How to Build a Successful Blog?

So you decided to have a blog for your brand, but how is it going to work for you? The challenge I see for people in different industries is always around content creation and achieving something out of it.  It requires lots of work and patience to build small-loyal readership. As average time for active blogging to start seeing big impacts on your traffic and conversions is 18 months depending on your industry and content strategy . Ok, now to have a comprehensive strategy for your blog here are the ten killer tips for that. 

Here is an inspirational post from #blogchat activity that was happening on twitter two days back, managed by the guys from Content Marketing Institute. Super cool stuff..

Ten Tips for Brand Blogs to Win:

1- Fill a need in the marketplace that is not being met.

2- Be consistent, same time and frequency every week like a newspaper would. Lack of consistency is the biggest reason brand blogs fail. Re-purposing content into podcasts or hangouts and incorporating them into your blog posts is a great way to engage and serve variety of content. There are big predictions insist that Brands will be turning into publishing companies and that they will buy media companies .

3- Tell stories like a human being would, no corporate speak.

4- Have a point of view, what is your take? Why are you the expert?

5- Remove the sale never sell anything directly in your blog. Are you also considering long form content , because it is coming back though 500-1000 words is sufficient, but yeah its coming back and going to be more crazy, maybe you want to start experimenting with that.

6- Strive Strive Strive to Be the leading content creator in your field..

7- Remember you are not the audience of your blog. Focus on 1 to 3 personas for readers at max to produce awesome engaging content. It would really help if you keep digging down into subscribers behavior what they like and don’t, then figure out what distinguishes them from non-subscribers to have different content for both.

8- Encourage subscriptions by social proof ( x people subscribed to receive updates, and clear CTA subscribe now).

9- The blog should be he center of your content strategy, not anything else. While the social channels are important for brands to reach, engage and drive actions from people. But it is important to focus 100% on your blog and drive people interests to it from social not the other way around because you don’t own the social audience, while you can engage more with your subscribers and readers’ database. On the types of content everybody is talking video but audio is important too. PLEASE , Edit edit edit to make sure you eliminate unnecessary bla bla blah and make it crisp and awesome.

Your blog is at the heart of your content marketing strategy, and everything else should drive traffic to it.No matter how big your social channel efforts are, still the focus is on the blog.

10- Draw your clear objectives and Why you have a blog in the first place.

So you looked at these ideas and realized it has to be a holistic exercise that requires careful planning, but now you will share this I assume, RIGHT?

Then what’s your first step?