ProBlogger: 7 Ways to Start Building an Audience for Your New Blog

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ProBlogger: 7 Ways to Start Building an Audience for Your New Blog

7 Ways to Start Building an Audience for Your New Blog

Posted: 28 Aug 2018 07:00 AM PDT

The post 7 Ways to Start Building an Audience for Your New Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

It's a problem every new blogger faces, and it can seem insurmountable.

How do you build an audience when no-one knows who you are?

There's plenty of good advice out there (so much that it might seem a bit overwhelming). So in today's post I’m sharing seven straightforward but effective ways to start building an audience for your new blog.

#1: Tell Your Family and Friends

This might seem obvious, but does your current network know about your blog?

If not, post about it on Facebook or send an email to your personal contacts. Don't feel awkward about doing this. It doesn't need to be pushy or spammy, and you may find you have more in common with your current connections than you thought.

If you're not sure what to write, try something like this:

Hello. I've just started a blog (www.nameofblog.com) about [topic]. I don't know if it's something you'd be interested in, but if it is I'd love any feedback. If not, I'd be really grateful if you could spread the word to any of your friends who might enjoy it.

Thanks.

[your name]

Tip: There's one big caveat here. If your blog's topic is likely to be controversial within your friendship or family group, you might want to be selective about who you share it with, at least until you find your feet and feel more confident about blogging.

#2: Comment on Other People's Blogs

Even though much of the conversation that used to happen in blog comments now takes place on social media, commenting on other people's blogs can still be effective in the early days of a blog.

In fact, low comment numbers can actually help you because your comment will stand out more.

If you're not sure how commenting can bring visitors to your blog, here's how it works.

You fill in your name, email address (which only the blogger can see) and your blog's URL, as well as writing the comment itself. Your name then becomes a link to your blog that anyone can click on to visit your site.

Tip: However tempting it might be, don't put in a keyword or phrase as your name (e.g. "Best Parenting Tips"). Use your actual name or whatever pseudonym you blog under. Otherwise your comment might well get deleted as spam. And by default most WordPress comments sections apply the "nofollow" attribute to all links, so there’s no point in commenting just to create a backlink to your blog.

#3: Join Facebook Groups for Bloggers

There are loads of great Facebook groups out there aimed at bloggers. And if you're not already a member, why not join the ProBlogger Community?

Groups are a great way to meet other bloggers who are just starting out, or who have been blogging only for a few weeks. You can ask others how they're getting traffic, and you may well meet some friendly bloggers who can become new companions for your blogging journey. If they write about the same sorts of topics as you, they may even be happy to share your posts with their growing audience. And you can return the favour for them.

Tip: Be careful not to come across as self-serving or spammy in groups. Don't just post "Here's my blog, please come and visit it" or similar. Respond to other people who are looking for help and support too. Make sure you check any rules for the group (look for a "sticky" post at the top of the group's news feed) before posting.

#4: Put Your Blog's URL in Your Social Media Bios

On almost every social media site, you'll have the option to include a website link. Sometimes (such as on Twitter) this is quite prominent. On other sites (such as Facebook) it's less so, but it's still there.

Make sure you include the link to your blog on any social media accounts you already have. It only takes a minute, and someone glancing at your profile might decide to check it out.

Here's how the website link appears on Twitter:

Tip: Depending on how you use social media, you might want to set up new accounts, profiles or pages for you personally vs you as a blogger. On Facebook, for example, it definitely makes sense to have a page for your blog that people can "like" rather than using your personal profile where you need to "friend" everyone back. (Once you start getting dozens or hundreds of readers, it quickly becomes unsustainable.)

#5: Answer Questions on Forums

One way to get an audience is to go where your audience already exists. A great place to try is Quora – a site where members ask questions on all sorts of topics. There are bound to be lots of questions relating to your chosen topic, and by answering them you can encourage people to check out your blog.

It's not just new bloggers who use this method either. You'll find some big names on Quora such as blogger Neil Patel and novelist Orson Scott Card.

Tip: Don't just post "That's a great question, and you can read my thoughts about it on my blog". You need to answer the actual question someone asks (preferably with lots of detail) if you want your answer to get "upvoted" as a popular one.

#6: Take Part in Twitter Chats

Twitter chats happen for a specific length of time (normally one hour) on a specific date (normally weekly). You take part simply by adding the chat's chosen hashtag (such as "#blogchat" or "#socialbloggers") to your tweets.

This can be a great way to meet new people with similar interests to you. And chances are you'll pick up a bunch of new Twitter followers. Of course, make sure you follow anyone in the chat who you're interested in getting to know, too.

There's a huge list of Twitter chats on TweetReports, which you can search by topic (e.g. "blogging").

Tip: As with any method for finding new readers, don't be spammy. If you're new to a particular chat, spend some time listening as well as tweeting. And don't share a link to your blog or a post on your blog unless other people are doing so.

#7: Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs

This is often a very effective method for getting new readers, especially in the early days of a blog when every reader counts. I know some bloggers feel they're too new to guest post, but the reality is that host blogs don't normally care how large an audience you have. They just want a well-written post.

