Hey Guys,
I am Jeevan Jacob John and I will be your host for today. Well, I know that many of you guys are familiar with the basic concepts and steps before starting a blog as an online business. But, we still need to go over those (P.S to experienced bloggers: I will try to make it informative for you too). In this blog post, we will take a look at different questions you need to answer – as a newbie/experienced blogger. Let’s start, shall we?
Defining Your Blog
Before you start a blog, you need to define your blog. Defining equals your niche/topic, purpose, audience and way of action (plan).
Your Niche/Topic?
- Why Am I choosing this niche/topic? (Experienced bloggers: Why did I choose the niche/topic I chose?)
Is it because I saw other bloggers succeeding in the niche? But, is that enough evidence that it will work for me? Should I start blogging in this niche just because I saw others doing it?
- What is special about my niche?
- Do I have any experience in the field?
If yes, how do you plan to apply that in your blog posts? (Experienced bloggers: Am I already applying those experiences in my blog posts?)
If not, how can I teach others about this niche? Shouldn’t I start looking for experiences before I start the blog?
(If you are new a niche, you should definitely start familiarizing with it and working with it before you start a blog. For instance: If you are planning to blog about rolex watches, you should probably buy some Rolex watches, study the price market, interview Rolex company employees and ask others about their Rolex experiences (Why did they buy Rolex watches? Is it just for luxury?).
Answering the three questions that are listed above will help you to define your niche (In case if you are an experienced blogger, answering these questions will help you to gain a new perspective and some new insights on your niche).
Defining My Purpose
Purpose is the basis. The action that lacks purpose is an action wasted (you will only lose the energy). Here are the questions you should be asking yourself:
- What is my blog purpose?
Purpose is more than making money, getting traffic or even providing value to your visitors. It is more about how the content can be useful and how your visitors can apply them.
A theory/principle is useless if it can’t be put to practical application.
Application is the key. If you can’t help your readers to achieve something (Whatever it is) through the tips/advice you provide through your blog, then I wouldn’t recommend you to start a blog – unless you are just blogging for personal needs – such as keeping a journal.
- How is the purpose going to help me?
Purpose should also define your benefit from your blog. What is your benefit? Is it satisfaction you get from helping people? Is it reader satisfaction through which you can convince them to buy your product, subscribe to your list and/or keep them coming back to your blog? Is it the money through ads?
Answering these two basic questions can help you to define (or redefine your purpose). And your purpose along with others, defines your blog.
Audience?
Like everything else, this piece ties in with all other pieces. The questions about your audience are:
- Who is my audience?
It is more than the demographics of your audience. It is about their minds. It is about their loyalty to your blog. In the case of newbie bloggers, the question should be: Who should be my audience?
- Expectations
What is your expectation of your audience? What do you think should the audience expect from you (Do you think that you are blogging up to their expectations?).
Setting expectations (for both you and your audience) in your mind will motivate you to take action and live up to those expectations (The case might be different when you set your expectations real hard or real easy; You need your expectations about the right size: Something you can achieve if you try hard and long enough).
The two questions on your audience will help you to define your audience, which helps you to be a better blogger; by helping your readers.
Last but not least is way of action/plan.
My way of action?
- What is your plan? Do you have a plan?
A plan is essential, especially when you are starting a new blog. In your plan, you should include things like post ideas, post frequency, design elements (minimalistic or fancy, plugins, layout, style), marketing (Social media, guest posting, commenting) and networking (commenting, social media).
Writing – You need to define how you are going to write, where you are going to write (Environment and Platform) and when you are going to write (writing schedule).
Design Elements – Minimalistic or Fancy approach? I go for minimalistic because a blog is about providing value to your readers, rather than entertaining them with your design. Of course, if you want to get fancy, you can. But, remember: being too fancy can do more harm than good. You also need to decide on what basic plugins you are going to work with (more plugins = more load time).
Marketing – What is your marketing strategy? Do you plan to guest post and comment on blogs? How are you going to advertise yourself on social media sites.
My advice – Start with social media. Provide real value by tweeting tips, tricks and other tweets related to your niche (You also need to have a good tweet ratio of actual value to interactions; interactions are tweets in which you mention others). More interactions will most likely mean more networking and more loyalty of your mentioned buddies. More real value tweets mean more followers and more loyalty from followers who followed you because they liked your content.
