101 Tips From Top Experts On How To Start A Successful Blog
Announcement! I have 101 tips from top blogging experts on how you can start a successful blog today.
Some of them are popular bloggers with huge followings and a solid reputation, while others are up and coming bloggers with top-notch content.
When it comes to blogging & business, they definitely know their stuff.
And I’m here to present to you with tips so that YOU can start a successful blog too 😉
Tapping into the collective wisdom of top experts
… was hard.
Honestly, it’s easy to point you to different resources that were written, but it was a big headache for me to look at the years of experience from each and every expert and pick just one tip.
But I know you guys. If I point you to the resources, you’ll likely bookmark them and forget, right? I want you to learn and implement these tips!
So, what I did was read their content and picked one top tip from each expert.
If you see something that interests you, please click on the link and you’ll be directed to the relevant blog post.
I picked their tip based on stuff they are either 1) known for, 2) from their most popular posts based on data or 3) something they said which has impacted me personally.
Starting with myself, of course. 😛
Experts are listed in no particular order!
How to Start a Successful Blog: 101 Tips
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Optimizing your website & user experience
1. Raelyn Tan (that’s me!): When blogging, don’t just give information. Focus on the transformation.
2. Darren @ Problogger: Categorize content neatly into main categories and put it on your start here page.
3. Pat Flynn @ SPI: Create a resource page for your audience – it’s a helpful resource, AND you get to bump up your affiliate income big time.
4. Jordanna @ House of Muses: Less is more. When someone arrives at your website full of ads, tag clouds, recent comments, recent posts, links to products, links to favourite posts, and every other kind of sidebar and footer content you can imagine, the reader gets one message clearly: you have no idea what it is you want to tell them. Have one clear call to action!
5. Ankit @ MasterBlogging: Create a professional ‘about me’ page. If created correctly, your about page should not only leave a good impression to people, It will also turn fairweather visitors into life-long subscribers of your blog.
6. The Social Media Hat: Have proper taxonomy (categories & tags) for your website, and create images to optimize your posts for Pinterest, as well as Facebook & Instagram.
7. Krista Rae: Four things to consider adding to your footer: 1) Social media links, 2) An opt-in, 3) Popular content, 4) A search bar
8. Harsh @ Shout Me Loud: Once your podcast is live, your website servers may not be able to take the crazy load. Rather than storing your audio files on your website server, use a podcasting host like Libsyn or Blubrry.
9. Neil Patel @ Quicksprout: Hard to find just one tip from Neil Patel, but I would say the latest thing I learned from him would be to track the time spent by users on individual blog posts using this Google Analytics custom report. The longer, the better!
10. Blog Herald: Use the Wordfence plugin to scan for any malware and infected files. Keep your website secure!
Writing & Content Marketing
11. Backlinko: Find content that has already generated a lot of links, and then create something much better than that.
12. The Collective Mill: Create evergreen content – content that will not become outdated years from now. The great thing about evergreen content is that you can still offer these content years down the road and still offer real value to your audience.
13. Melyssa Griffin: Your blog post titles should have 2 characteristics: It should contain keywords for SEO purposes, and it should entice readers to click on it.
14. Suzi Whitford: Ran out of ideas to blog? Brainstorm blog post ideas using post-it notes. Write down your ideas, paste them on the wall and get creative! Categorize your ideas using different colored post-it notes!
15. Brilliant Business Moms: Want to get comfortable when recording videos? Natural light is your best friend, and stand up for more energy.
16. Beth Hayden: How often should you be publishing blog posts? Focus on quality over quantity when writing posts.
17. Mostly Blogging: Longer paragraphs are harder to read online, so keep your paragraphs short.
18. The Alisha Nicole: Creating a solid process for writing your blog post will help eliminate frustration and keep you focused. (After you’re done with Alisha’s awesome writing process, check out the things you should do before you publish any blog post, and how to promote your blog posts after you publish it!)