When you guest post, you get to "borrow" someone else's audience while they read your post on the host's blog. And if they like what you wrote, at least some of those readers will click on the link in your guest post bio to read your blog.

Tip: If you want to know more about guest posting, check out 7 Powerful Non-SEO Reasons to Try Guest Posting and Find and Pitch the Perfect Guest Posting Opportunities.

When you're just starting out (or when you're returning to blogging after a break), finding even a handful of readers can feel like a huge challenge. Try at least one of the methods I've suggested, and see how you get on. If you're looking for even more actionable strategies, check out the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course to get more momentum for your blog.

Image credit: Kyle Glenn

The post 7 Ways to Start Building an Audience for Your New Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: 258: How My Table Tennis Blog Helped Me Quit My Job

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ProBlogger: 258: How My Table Tennis Blog Helped Me Quit My Job

258: How My Table Tennis Blog Helped Me Quit My Job

Posted: 27 Aug 2018 02:00 AM PDT

The post 258: How My Table Tennis Blog Helped Me Quit My Job appeared first on ProBlogger.

How a Table Tennis Blog Allowed This Blogger to Quit His Job

This is the third episode in our Blogging Breakthroughs series, which features bloggers' stories about breakthroughs in traffic, income, mindset and other aspects of blogging.

Today we hear from Tom Lodziak, who has the Table Tennis Coaching blog. He started with nothing – no income and no audience. He started his blog in the wrong way and, at times, felt like he was blogging to nobody.

Tom found a way to get to the point where his dream of quitting his job to pursue his passion was possible.

Tips:

Focus on great, quality content to increase traffic and grow audience. Spend 90% of time on article that serves your audience, and 10% on income-generating posts.
Experiment with content and income streams. Some income streams don't work now, but may later.
Monetize early with a small product to test the waters. Try something that’s easy to make and not too expensive to buy.
When it comes to blogging, be persistent. It takes practice. Keep going.

Just like table tennis, blogging isn’t easy at first. But you’ll have greater chances of success if you continue.

Do you want to become a successful blogger? Then, try the Success Incubator. Use the code: PROBLOGGER until Aug. 31 to receive 25% off.

Links and Resources for How My Table Tennis Blog Helped Me Quit My Job:

Tom Lodziak's Table Tennis Coaching blog
Tom Lodziak on YouTube
Success Incubator Event (use the code PROBLOGGER for 25% off)
Ping Pong-A-Thon 2018 (sponsor me)
Amazon Associates

Courses

Join our Facebook group

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: Hey there, welcome to episode 258 of the ProBlogger podcast, my name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com. A blog, a podcast, events, job boards, and eBooks and courses, all designed to help you to build a great blog to build profit around that blog as well. Now, today is the third in the series of our blogging breakthrough series of content where we’re featuring stories of listeners of this podcast who've had breakthroughs in their own blogging, whether they be breakthroughs around traffic, income, mindset, building community, or other opportunities have come their way.

This is the third in the series and we've had some really great feedback from previous ones. So, if you haven't listened to those, do dig back after this one to episode 256 and 257 and you'll hear those.

Now, today's story is actually from Tom Lodziak who has a blog called Table Tennis Coaching. There's a URL in today's show notes, which you can find it, if you want to check it out and I love this story because it's a story of someone who started with absolutely nothing but a dream.

He had no income coming in from another source, no audience, no real profile that he can build on and he started incompletely the wrong way, as he puts it, but he gets to a point with his blogging where he's able to reach his dream of quitting his job to pursue his passion of table tennis coaching.

You’re going to love this story, it’s got some really practical tips but very relatable as well. Certainly, there's a few things that I want to pull out at the end this episode just to emphasize to give you some encouragement as well.

Lastly, before we get into Tom's story, I do want to mention your last chance to get discounted tickets for our Success Incubator event, which is happening in Orlando, Florida, pretty much this time next month, on the 24th and 25th of September in Orlando, Florida. Success Incubator is the event.

If you go to the problogger.com/success, you'll find details of the event and if you use the word ProBlogger in the check out, you'll get a 25% discount on attending that event. The event is a Mastermind style event that would be half a day of teaching from other masterminders, which is kind of cool.

Last year we had some amazing content presented and then there'll be quite a bit of mastermind time, where you’ll be sitting with a group of other people or in similar boats to you in their online business and someone who's got some expertise to share as well.

Last year we had some amazing breakthroughs as a result of that Success Incubator event. Quite a few of the people who came last year are actually coming back. We’ve still got a few tickets left though. If you do want to grab those, check out problogger.com/success for all the details and don't forget that code ProBlogger in the checkout cart on event part and it will give you give that 25% off but that's only valuable to the end of August so don't delay.

Today's show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/258 where there will be a full transcript of today's show and some links to our event as well and to Tom's blog. So, he is Tom Lodziak from Table Tennis Coaching.

