visitors click on your ads. Your website can also serve as means of advertising other people’s businesses and you get paid as an advertiser.

One other way of earning money is through affiliate marketing where you display products from affiliate networks on your website.  You earn money each time a website visitor buys a product through your link. Many brands have products they need affiliate partners who can promote them for sale.

In addition, you can create digital products that you can promote on your website to make sales and earn money.

So there you have it, the basic requirements you need before setting up a blog.

Did you learn anything new? Let me know in the comment section and don’t forget to share too.

 

 

Content Creation Strategy You Must Not Ignore

Creating relevant and valuable content consistently remains the bane of most writers and service delivery businesses that wish to connect with their audience. In this write-up, you will be reading some content creation strategy solutions you must not ignore to keep your audience riveted to your presence and eager to hear from you.

Content marketing is the one of the new marketing strategy that have proven highly effective in engaging and retaining your audience and customers for the long run.

However, creating and delivering relevant content requires having an effective and top notch content creation strategy in place.

The biggest challenge you may face while creating content strategies are:

  • Knowing what your audience needs
  • Running out of content ideas

I will explain here:

To be able to create a relevant content creation strategy, you have to identify who your ideal audience are.

If your know your ideal audience then a part of the puzzle has been solved. Of course, this knowledge depends on the type of business, products or services that you offer.

Once you know who your audience are, the next thing is to identify what their needs are.

It is important to differentiate WANT from NEED.

NEEDS are more urgent and usually things we MUST have and can’t do without.

It could be something that brings relief, satisfaction, pleasure or simply adds value.

So at this point, you now know who your audience are and what they need.

You can find out what your audience need by asking them searching questions if you have an email list or social media group.

If you have no platform yet, you can create a FREE but valuable offer targeting your niche with an Optin page to collect email signups.

With this method, you can harvest individuals who are interested in your line of business.

In essence, your content creation strategy should be tailored towards the needs of your AUDIENCE.

The next challenge that you can face while trying to develop a content creation strategy is RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS.

This is also known as having a writer’s block.

It happens when you discover that you lack ideas on what to write about.

There are several ways to handle this challenge effectively.

  • You can create a content calendar based on topic ideas that are valuable and relevant to your niche’s audience.
  • You can use tools like Google Trend’s to find out topics that are currently trending in your niche and create good content on those.
  • You can also join social media groups and forums to find out the hot topics trending in your niche.
  • Next, you can contact your subscribers on your email list or messenger bot to indicate topic ideas where they need help with and you will provide a solution to them at no extra cost. Everyone loves free offers and you will definitely get them.

These two strategies are the two core ways I personally handle the challenge of creating a content strategy for my business.

How about you? How do you handle creating a content strategy?

Care to tell us your ideas?

 

Drop your comments below to share your ideas with us.

10 Tools You Need to Set Up the Perfect Blog

Blogging is fun especially if you are someone who loves to write. There are 10 tools you need to set up the perfect blog.

You can easily turn your love for writing into a business that can earn you money while you write.

Unlike freelance writing that involves writing for clients, when you blog you simply put your knowledge, experiences and information out to the public on your blog.

Blogging can earn you a very lucrative income if done right. To get it done right, there are 10 tools you need to set up the perfect blog.

Blogging can improve your business presence by giving you more visibility, authority and engagement with your audience.

In this article, I will be listing out the best FREE and PAID tools you need to start blogging either for your pleasure or preferably for business.

Here we go!

 

  1. Domain Name

Yeah, you need a domain name before you can even set up your blog. Your domain name is simply the name of your blog.

If you have noticed, the name of my blog is Onlinebusinesshacking.com, this is the domain name of my blog.

So simply put, your domain name is the name of your blog (or website). It is important that you choose a name that is relevant to your business if possible.

It isn’t a must but if you can find a relevant name, go ahead as it is helps your search engine ranking. You can get a domain name from any domain name provider. There are so many of them out there.

You can click any of the following to get a domain name right away for your blog:

Bluehost, Whogohost, Godaddy, Hostgator, Namecheap etc

 

  1. Web Hosting

This is another tool you need to set up your blog or website right. Your web hosting is a platform on which your domain name is based.

Without a hosting account, your domain name wouldn’t function on the internet.

See your domain name as a house and your web hosting as the plot of land on which your house is built.

The two go together the same way.

There are several web hosting platforms you can go for without paying a ton of money to get registered.

You can register a webhosting account on the following platforms:

There are so many others you can try out as well.

If you are Nigerian, I will suggest you try out our indigenous web hosting provider – Whogohost.

They are quite good and respond quickly to inquiries and complaints. You can click HERE to sign up with them right away.