19. Just Arpi: How to posts, list posts, case study posts, checklist posts and series posts.. these are the types of posts that will bring you traffic.
20. I Can Build A Blog: Have problems finding stuff to blog about? Keep a running list of reader questions.
21. White Oak Creative: Blog less frequently. Focus on creating information-rich content and promote them. Stop writing fluff posts.
Foundations
22. Smart Blogger: Validate your blog topic. Make sure you can find 5-10 influencers on your blog topic. If you can’t, there’s probably a reason, and it’s never good.
23. Matthew Woodward: Identify a gap in the market and create solid, free articles to fill that gap.
24. Gee Norturah: Be very clear on who you serve – this will streamline your content and attract people that will buy to you.
25. Zac @ Blogging.org: If you want to be an authority online, always niche down.
26. Adam @ Blogging Wizard: Understand your target audience and develop audience personas. Your audience persona(s) will drive everything you do on your blog, from how you write to the channels you use to promote your blog posts.
27. Blogging With Becky & Paula: Don’t blog randomly. Figure out what will do well, and write it.
Branding
28. Miranda Nahmias: Your brand colours are important – when choosing brand colours, think about what you want your audience to associate your brand with!
29. Wonderlass: Your brand is the overall vibe of your company… your brand is YOU. Some questions to think about: What gets you excited ever yday? How is your business different from others? Why do you do what you do?
30. Erika @ Olyvia.co: Wanna grow your brand? Be helpful, and be kind.
31. Fizzle: Figure out your unique selling proposition (USP) – what makes your brand stand out.
32. By Rosanna: Design is a balance between form and function. Get into the heads of your users & map out their user journey on your website.
33. The Branded Solopreneur: Don’t forget to brand your emails as well! You can do this by using a consistent template, including your brand logo in your emails, adding your social media icons to your emails and just adding your voice to them.
34. Kory Woodard: Stop crowdsourcing your blog’s brand and create something true to you.
35. Blogging Pro: Use WP image borders to create borders for your images in the WordPress dashboard.
36. Teresa Batey: Use Picmonkey or Canva to design graphics for your blog! (Check out 101 best blogging tools for more resources, if you like!)
Getting Traffic
37. Viper Chill: Want to rank? Search engines want to show the best results to their users. Build a site for people and create awesome content.
38. Minuca Elena: Create amazing roundup posts where you feature experts from your niche. You will bring huge traffic to your blog, connect with influencers, and provide quality content for your readers.
39. Video Fruit: When writing guest posts, always pepper your writing with examples, because it makes your post more relatable and actionable.
40. Fiona Flintham: Change the title and alt text of images you upload to optimize it for Google.
41. Meera Kothand: Writing a guest post at a large site? Link to a tailored landing page in your audience bio. Your new potential readers will feel more welcome (and be more willing to opt in)!
42. Candis @ Smart Mom Blogger: Huffingtonpost has a new blogging platform called Athena! Use relevant tags on your Huffpost article so that you can get more traffic and get your article sorted to the right category. (Want to get published on The Huffington Post?)
43. Mariah Coz: Want fast growth without resorting to ads? Hold joint venture webinars with your competitors and watch the both of you skyrocket to success.
44. Traffic Generation Cafe: Have one blog post? Think about how you can leverage it across different mediums (eg webinars, podcasts, guest posts, PDFs) etc.
45. Growth Rabbit: Use Upviral to create a referral chain (Invite X number of friends to unlock this feature/ get this freebie) and watch the traffic come in.
46. Blogging From Paradise: Use Triberr, where bloggers congregate and help to share each other’s posts!
47. Jeff Goins: Don’t be afraid to ask and contact influential people! There are people out there, waiting to connect with people who are bold enough to ask.
48. Clicknewz: Stop talking, and start listening to what your audience is saying!
49. How To Make My Blog: Getting visitors is a drip, drip, drip process – getting just 1 or 2 new visitors a day will snowball into something big in a few months.
