It’s difficult to explain just how popular blogging has become, especially over the last couple of years. These days, it seems like almost everyone is running a blog, and they cover topics as varied as marketing, books, fishing, parenting and programming.
75 million websites use WordPress, the most popular blogging platform, and it powers 27.5% of the web. Tumblr, the Yahoo-owned microblogging site, has around 350 million users. One handy tool from Worldometers shows you the number of blog posts that have been written so far today. You should check it out, it’s mind boggling. Go ahead, we’ll wait.
That means that there’s a lot of competition on the market, and newbie bloggers need to find themselves a niche if they’re to become a success at what they do. But finding a niche is one thing and dominating it is another.
Ultimately, the most successful bloggers have one thing in common: quality writing. Here are five tips to help you to be as good as the best.
1. Make it Relatable
If you want your readers to stick around, you need to make sure that your posts are interesting. It helps when you talk about something that’s close to them – if you can make it relatable, it’s more likely to touch the reader’s mind and heart. Get this step right and you’ll be forgiven if your writing is occasionally clunky.
2. Keep it Simple
Complicated words and formal phrases have their place in academic essays, but there’s no need for them in a blog post. You need to keep it as simple and informal as possible so that it’s easy for people from different backgrounds to read – including people who speak English as a second language.
3. Remember to Edit
Editing your blog posts is almost as important as writing in the first place. It’s fine to write a first draft in a hurry – and even to hit the publish button if it’s a time-sensitive story – but you’ll want to revisit it at your earliest convenience. Everyone makes mistakes – it’s only human. But by editing your posts, you can eliminate mistakes while improving their readability. Charles Horton from Aussiewritings.com goes so far as to say, “Editing is more important than writing. Anyone can string a sentence together, but it takes a real writer to go back and edit it.”
4. Plan ahead
Planning can help you to make sure that you don’t lose your way when you’re writing your articles, so be sure to constantly plan for the future while simultaneously focusing on the present. You can plan individual blog posts before you write them and you can plan your entire editorial calendar for the coming months. Remember the old adage: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
5. Research
The more you know about your topic, the more interesting your content will be. Doing your research will help you to inject your personality and to share unique advice and information that can help you to stand out from your competition.Remember that your audience is already passionate about the topics that you cover, otherwise they wouldn’t bother to stop by your site in the first place. Make sure that your passion shows.
Practice Makes Perfect
In the end, practice makes perfect. No new blogger gets it right first time, and many of the most successful bloggers got to where they were by making mistakes along the way. The key is to make those mistakes and to learn from them, rather than being too afraid to try.
Remember that blogging is all about finding a niche and expressing your personality – and this goes whether you’re writing a blog on WordPress or uploading video blogs to YouTube. Nobody follows a robot, which is why using formal language and an academic style is such a no no.
The best way to improve your blog writing is to keep on writing your blog. Read other bloggers in your niche, ask for feedback along the way and constantly try to tweak and improve your style. Your blog will be a hit in no time.
