Starting a successful blog involves precise planning, relevant research and fundamentally, gaining a full understanding of who your target audience is.
If you know how to get the most out of social media, then it can be really effective for drawing attraction to your blog but we’d recommend investing your time in a few starting factors first.
Start with WHY
The foundation of your blog can’t come from online tips, tricks or tools such as social media. The foundation of your blog starts with you and what you believe in. Simon Sinek has a really interesting theory that starts with identifying your why. He talks about people buy into why you do what you do, not what you do or how you do it.
We think that’s really important here. Ensuring you have a consistent message throughout everything that you’re doing will help you attract the audience and attention most suited to your blog.
“It’s about why you’re doing it, what your blog stands for”
Get exploring
It’s definitely worth spending a significant amount of time on getting your research done. It may be tempting to jump straight in and start building your content, but it’s essential to create your main blog theme and decide the topics you’re going to cover based on what’s already out there and what people want to see.
It’s easy to get lost in ideas and forget the importance of checking out other blogs, seeing where people are going right and wrong and ultimately, ensuring that there’s enough of an audience out there who are interested in what your blog has to offer. Otherwise, you can’t expect a high level of engagement.
So, the best way to get exposure online while you’re still in the early stages of blogging is to find out what people want, identify popular and consistent blogs and think about why they’re doing so well how are they giving their audiences value? Look at keyword research and start conversations based on what people are already searching for.
Creating a buzz
So where does social media come in? Well, social media can be a hugely effective platform for your blog if you use the right techniques. A technique we’d recommend for creating a buzz around your blog is newsjacking, a method we like to use at flatdot marketing.
Newsjacking consists of keeping up with big news stories by injecting your own thoughts, opinions and creative ideas into them online. So, this often involve thinking outside the box. The chances are, breaking news stories will be of no real relevance to your brand or your blog topics so it’s your mission to spin them into your content and ensure the voice of your blog is heard above all the noise!
A brand who mastered this is Snickers, who jumped on the story of Luis Suarez biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini. Snickers showed their own sense of humour while drawing attention to their product.
This got over 40,000 retweets, so it’s the perfect example of a brand jumping on a story, making it relevant and engaging an audience. It’s entertaining content at the top of the See, Think, Do, Delight marketing funnel. If you find something funny, you’re probably going to go and tell your friends, so that’s a great way to jump on board!
One thing I would say is to make sure that you are consistent with your activity, don’t get carried away and create a new blog every day for the first 2 weeks and then 2 months down the line it’s once every 2 weeks.