Anybody can start a blog, but becoming successful as a blogger goes beyond having a very nice blog.
Even your super-fast computer, internet network and ability to write and publish many blog posts per day are not enough either.
There are ways to build a no-nonsense blog that adds value to readers, more especially blogs that acts as a source of income to you.
What truly matter is following the right steps to start a blog and forming some habits which will make you successful.
In this post, you’ll learn the characteristics and traits which a blogger MUST have to become exceptionally different and succeed in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, The Philippines, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Senegal, Dubai, Malaysia, Turkey, Tunisia, Portugal, Italy, Romania, and perhaps anywhere else in the world.
Steps to Becoming a Successful Blogger
The following steps and characteristics depict what makes a good blogger.
1. Be Prepared
Blogging is like a race and everyone wants to become the first runner-up. Get ready for this.
You need to relax your mind and ask yourself if you’re up to the task or you’re just playing around.
Blogging is not for everyone, don’t be greedy because of the goodies in blogging.
But let it be you’re following your passion and finally chasing your dreams as a blogger.
Having accepted this, you’re gradually coming into the blogger world filled with billions of competitors.
Are you ready to take off?
2. Define Your Goal
Still trying to compete? Do you have a goal yet? What’s your aim?
Did you wake up this morning and thought of ranking higher than your competitors?
Having a defined goal means what you want to engage in, what do you want to offer to visitors around? Will they like it?
Remember that those people you’re trying to rank higher than they have a defined goal; they offer something people love.
Can you offer what people will fall in love with? If yes, let’s go ahead!
3. Be Business Oriented
Starting a business is not an issue as anybody can, but not having what it takes to profit from the business.
Hence, not everybody that starts a business succeeds.
It takes a serious investment, finance, technical know-how, experience, human and material resources to run a business successfully.
So, ensure you have everything ready before you can start a blog business and make a profit.
4. Be Knowledgeable
A successful blogger must always have answers to every why, where, how and when questions which his target audience asks.
Knowledge is key if you want to remain relevant in your industry and you have to invest in it.
You should be able to seek knowledge in order to go forth in discovering and developing new ideas to help solve problems faced by your blog audience.
This quality would make you become an authority in your chosen niche.
5. Are You a Good Writer?
This should be 100% important and it’s been discussed everywhere.
Bloggers always say ‘Content is King’. This works like magic.
When you have a great and unique content on your blog, then you’re already creating waves.
If you continue to provide ‘Unique Content’, especially what people love, then your chance of ranking higher than your competitors is 50%.
If you are not interested in going through the stress of writing your content yourself, then outsource your content writing.
While I don’t advise beginners to outsource their content, if you have some money to invest, this is okay.
If you want to get quality articles written and delivered to you immediately, I recommend HIREWRITERS.COM
6. Sign up for Grammarly
Grammarly is a grammar correction tool that helps; writers, students, teachers, freelancers, and web publishers (bloggers) to correct mechanical grammar errors in contents.
Grammarly allows you to:
- Correct wrong sentences and statements by suggesting possible fixes.
- Suggest missing punctuation in your articles.
- Write your vocabulary even better, presentable, and easy to digest by the reader.
- Check your work for plagiarism.
- Write well-formatted contents or research papers.
Grammarly is a very useful writing tool for bloggers.
It has a FREE version and no limits to words you can correct, but then you need a PRO license to operate well and get the best correction grade.
7. Be a Good Communicator
Blogging would bore if bloggers use big grammars or technical jargon to intimidate their audience.
Blogs are built around Search Engine Optimization (SEO) standards and that shows that bloggers who choose good communication skill over grammar perform better.
That quality can make a blogger successful since it will help the audience understand what you’re saying without the need to use a dictionary.
Mind you, using simple terms to capture all levels of audience is a part of your optimization efforts to create user-friendly content.
Otherwise, your post won’t attract a good engagement rate as your audience will leave the page without completely reading the post.
And if that happens, your blog will have to deal with a high bounce rate.
You should understand clearly, what makes a blog different from an article is its simplicity.
In style and tone, both are different.
To be grammatically sound can make you write a great article, but that won’t be necessary to write a great blog post.
8. Only Blog What You Know
What do you discuss on your blog?
Blog niches may rise from blogging tips, inspirational, business tips, etc.
Each niche you choose, be sure to work on it and provide adequate information on that niche.
You must have actual knowledge of what you blog about if you want to become successful.
Blogging about what you haven’t experienced will limit your thought leadership, irritate your audience and make your posts less engaging.