After you get comfortable with social media, go for commenting. Comment on articles that provide value and on blogs where you plan to guest post on (commenting prior to guest posting allows you to establish a relationship with the author and the readers). Comment >> Guest Blog.
You also need to think about advertising and/or partnering up with other bloggers for mutual benefit.
Networking – When it comes to networking, it is more than follow friday or sharing their posts (To tell you the truth, I hate to see bloggers sharing content all over the place, even when they didn’t read the post – you know, through the automated means of tweeting). I follow most people because I like their content (And I am sure that is the case for most of your followers, unless you used other methods to gain followers). I like to see when bloggers actually tweet something useful (Tips, tricks, quotes) related to their niche, rather than tweets about their content or about others’ content.
Actual value tweets (tips, tricks, quotes etc) – establish your follower base and build loyalty within your followers.
Interactive/Mentioned tweets – Helps your networking strategy and builds more loyalty for your mentioned buddies. In the case of interactive tweets, usually they are only useful to the mentioned buddy (not to your actual followers who followed you because of your content).
Anyways, that’s just a brief look on planning and how we should relate back all these things. I could go on and on with this. But, I don’t plan to. (It is smart to provide all value in your blog post to get the maximum results, but it is wiser to wait some time and distribute the value to get results in the long term).
The Wrap
Anyways, that’s puts a good wrap to our talk for today. We discussed a lot of things today, didn’t we? Now, it is your turn to participate. Choose any 1 or 2 questions (you are more than welcome to choose more) and answer them below in the commenting area.
I hope you enjoyed the post.
Remember, it is all about defining (or redefining) your blog. It all comes down to your niche, purpose, audience and your way of action.
So, go ahead.
Define Your Blog.
I agree with you, stick to a niche and blog your hearts out on that topic. People will the passion and you make it into a successfully blogger.
Shalu Sharma recently posted..Top Alternatives to Premium Themes
Hey Shalu,
I am glad that you agree. Yeah, of course. But, we must always be careful. Lot of people try to achieve success by investing all their efforts at once, which is a bad idea (you should never write all your ideas as posts). Invest your energy, make ideas, write some, store some (improve them over time) and go over the cycle once again.
Thank you for stopping by, Shalu!
Beautiful representation, really very informative (Y)
keep sharing
vidushi kaushik recently posted..Healthy Diet Plan For Quick Weight Loss By Dr Ashish Bhanot Wt Loss Surgeon
Thank you, Vidushi!
Would you like to add something? How about your experience? How did you choose your niche (why did you choose it?).
John recently posted..The Concept of Simplicity: Simplicity vs. Complexity?
Hey Jeevan, welcome to Dev’s new home.
I loved this post and man could I have used this advice when I was first starting out. What great advice is it too. All points very well taken.
I think the area most people fall into is having to come up with fresh, new and unique content week after week. If you aren’t really into the niche you chose then you’re really going to struggle with this one. I know people say to start a blog you’re passionate about but I struggled with this in the beginning because I wasn’t passionate about anything where I could throw making money into that mix. It took me awhile okay! There’s so much information out there and it can be very overwhelming.
Great job on helping the newbies though Jeevan. I’ll be sure to share this information.
Have a great week.
~Adrienne
Adrienne recently posted..Why Blog Maintenance Is Important
Thank you Adrienne
Appreciate your welcome and your compliments 
The best strategy, especially when we are starting out, is to develop many ideas, write some and store some for later (but that strategy may not work at all, especially with heavily congested and competitive niches like ours). These days, it is all about the same stuff (look at this article, for instance: Lot of things I wrote about is something that has been written already, but I still write it, hoping that new bloggers every day will read this).
Yeah, that is a problem. When we go with our passion, often times, it may not be a niche in which we can make that much money as a passive income. Same thing is true for real world. There are many jobs people choose to work with because they are passionate about it (and it is okay for the most part, until you are unhappy with the money you make).
Thank you, Adrienne! Appreciate your help. I also wish I had read something like this when I started blogging.
Great post. So many of these “how to’s” are trite and just restate the obvious. You give your readers concise information and practical ideas as to how to implement them. Thanks!
Hey Grace,
Thanks!