Tom: Hi I'm Tom Lodziak from Cambridge in UK. I'm a table tennis coach, blogger and YouTuber. You can find my website at tabletenniscoach.me.uk. I started blogging in 2015 and my blog is all about the wonderful sport of table tennis.

Now, I started in completely the wrong way. I was working full-time for an education company. One toddler and a new baby back at home but in the evenings and weekends I would coach table tennis for some extra income and I really love doing table tennis coaching. I would wanted to do this full-time but I just couldn't see a way of making a switch from a stable decently paid job to coaching table tennis as a living.

It's not a particularly reliable or well-paid career, so I started to look at ways I could earn extra income online. My first idea was create an online course where I taught the beginners how to play table tennis. I was convinced that this was going to be success and I spent ages doing it.

I wrote all my scripts, I bought camera equipment, did lots of filming then I bought the best camera equipment, re-filmed the footage, I learned how to edit the videos then I re-edited the videos to make them better and after few months I had my online course, Table Tennis For Beginners, and I launched it on Udemy. I clicked the publish the button and I waited for the money to roll in and in the first six months, I earned and you better hold on to your seats for this, I earned precisely zero, nothing, not a single pound, ouch, and of course, the main I earned nothing was because I had no audience, I had no one to promote the course to.

Just launching the course on Udemy wasn't going to generate an income so I had to build an audience and this is when I started to blog. I thought the best for me to grow an audience was to write articles about table tennis—useful tips about how to improve, and stories for my own coaching and playing experience.

The idea being that, if I could grow an audience, more people would visit my website, more people would find out about my course, and hopefully some people would sign up. So, I started writing a weekly blog post. Probably around 500 to 1000 words for each blog post and at first my audience size was tiny, 300 to 500 visits per month and certainly those early days it did feel as though at times I was blogging to no one but any small increases in traffic I did get gave me encouragement to keep going. After about six months of blogging, my traffic had increased to around about a thousand visits per month but I was still not earning any online income.

At this stage, I pretty much gave up in the idea of earning an income through online courses. I teach plans for more courses and I started to look any other ways to earn an income online. I read an article about Amazon associates and how you can link through to put up an Amazon and get a commission on anything which is purchased. I thought, "Okay, let's give that a try, got nothing to lose, let see if this works."

I wrote an article with advice on buying a table tennis bat and I've got a few recommendations on which best to buy linking to products I was familiar with on Amazon and within few days this article had earned a few pounds, breakthrough, my first online earnings and it was interesting because this article had taken a couple of hours to write and it had earned me more money that the online course which has taken six months to produce. Looking back is ridiculous—how excited I got about earning a few pounds but it gave me big motivation to keep going.

Over the next few months I kept blogging, kept growing my audience, and my income from this article continue to grow. It was still only pocket money but I could see the potential. If this one article could earn me income and my audience is pretty small, imagine how much I could earn if I did lots of articles with Amazon links and my audience size was much larger.

This small breakthrough let me to take blogging much seriously. I came across the ProBlogger website at this stage and I raided the archives, I read everything, learning from all of Darren's successes and his failures and I learned a lot from Darren.

The most important thing I learned and the thing which has worked most for me is focusing on creating good quality content. Good quality content which helps my audience in some way. Over the next three years, I wrote a lot of articles about all aspects of table tennis every week, a new blog post, 500 to 1000 words something to do with the table tennis – 90% of these articles, articles which just give helpful tips and advice about playing table tennis. I don't earn anything from these articles and I don't try to, these are articles which help me build an audience which helps to develop my authority and trust with my audience and help send more traffic to my website, and around 10% of my content is articles about table tennis equipment, about table tennis bats, balls, and tables –and these silly articles where I link to Amazon in which earned me an income but even with these articles, the focus is much more giving helpful information and pushing people to buy, buy, buy.

Now, fast forward three years and I have a lot more traffic, I get 25,000 visits per month and most of the traffic is from Google and I haven't use any special SEO tricks here, I just focused on creating good quality content. We’ve done a little bit of link building but honestly not that much. I take the approach that if content course is good, people will link to it anyway and Google loves good quality content, which answers people's questions and which comes from an authority. So, this has been the approach I've taken.

As my traffic has increased a lot so has my earnings from Amazon, I've gotten from 50 pounds per month three years ago to four figures per month and today. It's a low four figures but for me it's a significant amount.

I've also set up a successful YouTube channel which earns me a small income and guess what—I also earn some money from the online course I set up four years ago.

It's not huge amount but nice to get some reward for all that hard work I initially put in. Now, putting all of these income schemes together, it was enough that I could quit my day job and focus full-time on table tennis coaching, blogging and making videos.

There's a whole of tips I could share, I've already mentioned about focusing on creating great content. I really believe this is a great approach to take.

I mean if you create a great content, you'll be able to increase your traffic and grow a loyal audience and when you have traffic and you have an audience, you have many more options to generate an income online and don't afraid to try things and get things wrong and have failures. I've experimented with various income streams. Much of the stuff I've tried hasn't really worked but a few things, Amazon, YouTube, and a couple of affiliate schemes have worked. If I've never experimented and failed with the online course in the first place I would have never started blogging and I would never have discovered about earning an income through Amazon.