Your understanding of the subject or bog topic can make you become a successful blogger earning a lot of money.
9. Find Out What People Want and Give it to Them
Do you know what people want?
There is information people are looking for, but they don’t always seem to find it or find a satisfactory answer.
Many people want to know the correct way to build a successful blog and not all these stories on the internet that don’t add value.
You can use Google trends to know exactly what people are looking for, then you can solve the solution or write about it on your blog.
10. Find Where Your Target Audience Lives
It’s critical to find out about the location of your target audience, but if you make out time for research, it is really worth it.
Finding your target audience shouldn’t really be something hard, because I believe 30% of your target audience is everywhere.
It’s left for you to make out time and gather them to be in one place, which is your BLOG!
11. Know Basic SEO
One quality of a great blogger is knowing how to do SEO yourself.
Having the basic knowledge of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a part of what makes you a good blogger.
So, if you want to know how to become a successful blogger, you must develop the habit of optimizing your blog posts for both humans and search engines.
This technique can help you boost the user experience of your blog content and enhance its visibility on the entire world wide web.
If you have a beautiful theme and super-fast hosting plan and users can’t find your blog on search engines, there won’t be much success.
You can either use the Google keyword tool to research what keywords your article should rank for, or you could use SEMRush to execute a fail-proof SEO strategy.
12. Build Quality Backlinks Only
Backlinks are like votes to a website/blog which tells google your blog is cool and he/she is voting for you.
It also tells google how important your page is.
If there are hundreds of blogs/websites linking to you, you’re really making it.
Be sure to know the backlinks must come from quality sites.
Always write guest posts on popular sites, so that you can link your site from there. Submit your site to directories.
Provide information on popular forums, then provide your site link or post URL.
13. Social Media Sharing
Start getting engaged in social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit.
Share your posts there too. If you want to use paid ads to promote your blog, then do it.
14. Use Forums to Find Out Common Problems in Your Niche
Forums are good places to read the latest on any topic or niche.
Your blog may lack good design, good navigation or even excellent writing skills.
By visiting forums, you may know where to get started, and realize more common problems in your niche.
15. Note Down Bullet Points for Different Areas You Need to Cover
When coming up with an article or blog post for your blog, you should probably note down bullet points for the different areas you need to cover.
It helps to actually know exactly what you’re doing, and it also helps to cover the topic in details.
16. Create Two or More Pieces of Contents Solving Those Problems
After writing your bullet points on the different areas you need to cover, try creating two or more pieces of contents solving those problems, to make it more detailed or a continuation of the previous because of how long it is.
Creating two or more pieces of contents helps the readers to choose the easiest method or the one they can easily do themselves without making unnecessary mistakes.
17. Use Google to Find an Example of What Others Have Created
Sometimes, we learn from what others have written, and we as well grab ideas while writing our own topics.
Using Google to find an example of what others have created gives you an impression or ideas of how your own should look like.
It also makes you to do better than what they have already done.
18. Ensure Yours is the Best Piece of Content on That Topic
After reading examples of what others have already done, while writing yours, be sure to make yours the best out of the already existence ones.
When writing your own topic, add what they’re too lazy to add and then your content will rock.
19. Setup Push Notifications on Your Blog
If you have a business online with a website, register on NOTIX platform.
As a blogger, you should have an account with them.
When people visit your website, you should have a way of reaching them again without sweating it.
Some of you get hundreds of thousands of visitors on your platform every month, but they just visit and go.
To convert your traffic more, you must have a means of recalling those visitors you like.
Imagine if you had a way of gathering 100,000 people who are already interested in your product or services?
Imagine offering a sales promo or discount and you can reach 100,000 people already interested in your offer?
Imagine the sales and conversion that would give you?
One of the most effective ways of doing this is through push notifications.
Push notification uses browsers to deliver effective messages to users who subscribe on your website.
So, when people visit your website and subscribe to your notifications, you can send them messages later; and as many times as you deem necessary.
It drops like a WhatsApp message and it has a higher open rate than emails.
I currently have over 150,000 push subscribers and it’s my secret to free traffic any day, anytime.
This is how I’m able to recall thousands of people back to my blog daily without additional cost.
You should start building yours today.
Go to www.notix.co and register an account. They’re arguably the best in the industry right now.
Sign up an account, install their plugin on your website and activate it.
The Notix team delivers excellence and you will get prompt help if you have issues.
20. Use Content to Engage People by Solving Their Problems
There are some contents that make users to engage in your site.