List Building
50. Social Triggers: Use a feature box (those boxes you see above the fold on my home page) to convert traffic into subscribers.
51. Keep Chasing The Stars: 4 types of emails to send to your list: 1) RSS to email, 2) Round-up/ summary of your posts, 3) Relationship building emails and 4) Sales.
52. Uncork Your Dork: To prevent your emails from going into spam, make sure your email titles do not have words like “Sale!”, “Discount” & “Limited Time!”
53. Debi Stangeland: Email is personal, immediate, focused, respected and widespread. Use email marketing for your business!
54. MailMunch: You need to include opt-in forms on your website to grow your lists, but make sure they’re the right ones for your audience. Test several types to see what converts best: popups, embedded forms, top bars, polite slide boxes, and full landing pages. Keep in mind that you can use a combination of multiple types!
Social media
55. Elizabeth Kelsey Bradley: Want influencers in your Facebook group? Don’t assume that they will know about your group – be proactive and ask them to join (and perhaps even do a Q&A!)
56. Oh, She Blogs: Use Woobox to add social media tabs to your Facebook page.
57. Mary Fernandez: A good way to engage your Facebook group? Get other experts to live stream in your group. This provides value to your peeps and helps you to establish relationships with other influencers.
58. Margo @Blog Loft: Use conversions box to increase your FB likes. It results in a small pop-up at the bottom right-hand corner of your blog, asking people to like your Facebook page.
59. Jamie Delaine Watson: According to Moz, the shelf life of a tweet is 18 minutes. In light of this, make it a goal to tweet 3-10x a day.
60. For Profit Blogging: Sign up for Twitter Cards. They provide more information about your tweet.
61. Melissa @ She Owns It: I love how Melissa is super active on Twitter. She retweets people that mention her + her biz liberally, tweets her posts many times, and tweets good posts in her industry constantly.
62. Twins Mommy: Make your pins a little longer than average to make it stand out in Pinterest’s smart feed. (Elna’s pins are 800px x 1422px)
63. The Daily Femme: Create a new image for an old post and re-pin it. Get ready for more traffic!
64. Design Your Own Blog: Once you’ve your customer pin it button ready (you can use Picmonkey, Canva or photoshop to design it), use the JQuery Pin It Buttom For Images plugin to highlight images on hover and add a custom pin it button to them.
65. Pinkpot: Styling your photos for Instagram? Choose one hero piece around which you can create a theme for the photo. Have objects distributed such that they don’t compete for attention, but complement each other.
66. Twelve Skip: Instagram’s picture dimension is 640px by 640px.
67. Brittany Berger: Use IFTTT to automate some parts of your business! IFTTT connects devices and apps you love with “if this, then that” statements.
Monetization
68. Successful Blogging: Don’t expect Google Ads to bring in lots of revenue. Ads look tacky and take readers away from the content, and the payout is tiny! (Note from Raelyn: I recommend creating your own products and services, or being an affiliate for other people’s products!)
69. Yaro Starak: Create email courses/ a series of videos for your readers, give them amazing value, and make your offer multiple times throughout the content sequence.
70. Melissa @ Blog Clarity: If you post affiliate links, you must have a disclaimer at the top of your post, not at the bottom.
71. The Work At Home Wife: Old but popular posts are where I make most of my affiliate income. Weave your recommendations naturally within your posts and don’t forget to check your old posts to make sure they are working properly!
72. Screw The 9 to 5: Most sales funnels start with a lead magnet, but Jill & Josh start their funnel with a blog post with content that aligns itself with what the funnel has. i.e, write stuff that leads to your paid offers!
73: Blog Tyrant: Selling something on your landing page? The story and fears outweigh the features and specs.
74. Blog Ambitions: Don’t just link drop when promoting affiliate products. Create a guide, round-up post, video or resource page around it around it.
