Tips For Building An Established Blog

#AD I often have days where people email me asking questions about the blog. “Why did you start blogging?” “HOW did you start blogging?” “How can I start my own blog?” “How do you make money from blogging” or the one I roll my eyes at a little “How do you get sent stuff for free?”.

There are a few things to note here – firstly, blogging is not, has never been, and more so now than ever, is not a quick and easy way to make money. It takes determination, persistence and a whole lot of effort to get to a stage where income is at a steady flow, however, there is still lots of benefit in starting a blog and establishing it as a source of income to support you or your family. Secondly, things are never free. It may look like that from the outside looking in, but trust me, swap places with me for a week and you’ll gain some insight into just how much work goes on behind the scenes in exchange for product.

In my 6 years of Real Mum Reviews, I have seen lots of bloggers come and go, starting a blog with the best of intentions before realising that things don’t happen as quickly as they would like, and giving up.

For those of you that are in for the long haul, here are my hints and tips for building an established blog.

Build up backlinks – become a trusted source of information. What is your area of expertise? What is your niche? What topic can you talk about with confidence, that other people will want to share / link back to? The stronger your backlinks the higher your domain authority.
Pay attention to your SEO – how you write your posts has a huge impact on how highly your posts will rank in google searches, and search engine optimisation is all about writing in a way that helps google index and rank your content. The Yoast plugin is really helpful to ensure your posts are SEO Friendly. Including alt text (a description of all your images) is particularly important, as well as ensuring that the key word you select practical and suitable for your content.
Be consistent – post regularly, and ideally at the same times / days of the week. Your followers will get used to your approach and learn to expect your content. By posting regularly, google will index your site more frequently, meaning that your content has the potential to be read more often.
Don’t just stop at the publish button – you can’t expect your readers to always come to you. In 2019, you have to go out and find them – publish and promote your posts – share on social media, add them to Pinterest and Mix, push them out in Facebook groups relevant to your topic. It’s a competitive digitial world out there and therefore in order to be seen you need to promote promote promote. You don’t have to do all this manually however, there are lots of tools you can use (some free and some with a small monthly fee) that can be used to schedule your blog posts to social media at predetermined times, meaning that where ever you are and whatever you’re doing, your blog continues to be promoted in the background.
Be flexible – to survive in the now heavily saturated world of blogging, particularly if you are in the parenting and lifestyle sector, you have to be adaptable – particularly when it comes to the world of social media With ever changing algorithms and hurdles to tackle, what works today almost certainly wont work tomorrow. You need to be willing to change your approach regularly and do what works RIGHT NOW in order to stay ahead of the game.
Plan ahead – an established blogger will always be planning ahead, creating content and working on features that will be interesting to their readers in a few months time. An editorial calendar is a great way of staying organised and ensuring you have content going out at the right time in the right style for your readers.
Be patient – building an established blog does not happen overnight. You cant expect to jump from 10 to 10000 followers quickly (at least not through ethical means) and therefore persistence and patience is key. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Keep learning and take every bit of advice about blogging you can find. There are so many things I wish I’d known when I first started blogging back in 2013, and since then I have really had my eyes opened to some of the things I should and shouldn’t have been doing when I first started! Create your tribe, network with other influencers, and keep learning.
My final tip is that blogging should NEVER feel like a chore. If you’re blogging with the sole purpose of making money, and not enjoying the writing and the creative process AT ALL, then you’re in it for the wrong reasons. For me, the money that the blog brings in is obviously a huge bonus, but even in the quiet months, even when I have no sponsored campaigns or am taking photos of every day life, I continue to do it because it’s a channel for my thoughts. I find writing therapeutic, a stress release, and if I am honest, I can’t imagine a week where I wouldn’t want to get out my laptop or scribble down my thoughts. Think long and hard about WHY you want to blog, and do what makes you happy. Everything else is a bonus.