The irony is that the original online course actually wasn't out and out failure. I just got the timing wrong. I should have built my audience first but now I have a good audience size and doing a new online course makes much more sense.

So, at the moment, I'm actually working on a new course which would hopefully being much more successful as I have a bigger audience to promote to but the main tip I want to give is very simple, this is persevere, be persistent, just keep going.

I see many people put a lot of effort early on with blogging and then they gave up as they don't get the traffic or earnings they were hoping for but it is tough to begin with, it does take time to get decent traffic and earnings. You just have to keep going and going and going. It's a bit like playing the table tennis, it's not easy to begin with and the best places aren't blessed with mysterious natural talent. They're the place who just keep turning out, keep practicing, keep trying to improved, this is how they get good at table tennis same with blogging. If you put the effort in over a sustained period of time, you’ll have much more chance of achieving success.

And the final thought for me, my audience size and my online income is tiny compared to other bloggers but that's not really the point. I wanted to quit my job and work for myself as a table tennis coach, a blogger, a YouTuber and setting up my blog and writing a new post each week is help me to do this and if I can do it in a niche like table tennis then I guess you can do in any niche you want to.

Thank you very much for listening and thank you to Darren for sharing all your brilliant tips on the ProBlogger website.

Darren: Thanks so much to Tom Lodziak for sharing his story today. You can check out his blog at tabletenniscoach.me.uk. His blog is table tennis coaching. I love this story, as I said at the top of the show. It really tracks a very similar story to many bloggers, who do start out with nothing, I mean we all started with no audience really. Some of us do have the advantage of starting with a bit of a profile in an industry but I was just like Tom when I started out.

No one knew my blog, apart for my friends and family who I shot an email out to, that turned out not to really help that much, not many of them ended up reading in the long-term. So, we all started out in that place and we all kind of feel our kind of feel our way through it. I love that line in his story. –” At times I felt like I was blogging to no one.” That’s certainly something I relate to, pretty much every time I started the blog, even when I have started with the a little bit of profile, it does feel like that. Sometimes you reach these plateaus no one is commenting, no one is emailing you, you don't really know if anyone's reading at all.

I love the tips that Tom shared, number one tip there, focus on great content, really that is what is all about. It seems I haven't actually dug too much deeper, a couple of times, he mentioned, he was just writing one article week and I think that's just brilliant. You can sustain it, as long as it's useful content that can be enough. Going full-time later on, you might want to increase that a little bit but a week is great because people get to know your rhythm.

I love that he focused on—90% of his posts where about just writing content that was going to serve his audience and about 10% of them were income-generating posts, but he still mentioned that even those posts where about serving the audience, I think that's a really great mix.

So, I do see some bloggers particularly with the affiliate marketing side of things that every post seems to be just about trying to get people to their links. You must understand why you might do that. It comes across a bit of sale every single time, and so just sprinkle your content from time to time with those types of affiliate links, I think is a wise move as well.

Tom talked about experimenting with content and income strains. Some of the income strains won't work at all ever for you but some will work later on, you may be too soon. One thing I would advise if you are thinking of starting with creating a product of your own, it's okay to have a product, ready to go when you launched your blog. I think that's actually smart in some levels, so as your traffic grows you've got something to sell but make sure that first product isn't something you overinvest in and that's a sense I got from Tom is that it took a lot of time and energy and effort to that course together and maybe he could have come up with a different type of products in those early days maybe a short eBook.

I'm really grateful that my first product of my own was a very simple eBook, it was a repurposed content from my blog. It didn't really take so much work to get it together. It did take me awhile to get it together because I was busy and it was also content in and my readers work for me and so, it was more natural product for them as well. Of course, I did have some readers by the time I had it developed.

Start with something smaller, test waters with those smaller types of products, and then later on you can invest more. Once you've got the proof of concept and an audience of course as well.

The other beauty of waiting to build those bigger course s is that you can base the content in the course upon the questions your audience ask. Having that audience certainly can help you to develop a product that is actually going to serve them better. You're not guessing quite so much in the early days.

The other thing I'd advice of course, if you are creating a product, this affiliate marketing can be a great way to test what people are interested in as well.

Now, in a niche like table tennis coaching, I'm sure how many eBooks or courses there would be out there but if there are courses out there, you might be able to test with the people interested in that format of product but also the topic as well.

I love his last tip there about persisting as well and the idea that it takes practice, great analogy from table tennis. As someone who plays table tennis from time to time, my brother actually runs a charity that's all about table tennis. He raises money and people doing a Ping-Pong-Athon, which I'm actually incidentally doing, I wasn't going to promote it here but if you want to sponsor me for that, check out the show notes. There is a way to sponsor me for my Ping-Pong-Athon to raise some money for people caught up being in slavery, in some horrible situations.

If you want to check that out, I will include a link the show notes to day, but as someone who does play table tennis from time to time, once a year, I know that I'm not as good as I could be because I just don't practice. I only play that once a year and as a result I don't improve. The same is certainly true with blogging—the more you do it, the better you get, not only in you writing but also in how you connect with your audience, that takes time. It takes time to understand who is reading your blog as well.

