Some call it professional blogger while others call it problogger.
Out of every 10 bloggers I meet, 9 wish to be one. The chances of success you are asking?
I’ll give it a 5% chance of success.
There are tons of blogs out there but are there so less bloggers who really achieve success in this blogging industry? Is it really that tough to become a problogger?
Have you ever wonder why there are so many bloggers fail to achieve success in blogging?
It was lunch time and as usual, I was having my meal with the accompany of Feedly. I saw the notification bar and I had over 70 new posts to read and I thought “Okay, let’s choose 10 and that should be just nice for an hour break”.
I ended up reading only one.
Yes, you hear me right. Just one article.
It was an article written by Jay Baer from Convince And Convert. You can find the article here. Basically, it was about 6 steps to build a great content marketing strategy. And heck, he is really successful (off topic).
And this struck me like lightning bolt as I remembered a received a message on Facebook the day before from a friend asking about ‘being an problogger’.
While Jay outlined 6 steps, mine is much more simpler with just 4.
So, let’d dive in and get the ball rolling!
How do you become a problogger in just 4 steps?
Blogging is no longer the 90’s way where backlinks and normal blogging would lead to a successful blog. Now, you need to be different and by different I mean being bold.
Don’t just share the darn information you can find on the web but instead, share something others are not doing (at least for starters).
Putting aside all my rant (above), here are the 4 points:
- Goals
- Strategies
- Marketing
- Measurement
Step 1 – Setting actionable blogging goals
If you are expecting blogging once a day and traffic will pour in itself, then you are dead wrong, dear friend.
For Christ’s sake, blogging nowadays is not the same with years back. Everything is evolving!
Setting the right goals in blogging is always simple and allow me to share my goals with you:
- What are you good in? – Consider blogging on things you know is highly recommended
- Who do I target? – Questions such as male, female, age and location are great starts
- Why would people come to my site? – Ask yourself what you can offer to your visitors
- What do you consider as success? – Realistic is the key here
I got to admin the above has little or nothing to do with goals but those are great start to get your goals ‘moving in’.
One important thing I would like to stress is NEVER consider these as your goals:
- I want lots of traffic
- I want to get PageRank 6 (or any digit)
- I want to make thousands of dollars like Mr You Know Who
Those hopes and dreams won’t bring you far. Sorry.
Be realistic or else, you will forever miles away from the big boys in blogging.
Step 2 – Strategies determine both success and failure in blogging
You want to be a problogger and I get it. Now, do you have an action plan to work with?
Today, everything in blogging is changing. For example, SEO in 2014 is different from 2013.
The keyword in blogging is balance. Make sure you have a balance strategy which involves SEO, social media, content marketing and link building.
Being good in one doesn’t guarantee you success in blogging.
If your content strategy is still ‘creating tons of articles and wait for traffic to flow in’, you are in for trouble.
A few sources to help you with blogging strategy could be:
- Getting feedbacks from readers (I uses GetResponse for Q&A survey ~ Try it for 30 days free)
- Social listening (check out the trending topics on Gogole, Facebook and Twitter)
- Search engine analysis (I uses SEO PowerSuite for a comprehensive analysis ~ Free trial version)
Step 3 – The viral effect of marketing
You need to market your content. People will not magically find your content … unless you are as popular as Neil Patel, Pat Flynn or Darren Rowse.
You should treat your blog like a product and launch them the same way you would do for a product (Jay Baer).
One of the biggest mistake I often see on Facebook is sharing and article, tagging God knows how many people and hoping it goes viral.
Well my friend, that is only going to land in you the spam. *Most of us hate irrelevant tagging. So please cut it off.*
Instead, find the right group and tell them to read about it. Of course, a good way to start is by informing your mailing list and you can start one using this guide.
Step 4 – Measuring your blogging success
If you want to be a problogger, make sure that you are measuring your success. You don’t have to do it on a daily basis but instead, you can opt for weekly or monthly measuring.
A few metrics that you could measure in blogging are:
- Strategy vs Traffic
- Conversion rate
- New vs Returning visitors
So, why do you need measurements in blogging?
Measurements align you with your blogging goals (refer step #1). It gives you a complete outlook of what you come short of getting more blog traffic and of course, possible steps to start becoming a professional blogger.
When it comes to measuring blog success, ensure that you are giving yourself goals which are achievable as raising the bar sky high would lead to much failures and a drop in motivation.
Now, what do you think it takes to become a professional blogger?
I certainly hope this short article could give you a simple outlook on becoming a problogger. Do you have any plans to strategies you would want to share with all of us?
Use the comment form below and tell me your thoughts on this matter.