75. Copy Blogger: Use trustworthiness, lots of good content to beat the #1 sales killer: Prospect fear of wasting money & feeling stupid. Every detail of your website and business counts.
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Mindset & entrepreneurship
76. Amanda Northern: Businesses require investment. There is nothing in this world that you can get for free. Your college education was not free. Even finding a job requires you to spend money on nice clothes, transport etc. Unless you have someone willing to mentor you for free, you have close to no chance of being successful blogging.
77. xoSarah: Have problems staying disciplined? Do specific things at specific timings. For instance, Sarah creates content on Friday and Monday, and send emails on Tuesdays.
78. Mary Jaksch: What separates top bloggers from tragic wannabes? Top bloggers keep going!
79. Daniela Uslan, Writer: Blogging is all about relationships. Write posts that people care about, offer freebies that are helpful, create valuable emails and create true fans. That’s how you make money.
80. Tim Soulo: Don’t write about strategies you’ve heard from someone else. Only write about stuff you’ve personally tried.
81. Living For Naptime: Never, ever, grab a photo from Google image and use it on your website, or risk paying thousands for copyright infringement. (Check out where to get royalty free stock images here)
82. Side Hustle Nation: Figure out your rat race freedom number: How much you have to make from your side business to cover your fixed monthly expenses. Once you reach this number, you can consider quitting your job.
83. Blogelina: Creating a daily routine as a blogger is very important.
84. Amy Lynn Andrews: Find bloggers further along than you doing what you do and watch them. Not to copy them, but to know what to focus on.
85. Secret Bloggers Business: I try to keep it 40/60. I keep 60% of the good stuff for my paying clients and paid products, and then I share 40% with my audience.
86. The Blog Maven: You will either work hard to create your dream, Or you will work hard to create someone else’s.
87. Maggie Patterson: Just because you’re doing it online doesn’t give you a superpower of being able to skim over the important bits and becoming a master at your craft.
88. Alex Beadon: Start celebrating the pure act of creating, rather than your success. Your creative energy itself should be celebrated!
89. The SITS Girls: The secret to success is support.
90. Christine Tremoulet: Turn your nervous energy into something positive by telling yourself you’re EXCITED!
91. Leaving Work Behind: Want to make money online? A great way is to branch into freelance writing.
92. Kevin J. Duncan @ Be A Better Blogger: Why do blogs fail? Because bloggers don’t have a specific goal for their blog.
93. Blog Brighter: Use Peek to get raw, unbiased feedback about your website, for free!
94. Andrea @ QuickBooks (An Invoicing Option): Take advantage of resources out there that can help manage and track your billing and finances. Making sure your financials are in order is key to optimizing your time for your website.
95. Entrepreneur On Fire: Consistency will make or break your business. (EoFire is so special and popular because it is a daily podcast!)
96. Lillith Black @ Nightpreneur: Choose 1-3 main tasks, time yourself using the Pomodoro method and evaluate it using the Pomodoro method.
97. Mad Lemmings: Consider using the distraction free writing mode in your WordPress editor if you have problems focusing when writing.
98. Michael Hyatt: Michael has an awesome Spotify playlist for writing right here.
99. Heather Crabtree: Wanna scale your business? Delegate, automate and communicate!
100. Jeff Bullas: Key elements of marketing include: having a great headline + being memorable, creative, emotional, leveraged and trusted.
101. Female Entrepreneur Association: Base your business around creating a community and inspiring others.
I do hope these 101 tips on how you can start a successful blog has helped! I recommend that you download the free printable so that you can go through these tips and digest them in an organized fashion.
Another pin design for you:
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I built this blog piece by piece, one small share at a time, and will continue to do so. So thank you so much for your support, my reader.
A share from you would seriously help a lot with the growth of this blog.
Some great suggestions:
– Pin it! (I even made a pretty pin for ya!)
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Thank you so much!
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