What is Blogging? A Beginner’s Guide to Blog Marketing

With one of the most trending topics in the era of digital marketing, YouTube being a career and a rise in Content Writes on the internet, one major fact that we have to address is that Blogs are becoming more relevant as well as popular in terms of getting to know more about an individual or a brand through the content put out on the Blogs. This leads to a majority of people wondering and finding out more about ‘How blogs Work’ or ‘What is Blogging?’ 

This would be an article that would bring in clarity on the basic questions to be answered and ensure you have a takeaway of information and insights on what the whole concept is about!

What is Blogging and How Does it Work?

As individuals who are a part of a growing digital global platform, we all know that there has been significant growth in the usage of the internet for our day to day functions and key job roles, for a lot of information that we would possibly derive from it for our businesses, jobs, school assignments and college examinations.

For every possible reason, one major part being the fact that the internet has ensured that we have a platform to find information about all the key areas that we would want to know more about as well as having significant growth in individuals finding Job Roles that may interest them with regards to having to work remotely.

With that being established, with an increase of businesses having their websites online and having a need for Content Writers and Bloggers have significantly increased with the increased usage of the internet. From having to market the products and services to having to write scripts for campaigns, Bloggers and Content Writers have been rigorously working to provide quality content for growth of the companies they are working with/for and also making sure that their requirements are met.

Now answering one of the most asked questions on what is blogging and how does it work? 

Well, Blogs are basically websites made simplified that could be created and published by anyone who can put out content and information for their audience to enjoy. And hence blogging/bloggers are individuals who create and publish their work for the benefit of their audience. Just a fact that can be put out, the word Blog has been derived to be a short version of ‘weblog’ which means an online journal that you would create and publish from time to time in the form of a website.

With that being said, we all know that usually, a blog consists of a series of posts that are put out by one or more bloggers depending on what is the main idea behind the blog.  While the recent posts are shown and displayed in chronological order which essentially means that the most recent article is displayed as the topmost article while the older articles can be browsed by the audience as per what they would want to see.

Blogs can aim at a single topic or a niche or could cover a variety of aspects depending on the aim and motive of the blog.
A few common niches that you would find Blogs in are:

1. Parenting aspects
2. Small/medium business and their products
3. Cooking, food and recipes
4. The entertainment industry and celebrities
5. Career advice
6. Product reviews
7. Sports

Why do Individuals Choose to be a Blogger?

While we have answered the questions on what blogging is and how blogs work, it is also important to consider why so many people are blogging now and what interests them. With one of the major reasons being the fact that anyone who has interests in creating content by sharing their words/thoughts and emotions in a manner that their audience would stay put in a few clicks and in a matter of no time could be set up. 

Another major reason why individuals choose this field is of the fact that this is the easiest way to establish themselves in the chosen niche that may lead to potential sales or capturing customers. The fact that Blogs could also be monetized for you to earn more as a side hustle or as a full-time income source attracts people across the globe.

Blogs are also used and integrated with company websites so that SEO related articles could attract more potential customers and traffic over their platform. To put it down easier in a glance, there are a few reasons why individuals may want to choose blogging as a side hustle or a full-time career is because:

To Send a Message:
One major reason for putting out content over a blog is to send a message that they would invariably would want to convey through the post. This may be by a professional service that they want to promote or even as simple as an experience that they want to share for their audiences to read and enjoy.

Promotion of Particular Expertise:
Even though there are blogs that serve simple purposes of journaling or having posts that are very easy to read and enjoy, blogs are platforms that could be monetized or collaborated with certain brands or companies to promote their expertise, services or products that may benefit the audience.

The blog continues to stay over the Internet:
With the growth of content being put up on the internet and the forms of sharing content have expanded, blogs have changed quite a lot from simple journaling style of expression (of thoughts and opinions) to sites having a lot of traffic that it has, they are mostly considered to bring in a generous income by collaborating with partners, influencers and businesses.

With more and more exposure to the internet, blogs will have grown and changed patterns in personal as well as business forms of communication online.