It takes a practice to respond comments to engage in a deeper way. It takes time to learn all the different skills whether it be social media, creating graphics, designing a blog, all of these things take time. So, I do encourage you to put aside regular time to do that as Tom does as well.

I encourage you to hit over to Tom's blog if you are interested in that topic tabletenniscoach.me.uk, there will be a link in today's show notes as well. Check him out, support him, leave a comment on the show notes as well and let him know what you think as well.

Check out Success Incubator, as I said at the top of the show, There’s that 25% off discount and if you want support me in my Ping-Pong-Athon endeavors coming up, check out the show notes as well. I'm trying to raise a couple of thousand dollars and go to an amazing course and you can check out more of that later on as well. Thanks for listening today and I'll chat with you next week with another blogger breakthrough story.

Thanks for listening today, chat with you next week on the ProBlogger Podcast.

How did you go with today's episode?

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The post 258: How My Table Tennis Blog Helped Me Quit My Job appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: How Long Should Your Blog Post Be?

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ProBlogger: How Long Should Your Blog Post Be?

How Long Should Your Blog Post Be?

Posted: 22 Aug 2018 07:00 AM PDT

The post How Long Should Your Blog Post Be? appeared first on ProBlogger.

How long should your blog post be?

Today's post is by ProBlogger writing expert Ali Luke

When I started blogging in 2008, there was a (roughly) agreed-on standard for blog posts: you should post around 500 words every weekday.

Now that I look back on that, it seems pretty silly. Some topics can be adequately covered in 300 words, while others might need 5,000. And some bloggers have a naturally terse writing style, whereas others like to dig deep and give lots of examples.

Around the end of 2013, long-form content became much more popular in the blogging world. (Here's Darren's post about ProBlogger's own experiments with writing longer posts.) Then, as now, it seemed clear that Google had a preference for in-depth content.

But during the past few years, short pieces of content have become increasingly popular as well. Twitter, for instance, is often described as a "microblogging" platform. While plenty of people use it for general conversations or promotional tweets, others do use it in a blog-style way. Take a look at James Breakwell (@XplodingUnicorn)'s brilliant tweets about family life, for instance.

Lots of blogs also carry relatively short posts. Gizmodo is a good example, with very frequent news / time-sensitive posts. For instance, eBay is Knocking 15% Off Everything Just for Today was 168 words.

So should you write short posts, long posts, or something in between?

The answer is, as you might have guessed, it depends. You need to find a post length that suits your content, your readers, and (perhaps most importantly) you as a blogger.

But before we dig into those considerations, let's take a quick look at length vs frequency.

Blog Post Length vs Frequency

While it's not a rule, blogs that publish short posts usually publish them more frequently than blogs that publish long posts.

You can see why this makes sense for both the blogger and the reader. You might publish a 400-word post every weekday, or a 2000-word post once a week.

If you want to increase the length of your blog posts, you might also want to decrease how often you publish them. Otherwise you'll burn out, and your readers will get overwhelmed.

(Sidenote: I've never unsubscribed from a blog because they posted less frequently than I wanted. However, I have unsubscribed from blogs that posted too frequently, especially if the quality of posts wasn't consistent.)

So, with the caveat that changing the length of your content will likely mean changing the frequency too, here are some key considerations when thinking about how long your blog posts should be.

What Suits Your Content?

Some topics pretty much demand in-depth posts. If you're writing about something that involves lots of different steps, such as "How to start a blog", it's probably not going to be short.

But other topics work best with short content. This is particularly the case for blogs that aim to entertain rather than inform. Readers may delight in reading lots of short anecdotes about your kids, but be put off by a rambling story.

Of course, you probably have a bit of flexibility on how exactly you approach your topic. So if you feel you want to write short posts rather than in-depth ones, come up with post ideas that would work for that. Instead of "How to start a blog", you might write "How to register a domain name" or even "What is a domain name?"

What Suits Your Readers?

The next key consideration is whether your readers would prefer shorter or longer posts. If you already have a reasonable number of readers, you could survey them to find out. You could also take a look at your most popular posts in Google Analytics, or the posts that get the most comments or shares. Does short or long content seem to resonate better with your audience?

You might potentially find that your readers like a mix of posts. Maybe they want fairly short and to-the-point posts most of the time, with a much longer piece of content occasionally thrown in.

What Suits You?

Last, but certainly not least, comes… you. Are you the sort of writer who naturally produces concise, impactful posts like Seth Godin does? Or do you love to dig into a topic and write a post that covers every angle?

If you've been trying to write long posts but struggling to stay motivated and productive, it could be a sign you're better suited to sharing short, succinct pieces of content instead. On the other hand, if you've been writing three or more short pieces every week and it feels like you're on a content treadmill, writing one long piece every week or even every couple of weeks might work better for you.