I am glad that you liked my post. Thanks!
Hi Jeevan,
This was such a powerful blog post! I think the concept of: define your blog is so much more easily achievable when people know what action steps to take in order to do this in an effective way. You’ve outdone yourself to that regard!
I have seen people with good strategy outdo people who have more natural talent but choose to operate with no strategy.
I think that along with having a strategy (big picture), we also need to be a bit flexible to be able to amend and adjust this process as we move forward. This is so important in light of the rate that technology is evolving in front of our eyes daily.
…but as you mentioned, it’s important to just get started with a viable plan of action and I think you’ve done a commendable job in helping to outline what needs to be done! Thanks for sharing this, Jeevan. I know many are looking for this kind of info!
Tweeting widely!
Cat Alexandra
cat Alexandra @ Internet Marketing Success recently posted..The benefits of blog marketing | Why you need to be blogging!
Hey Cat,
Good to see you here @ Blogprenuers
Thank you! Yes, defining becomes easy once we know what we want to achieve and how we want to achieve it (the niche, purpose, audience and way of action).
You are right on that, Cat. We need to be open to changes. Lot of bloggers these days aren’t willing to take risks or change according to the time.
No problem, Cat. I am glad that you appreciate my post. Thanks once again for your support!
All good questions Jeevan and answering them up front certainly helps. One extra thing I would add to make sure you have an overall marketing strategy in place as a blog is a tactic and must support the strategy instead of being seen as a stand alone activity.
Susan Oakes recently posted..One Simple Difference, One Huge Advantage
Yes, of course. Having an overall marketing strategy is important (we also need to be flexible with it – open to changes and brave enough to try new techniques and experiments every now and then).
Thanks for the comment, Susan!
I appreciate your writing skills and completely agree with “stick to niche”.
It’s important because when people search for particular topic, they only want to read post related to their search or else they leave your site, if you offer them some other niche blog post in your blog
Ayush recently posted..4 steps to create a Web page with HTML
Ayush,
Thanks! Yes, of course. You are right on that. People are becoming less patient (with tech companies trying to improve their products and making it better by providing “more instant” solutions to their users).
Thanks for the comment, Ayush!
Jeevan Jacob John recently posted..The Concept of Simplicity: Simplicity vs. Complexity?
Good suggestions that all bloggers should contemplate, preferably before they start blogging. What I would add is that that it would be a good idea for new bloggers to find a niche where they have less competition.
Catarina recently posted..Let’s deprive people smugglers of their income!
Hey Catarina,
That is a great thought, Cat. But, these days less competition also means low popularity (of the niche) within the regular internet audience. Of course, I think it is more about assessing our competitors and see which ones are easier to “beat”.
Thanks for your thoughts, Catarina!
Once you have determined your niche, following your very well written and practical article can help many, including myself. Once that is done, having the patience and perseverance to keep it going seems to be where people fall down. Many do not, or have not, anticipated the work it really takes to blog consistently.
Susan Cooper recently posted..Bridlewood Pinot Noir 2010: Wine
Yes, of course. We do need a lot of patience and perseverance to help us get through our initial struggles with blogging. It certainly takes time to build a successful blog (On a side note: Impatience is also important in that it can motivate you to take more action in a shorter time span to achieve the results you expect to achieve).
Anyways, Thank you for stopping by, Susan.
Jeevan Jacob John recently posted..The Concept of Simplicity: Simplicity vs. Complexity?
Your choice of niche, defines your audience. It is even easier to make posts when you are experienced in the field. More so, if you are genuinely curious about your niche then you will be able to create great blog posts in no time. Thank you for posting!
Yes, of course, John. Our experience counts (and that’s why we should write in a niche that we are familiar with). No problem. Thanks for the comment!
Jeevan,
These are all good points for thinking about one’s blog. Personally, I like writing about technical topics, but I also like having a broad audience. So I am learning to combine both technical and general business topics. Blogging is a process – sometimes where we start blossoms into something else.
LEORA recently posted..Turn a Menu into a Site Map with WordPress
That is great, Leora. I have done that, with my old blog, my combining bunch of topics (like psychology – what I learned in school) to blogging. That is a great way to think of it. But, for it to blossom, it needs nutrients, sun light and water (our efforts, patience and smart planning).