 

  1. WordPress

WordPress is an awesome Content Management System you can use to set up your blog without any issues.

There are other CMS like Blogger and Joomla and others but if you want anything close to perfection then I suggest you go with WordPress.

WordPress is the most popular website creating app and many websites are based off the WordPress platform.

It has the best integration systems with other tools, has a supportive forum and community, easy to use and there are thousands of plugins and free/paid themes you can use to set up your blog.

 

  1. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner helps you identify the keywords that have the most searches on the internet.

With this tool, you can go for these keywords in your content creation to improve your visibility to search engines on the internet.

Remember that your audience is out there on the internet and you have competitors who are competing with you to win your audience over.

The Google Keyword Planner will help you see the keywords in your niche that has the most searches online and you can implement these keywords as well to rank quickly.

If you are a blogger or content creator, it is important that you have this tool handy.

 

  1. Social Sharing Tools

Social media is the new face of advertising and if you want more people to come across your content then you will do well not to overlook social media.

The question is, why do you need to share you content?

Traffic is the answer.

The more people who see your content and visit your website, the more you chances of making money from your website through the sale of your products, affiliate networks or advertisers networks.

There are several tools you can integrate with your blog so that when you post your content, it goes directly to your social media accounts pulling your audience to visit your website to read more.

Below are some social sharing tools you can implement on your blog and fortunately for us, most of them are free to use:

  • WP Social Sharing
  • BuzzSumo
  • JetPack by WordPress.com
  • Ultimate Sharing
  • Social Share Icons

There are hundreds of social sharing tools and plugins you can install to share your content to your audience.

 

  1. Evernote

Evernote is another wonderful content creation and editing app you can use to create, edit and manage your content easily if especially if you are always on the go.

It is tied to your email so you can easily create and send to your email to send out later to your audience.

Evernote really makes content creation easy and seamless because it has all the important features to help you create your content as you love it.

Are you always on the move?

Try Evernote for Android and Iphones today.

 

  1. Canva

It will be erroneous not to include Canva in this list. Canva is a FREE online platform that helps you create wonderful graphics and text for your content creation needs.

Using Canva, you can create just about any type of graphic for your blog content and it is entirely free.

You can create, edit, modify or customize your images and infographics to look as you want without stressing yourself unnecessarily.

To use Canva, you have to get registered first, but don’t worry as registration is free.

Click HERE to visit Canva and get registered now.

 

  1. YOAST SEO

The Yoast SEO is another useful for every blogger who knows their business.

SEO is everything especially if you are not depending on paid traffic to grow your visibility.

This tool is actually a plugin that helps you improve your blogs features so it becomes more visible on the internet.

With Yoast, you can get decent traffic to your blog if you do the right things and meet all parameters set by the plugin.

Even if you are a newbie, you can visit their website HERE to find out how you can set up your Yoast plugin on your blog for maximum effectiveness.

 

  1. Google Analytics

Like the name implies, this tool helps you check your analytics to see how your blog or website is performing.

It is free of charge and has a plugin that you will install on your blog’s WordPress dashboard to use it.

This tool will help you track, monitor and measure your blog’s statistics and performance. You will get to see how many visitors you have had, their locations, their interests and several other indices that will guide you in taking action accordingly.

 

  1. E-mail Marketing and Management Tools

Whether you are a professional blogger or not, you need to be close to your audience one way or another or suffer the consequences of your neglect.

That sounds serious right?

It is.

If you are wondering how staying close to your audience is going to be possible, this is how – Email Marketing

The truth is, if you don’t keep in touch with your audience, sooner or later they are going to lose interest in you.

There is competition out there so to keep your audience, you have to keep them engaged as often as possible.

With Email marketing tools, you can get this done without issues.

Your email marketing helps you to not only keep in touch with your audience but to drive traffic to your blog and offers.

If you have a product to sell, your email marketing audience can provide a list of willing buyers who will place orders from you immediately.

Email marketing tools are offered by platforms offering email marketing and management services.

When you sign up to their offers, you will have access to email creation and management tools like the autoresponder and newsletter campaign managers which help you create and store emails and send them out automatically when you like after you have scheduled them.

Below are some email marketing platforms you can get registered on to use their email marketing tools.

Some of them are free while others require little monthly payments.

You can pick any one of your choice after you have visited their websites to check out their packages. You can click HERE to read more about Email Marketing platforms so you can make a choice right way.

I discussed them in detail HERE so you can check them out now.

So there you have it, the 10 very important Blogging tools you need to have a professional blog.

I hope you enjoyed it and if you have questions or suggestions, kindly put them in the comments section.

Don’t forget to share this either.

See you around in my next post.