The great thing about blogging is there are no "rules" on how a blog post should look. You're free to write 10,000-word epic guides (such as Neil Patel's Online Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide), or posts with only a few words and mostly pictures or embedded tweets (such as Buzzfeed's 19 Hilarious Back-To-School Tweets From Parents Who Have Been There), or anything in between.

Quick note: If you're concerned about the SEO benefits of short vs long content, it's worth knowing that many experts believe longer content does better on Google. However, if you and your existing readers prefer short posts, don't force yourself to create long content. It will only rank well if it's really good (and gets backlinks).

So what sort of content will you create: short or long? It's completely up to you. Have a look around and see what others are doing, experiment with different lengths yourself, or come and discuss short vs long in the ProBlogger Community.

Image Credit: Markus Spiske

The post How Long Should Your Blog Post Be? appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: 257: 3 Writing Tips That Helped Kelly Grow Her Readership by 500%

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ProBlogger: 257: 3 Writing Tips That Helped Kelly Grow Her Readership by 500%

257: 3 Writing Tips That Helped Kelly Grow Her Readership by 500%

Posted: 20 Aug 2018 02:00 AM PDT

The post 257: 3 Writing Tips That Helped Kelly Grow Her Readership by 500% appeared first on ProBlogger.

How One Blogger Grew Her Readership by 500% with Help from Three Practical Writing Tips

In this episode we continue our Blogging Breakthroughs series, this time with a story from my friend Kelly Exeter.

Kelly is a regular speaker at our events, has contributed ProBlogger content as a guest writer, and has been a guest on this podcast several times.

Today, the story Kelly shares is a great companion piece to the "How to Become a Prolific Content Creator" episode.

Her blogging breakthrough is about going from someone who is a good and proficient but bland writer with a plateauing audience to someone who writes with more personality and in a way that’s magnetic to readers. A lot of readers.

To get to that point, Kelly was willing to find someone to critique her writing. We all know it can be difficult to accept criticism, but it's well worth doing.

Sometimes you write something that has good information and is well written, but doesn't connect with people. It's too vanilla. It isn't read, commented on, or shared.

The problems Kelly experienced are probably things many bloggers can relate to.

Kelly describes three practical tips to improve your content:

Messy drafts: Hand-write random ideas, previous stories, and tangents (some may not make it into a post). Form core idea with developed personality
Don't sit on the fence: You don't need to be confrontational or controversial. But you do need to define your stance. Just be you
Write the way you talk: Have faith in your voice, and let your personality shine. Use quirks, funny words and expressions you use when you talk in your content

By improving her writing, Kelly increased her reader traffic from 2,500 to 15,000 a month – a 500% increase. It also helped her make about $100,000 in off-blog income.

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Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 257 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, I’m the blogger behind problogger.com. A site dedicated to help you to create a great blog and to build profit around your blog. You can find at problogger.com where you’ll also our eBooks and more importantly probably our courses, our starter blog course for those of you who haven't yet started, but also our 31-Days To Build A Better Blog course which is ideal for those of you who are early in the blogging or even intermediate, and advanced bloggers that need a bit of a kick start for your blog. Just look for the courses tab at problogger.com.

Today, we’re going to continue our blogger breakthrough series of podcast with a story from my friend, Kelly Exeter. Kelly is going to be familiar to many of you because she has regularly spoken at our events here in Australia. She has contributed guest content on the ProBlogger, the blog but also has been on this podcast a number of times.

I interviewed her back in episode 193 on how to be a prolific content creator. That was a hugely popular episode, one of the more popular interviews that I’ve done. You can find a link to that in today’s show notes. Today she’s going to share a story that I think it’s a great companion piece to that interview that I did. I do encourage you to listen to both if you haven’t listened to the previous one or if you want to relisten to it, too.

Today, Kelly is going to share a story about how she went from being a good proficient, but a bit bland writer whose audience had plateaued, to someone who was writing with more personality and was writing in a way that was more magnetic to readers. Ultimately, it attracted a lot more readers. she’s going to tell you exactly how many readers she had, and how many she went to just by implementing these three practical tips that I love.

I really love the way she’s expressed each of these, and I want to tease them at a little bit more at the end of her seven-minute story. Do stay tuned to the end, you’ll find out how much traffic she went from at the end, but also I will come back and wrap this show up with a few thoughts of my own.

You can find today’s show notes where you will find a link to Kelly’s site, kellyexeter.com.au. You’ll also find a link to that previous interview I did, and a full transcript of today’s show, you’ll find it at problogger.com/podcast/257, now here’s Kelly.

Kelly: Hi, my name is Kelly Exeter, you can find me online at kellyexeter.com.au and I have been blogging for eight years. Before I share my blogging breakthrough, I need to emphasize that the point of my blog is always being able to showcase my abilities as a writer.

I’ve always known that one day, I wanted to be writing books, and making income from people buying those books. I needed people to fall in love with my writing. About three years into my blogging journey, I was pretty happy with where I was at. Some people seemed to like my writing, but I'd hit a bit of a plateau in that my readership wasn’t really growing anymore.