Blogging for fun and personalized:
This kind of bogs are usually shared by the individuals who are usually well-established or at a stage where there are enough people who are following them to update about their families, their daily routine, food that they cook, or even about their hobbies/interests or jobs.

However, you may not have much traffic or readers if you do not have much following. Whereas niche topics with a wide range of posts have more audience who want to know more.

Blogs catering to profits:
While some blogs are for personal purposes, there are some blogs that are started with a motive of generating income. With advertisements and the method of PPC incorporated on their blogs, where many brands and businesses approach the bloggers to promote their products and services. In such cases, some bloggers earn a generous income while some bloggers may not earn much. 

Practices You Could Follow If  You Are A Beginner:

Blogs being one platform that is used to regularly and frequently update articles in a wide scope of the area or specific niche, it could be informative, opinionated, or entertaining depending on the individual, brand, the subject, or the targeted audience. 

While you use this platform to generate certain traffic that could be potential converted leads, if you are a blogger who has just started out and are looking at a certain set of practices that you may want to follow to tasks easier, here are a few practices that many established bloggers have done in their blogging career to ensure that you have results that you desire with minimum efforts:

Use concise, crisp, compelling, and attractive titles or headlines. This invariably means that using short and crisp titles that are descriptive would do the job of your target audience clicking to read the post. Use keywords and easy to find content as well as make navigating through your blog easier which would mean adding a search widget on your blog for people to search the content that they want to be redirected to.

Ensure your content is framed in a way that it is SEO friendly so that your blog is ranked in a way that the potential target audience clicks on your blog. This would mean content pieces that are optimized for search engines.

Planning and creating content for your audience should be the primary motive of creating content and posts for your audience and their interests would certainly work in your favor. This should match the bar or quality and standards that you may have set for your blog keeping in mind the suggestions that they would constantly give from time to time.

If you are running the blog for your business, it is important to keep in mind to post content that is very close as well as relevant to the vision/mission and the most searched content relating to the products and services of your business. This should be of relevance and closely knit to your business.

While you post all the relevant content on your blog, it is important to share in on other social media platforms and distribute it depending on what the requirements of the situation suggest. Update the posts you put out and should be done frequently and regularly. This would be important to keep up with the changing market trends.

One important pointer that should always be kept in mind is that you have to be consistent in terms of putting out the posts and content but also to keep in mind that you should be planning and scheduling your content in advance. This will not only help you meet your deadline but also guide you through the path of success. There are several tools in this niche that you can loop up for planning and scheduling bit for your blog posts.

Major reasons why blogs and posting content on blogs are catching attention is because how creative yet informative it can get depending on the individual or the business. An important factor that makes a blog a success is because web analytics tools are used alongside content that performs the best without a doubt. There are again various tools that will help you in this area including Google Analytics if you are looking at measuring and identifying how well your post has done and key areas to improve.

Content with just information or plain text could be boring and thus, it is important to add a few pictures here and there to make it much more interesting. You could however consider accepting guest posts which may just increase the viewership of your blog and help you showcase the expertise that you possess.

One step towards making your blog more engaging would be accepting feedback and constructive criticisms would not only help you know what articles and posts would help you make better content but also to understand what kind of articles your audience would like to read on your platform.

Using short and concise paragraphs, subheadings and proper lists would help you make your content more reliable and easy to read. This would make it easier to comprehend as well as get a better understanding of what information the readers would want to pick up from the content that you have put.

There are several tools, Softwares and plugins that you would want to use if you want to make your platform more engaging, personalized and creative. A few of the platforms that you may have heard of are Hubspot, SEMrush, etc.

Conclusion:

Knowing that exposure to the internet that is dynamic and changing patterns of communications over the internet, blogs have invariably gained a lot of exposure and a change in the pattern of how posts and communications have happened, they have had their own fair share of recognition and merits.

While blogs are a beautiful platform for businesses, networking, news, personal journaling and other professional advantages, in the overall scenario, blogs as a career or a niche are being taken on more seriously with time.

I hope with this article, you have had your fair knowledge of a few buzzes around this niche, and have had the chance to enjoy this article. With this field that is growing, we hope to have more knowledge of the changing patterns of blogs and continue to enjoy their features.