When you have written a blog post sharing a particular problem, many will engage by asking you question via the comment box if they felt confused on any aspect.
Get involved with the community period!
Visit forums, search for related questions in your niche, solve the problem in your blog by writing about it.
Share the link on forums, and their problems were solved.
Some will choose to visit your blog to learn more tutorials!
21. Network with Other Bloggers
Blogging goes beyond writing and having an expert knowledge.
Great bloggers need a lot of collaboration among themselves to compete with big guys in the community.
If you have an idea or knowledge about something and you keep it to yourself, it means you are blocking yourself from learning more.
When you want to write about something which you have not experienced or which you do not know of, that doesn’t make the subject a no-go area.
If you think writing about that topic is very important to your growth and you can’t handle it, instead of misleading your audience, you can hire or interview other great bloggers who have the experience.
While that can help you build a powerful bond with other great bloggers, it will also make your audience trust you.
22. Hire Professional Blog Content Writers
It’s fine to note that, if you’re short of words and you can’t provide great contents for your visitors at a time, you should probably hire professional blog content writers to write on your blog.
These professional blog content writers are often talented.
They’d know how to write enticing articles you’ll fall in love with.
This also helps as an alternative in keeping your blog live and improving the number of visitors on your blog.
For quality content writing, I recommend HIREWRITERS.COM to get your articles written for you.
23. Be Consistent
In your quest to rank higher than your competitors, don’t give up on it. Consistency is key!
Your consistency shows your discipline level at your niche.
You have an ambition? Chase it. You have a passion too? Go after it,
Your competitors never gave up. Why should you?
You still have an unfilled goal. It’s time to work out your ass.
You can start now and re-write your own history today!
You can’t beat the competition by copying the competition.
24. Join Good Affiliate Programs
Most successful bloggers earn money daily via affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing could be as helping business organizations promote and selling their products or services for a certain commission.
If you’ve got amazing users and fan base on Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, your blog, or a popular Facebook group, you can start bringing getting bank alert if you can sell products on these platforms using any affiliate network of your choice.
Before you can become a high earning affiliate marketer, you need to join high paying affiliate programs.
Know what it takes to make your blog relevant, authoritative, visible, accessible and engaging to your audience.
25. Start Building an Email List
The biggest mistake many new and existing bloggers make is they don’t start building an email list from day one.
Most people will visit your blog once and never return, because they already have somewhere else, they get information on the type of content you’re offering.
The only way to get them back is to prompt them to sign up for your newsletter.
Your pop-up pitch must entice and, true to its word.
And every time they get an email from you on a new post, they’ll click to read, and overtime, come to trust your blog enough to visit it directly.
If you don’t build a mailing list from day one, your chances of becoming a successful blogger would be slim, because all your marketing expenditure could go down the drain when Facebook ads or pages, Google SEO, or any other marketing platform either goes down or blacklists you.
A great tool you can use to collect and send emails to your newsletter subscribers and blog readers, manage your marketing campaigns and keep track of your leads is GetResponse.
GetResponse makes all your emails and newsletters look great on all devices, automatically.
Responsive email design works its magic behind the scenes to get you 42% more results and more sales.
You can use GetResponse FREE Plan to get started today.
And when you’re ready to take your blog business and marketing to a new level, upgrade to one of the premium plans.
I equally use them, and their service is outstanding.
26. Use a Responsive and SEO-friendly WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme provides all the front-end styling of your blog/website.
Your WordPress theme of choice should not only be about colors and layouts but also provide seamless integration with your website’s content, besides being beautiful and easy-to-use.
It is extremely easy to build a great website using WordPress plus any responsive theme at HappyThemes.
The growing collection of high-quality themes at HappyThemes are clean, fast-loading, SEO-friendly, and flexible, enabling you to start your blog, website, or online business quickly.
All themes work with the latest version of WordPress (Gutenberg compatible), and are thoroughly tested using the latest browser versions (Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari) running on multiple device types (desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile phones).
If you’re looking for a recommendation, I recommend MakeMoney WordPress Theme, as this is what I started with and besides, it is SEO optimized for Google. Fast as well.
Over 1 million copies of themes have been downloaded by bloggers.
Get one today for your blog.
Final Words
Becoming a successful blogger will be difficult without having some qualities of a great blogger.
All you have to do is to invest in your blog, provide valuable contents to your readers and show all the features of a great blogger as discussed in this article.
I wish you success.
Indeed without these qualities it can be hard to create a successful blog. All the qualities listed here are a must for bloggers. Coming from a great blogger like you.