This led me to seek out a writing mentor, someone I knew who wouldn’t sugarcoat anything and tell me straight, and well she told me straight and so she said, “Kelly, your writing is technically very sound, you communicate your points well, there are no wasted words. It's good writing, but it’s not great writing. It’s very vanilla.” So, it definitely hurt to hear that, and what did she even mean by "very vanilla."

She meant that while my post contained useful information, they were quite bland and hard to distinguish from any other reasonably well written post on the topic.

I was also writing in a very safe fashion because I was so scared of offending someone. My writing it was littered with caveats like maybe, and might. Finally, I wasn’t letting my natural voice come through. This is because there were writers I really admired whose tones and approaches I was trying to emulate. I was trying very hard to sound like them and not allowing my posts to sound like me.

So, what did I do to make my writing less vanilla? The first thing I did was I started handwriting first drafts and those first drafts were idea dumps more than anything. So, previously I’d have an idea, and then I'd outline and post that idea, and then I'd write the post to that outline, and what emerged was something like a school essay. It’s very proper, it was good information, but there was no personality, and sometimes, the idea wasn’t actually that good, but because I’ve outlined the post, I would persist with it, and write it, and publish it anyway.

What handwriting those first drafts did was it removed my ability to edit as I went. Instead of stopping, and starting, and finessing each sentence, and getting blocked when I couldn’t get a sentence right, I just wrote, just writing. Quite often I find myself drifting away from the original idea I had to a new much better idea or at the very least, a new much better way of saying the thing I was trying to say. Bottom line, approaching my first draft writing this way meant the core idea behind each post was stronger.

The second thing I did was I stopped worrying about offending people, which is hard to do because I don’t like offending people. I once heard someone say that, "You know you stand for something when you become simultaneously magnetic and repellant." Because I wasn’t willing to be repellant, because I would keep sitting on the fence not wanting to offend anyone, it wasn’t clear what I stood for.

Before writing a post, I started making sure the idea I was posting was something I could stand behind very strongly and then I made it clear what my stance was. I didn't vacillate, I didn’t say maybe, and might, and sort of every second sentence.

Then finally, I let myself write the way that I talk, which is much harder than it sounds because I feel my natural tone is overly earnest, and I kind of wince a bit when I hear myself speak, and this is kind of why I was forever trying to emulate near the reflectiveness, and cleverness, and snappiness of my writing idols, but in trying to write like other people, the result always came across quite forced and inauthentic and a bit bland.

Again, it’s entirely possible for your writing to be technically sound and convey great information, but also be very bland, and when this happens, it’s much harder for the reader to connect with you, and if the reader doesn’t connect with you, it’s going to be very hard to achieve any kind of blogging success.

There’s so much competition for your readers these days. They don’t tend to stick around and read bland stuff. Even if they read it, they certainly don’t share it. So the upshot of all of this was, I started writing in my own voice rather than trying to write like other people. If you too feel your writing is a little vanilla, and you’d like to be able to differentiate yourself better, here is a quick summary of those three things I just mentioned about the three things that helped make my writing better.

One, allow yourself to write messy first drafts instead of perfect first drafts because messy first drafts throw out much better ideas. For example, anyone can write a blog post around how to be more productive at work. When you go beyond that first idea and write a messy first draft as I did, you might find yourself writing, how I get all my work done in five hours a day. So it’s much stronger idea, and that idea led to a post of mine that has been shared thousands of times.

Number two, don't sit on the fence. When you have found your way to a better idea, stand strongly behind that idea because doing this will draw the right people to you, and repel the people you’re not trying to attract. Remember, we don’t want to speak to everyone, you only want to speak to your people.

Number three, write the way that you talk. Have faith in your own voice. Remember, your voice is something no one else has. It's the easiest way to distinguish yourself from others, and again, some people will love your voice, and some people will hate it, and that’s okay because it’s better to have 50% of people love your work and 50% of people hate it than have 100% of people being quite indifferent to not care in one way or the other.

Now, let’s talk about results. What is the end result of me doing these three things that I’ve just outlined above. Well, within three months of implementing those things into my writing, my monthly readership jumped from 2500 readers a month to 15,000 readers is a month. It got the ball rolling towards a scenario where I was able to generate more than $100,000 on of blog income. It was definitely worth it for me, and I’m sure it’ll be worth it for you, too.

Darren: Thanks so much to Kelly Exeter who has shared those tips, you can find her at kellyexeter.com.au. There’s a lot that I love about these particular episode and I knew that she would have a lot of good things to say and that’s why I invited her to help us kick off this series. The first thing I love and she didn’t really mention it as a tip at the end, but I think it’s a great tip, is to find someone to critique your writing.

Kelly stepped out of her comfort zone into that uncomfortable space of asking someone to tell it like it is about her writing. This is not easy stuff to hear when someone tells you, “You’re a good writer, but you’re a bland writer.” That must have been hard to hear, but if she hadn’t have stepped into that space, she wouldn’t be where she is today. I think it’s well worth doing, finding that type of person who can give you that type of advice.

