How to Create a Successful Blog

Undoubtedly, there is no point in blogging without a strategy. Especially today, when we live in the age of information overload & almost everyone is bombarded with information every minute (social media, messages, breaking news, etc.). Consumers are overwhelmed & always looking for trustworthy & high authority sources to resolve their pain points.

Hence, it is extremely crucial to carve out a niche for your blog & stand out from the crowd. Equally important is the topics you choose to blog about & how to communicate.

The objective should be to generate a top of the mind recall for readers.

Broadly, key steps to starting your blog would include -

Step 1 — Identify your niche

Identify topics you would like to cover in your blog. It could be based on your expertise, interest, or real-world experience. Needless to say, the information should be credible & up to date.

Before the launch, we put our strategy in place & conducted internal meetings to finalize the topics & how to create value for readers. From our business experience, we knew about the customer’s challenges and how we could creatively satisfy them.

Once we finalized the topics, we created an editorial calendar which included

1. blog headlines

2. Key points to be covered

3. Blog layout & content items (Text, Info graphics, Videos etc.)

4. Goals

5. Deadlines for internal teams (Design, copywriter etc.)

Ideally, you should always set your blog goals.

It could be either

a) To elevate your brand awareness

b) Capture more leads

c) Provide information to users (announcements, product updates, etc).

d) Something more relevant to your business requirements

Step 2 — Identify costs associated with running your blog

Usually, there are the following costs which must be considered while finalising the budget.

Fixed Costs associated with

1. Domain Name

2. Hosting Provider

3. Design themes

4. Plug in’s, extensions or applications (like Chat Application etc)

Variable cost

a. Content development (copywriter, the cost for creating graphic images/video)

b. Marketing cost (Advertisement, Outreach or Newsletter management tool)

Step 3 — Set up basics & technical aspects

1. Name your blog & find web hosting — Try to find a creative yet easy to remember the name. Book web hosting in case you are not running a website already or wish to host separately.

2. Install Content Management Application (CMS) — It is a blog Software/application which allows you to manage & update content on your blog. WordPress is a very commonly used CMS.

3. Add a design theme to your blog — You could add a single design or multi design blog.

Step 4 — Marketing & Promotion

As Steve Jobs said, “Master the topic, the message, and the delivery”. There is no point in creating hundreds of pages of content with no readership. Research about your audience, their preferences, and which marketing channels to use to effectively reach them.

Step 5 — Measure your blog success

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic and you should track at least 3 metrics -

1. User Growth — Increase/decrease in the readership from existing as well as new users.

2. Dwell Time — Time spent by readers. Which means the more time they spent, the higher the probability that the page satisfied their requirements.

3. Engagement Rate — sharing on the social media & response rate (in the form of inquiries, blog comments, etc.) is a very strong indicator of engagement.

You could add more metrics such as location, devices, etc. depending on your business goals.

I hope I've covered all points that help to create a successful blog. You can create a free blog on Blogspot platform and start your blogging journey.

If you have a budget of around 5000-6000 then I would suggest you always go with WordPress platform. WP is the best blogging platform for starting your blogging career.