I think the problem that Kelly has is something that many of us probably can relate to. I think most blogs go through this, whether they articulate it in exactly the same way. I see a lot of people with plateaued traffic that's certainly something, it’s not always to do with your writing voice, but I also see a lot of writers and I include myself in this, you go through periods where you become a good writer, but your writing is bland, and it is vanilla.

This is something I think a lot of us need to keep coming back to, and it’s easy to slip into this type of writing. Your blog always becomes a bit of a machine, you keep churning out content, and it can get to a point where it does become a little bit bland. It might have useful information, it might be technically well written, but I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience, you put something out and it just doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t connect with people, as a result it doesn’t really get read, it doesn’t get commented on, it doesn’t get shared.

This is one of those things that I encourage you to really go back to look at in your writing, if you have got to that plateau in your content, maybe this is one of the reasons that’s behind it. Kelly’s three tips are fantastic. First one, writing messy drafts. I’ve seen that in practice over the last few months of working with Kelly.

I’ve been working with Kelly on a book and she helped me with the medium articles that I spoke about in episode 255. That article started really messy. In fact, we probably went through a few first drafts which were kind of random collections of ideas, previous stories that I told, and no real core idea. In playfully drafting that article, and exploring all kinds of tangents as it developed, many of which didn’t actually make it into the article itself, the core idea began to form.

I don’t think it would have gotten to the point that it is, if we hadn’t have had sort of that messy start to it. I’ve never done what she said there, to handwrite the first drafts. I can see how that would really help. I personally fall into the trap of editing as I write. I try not to do that because I do know that it stifles my ideas in the flow, but it’s something like I naturally do because it’s so easy to do when you’re writing on your computer, you can just delete things, rewrite things, and it does stop the flow. It’s something I’m probably going to give a go to do that handwriting type of thing. I can see how that would work quite well.

The second tip there was not to sit on the fence, and this is again something I can relate to. My temptation is to not to want to offend anyone. I don’t like to have people react negatively to a content. I think it’s a natural reaction, but as a result of that, I try to please everyone, and my writing at times can feel like it has lots of disclaimers, explanations, caveats, excuses through the content, and again, that’s not easy to read.

I don’t think people want all of that, they want to get to the point. Getting past that and realizing that your content doesn’t have to please everyone is a great lesson. It does create stronger writing, it creates that reaction in your readers. That sometimes does magnetize people, and sometimes repels them but as Kelly says, it doesn’t leave them feeling indifferent, and that’s what you don't want.

You don't want indifferent readers. It sometimes means that you need to push into I guess, areas that you feel a little bit more uncomfortable, but I don’t think it means you need to be confrontational, you can still write in a nice voice, you don't have to be controversial just to the point of it and just be you which leads to that last tip that Kelly shared of writing the way you talk. This is the big lesson for me in the early days of my blogging. I tried for many years, not for many years but for many months at least to write in the style of other people that I saw and admired.

I realized my voice was much more conversational as well. It’s something I’ve noticed many times with successful bloggers that I’ve met in person. Often there are little quirks and funny words and expressions that you see in their content, it’s just an extension of what they say in a conversation, and as I think about this, Vanessa, my wife, her blog, Style and Shenanigans, she uses a language that she talks in, and it’s kind of quirky at times, but I think it actually stands out. I’m sure it does annoys some people, but I’m sure, it also really connects with other people and that’s why she’s got a very engaged audience, it shines through her personality.

I love the advice on that Kelly has given today. I’ve seen the results of these advice in her writing, it really has changed over the years. I’ve never heard the traffic change there from 2500 visitors a month which is great to 15,000 a month, that’s a 500% increase in traffic in just a few months. You can see there the impact that this has upon your readers. I know the times that I’ve gone with this advice almost intuitively, I’ve seen that same thing happened as well.

Thanks so much to Kelly. You can find more from Kelly at kellyexeter.com.au. There’ll be a link in today’s show notes to that as well.

I’ll also include a link in today’s show notes to the interview I did with Kelly back in episode 193 where she gave some really good advice on becoming a more prolific content creator. That was episode 193, you’ll find it in iTunes and in the show notes. The show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/257 there’s also full transcript of today’s show there.

Thanks so much for listening. Next week, we’re going to get back into the blogging breakthrough series. You’re going to hear from some of the listeners of this podcast. The first two episodes have been friends of mine who I invited to kick off the series, but we’re going to get into some listeners in the coming weeks, looking forward to sharing some of those stories with you.

Lastly, if you want to head to one of our events, Kelly is a speaker at many of our events. We’ve got an event coming up in Orlando, Florida, late September. If you go to problogger.com/success you’ll see the Success Incubator event that we’ve got running up.

There will be some presentations at that event, but there will also be a lot of masterminding. So if you want to check that out as well. The event is actually happening just before FinCom which is a conference for financial bloggers, and if you’re one of those bloggers as well, I will be speaking at that event as well. Those two events held at the same venue, running into the other, our event is first, so that might be a good one to check out as well if you’re in that space.

Thanks for listening today, chat with you next week on the ProBlogger Podcast.

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