6 Steps to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

Is your blog currently stagnant, or are you tired of which level you are with your blog at the moment? I have good news for you, progress can still be achieved!

In this article I share 6 steps you should take to move your blog to the next level.

1 – Be Consistent, But Don’t Have a Schedule

Be consistent with your blogging but don’t have a schedule.

We’re all used to the idea of blogging by sticking to a schedule but the reality is that it hardly works if we really want to contribute value to our audience. You don’t have to be forced to post on a particular day; only post when you have something of value to say.

Of course, consider my point about consistency. In other words, not having a schedule doesn’t mean you should post once a week and then not post for a whole month. Make sure you post in a consistent basis in a way that lets your readers know you’re reliable and should be trusted.

2 – Diversify, Diversify and Diversify

This applies to traffic, income and approach. Don’t depend on just one source of traffic, income or results; let your business be built on multiple streams of everything and carry out from there. Of course, you can use one approach to influence the other, such as using guest blogging to improve your search engine traffic but make sure your blog is as secure as possible in such a way that if one or more source of results to your blog were to dump you your blog will hardly be affected.

3 – Reinforce Your Core Message and Filter Out Your Target Audience

Bloggers make the mistake of not wanting to piss their “readers” off, of not wanting to offend anyone and of wanting everybody to read their stuff because they want their brand to grow. Unfortunately, that won’t get you anywhere.

What is your core message for your blog and what kind of audience do you really want to build? Who is your target reader? Do as much as you can to filter those you don’t want out and prevent them from reading your blog; it can be by telling them explicitly that you don’t want them to read your blog, it can be by looking for ways to offend them so that they don’t read your blog and it can be by integrating a message to your kind of target audience in your USP.

4 – Start Monetizing…Now

One thing I notice most newbie bloggers say is I want to wait to build an audience before I start monetizing. Now, tell me, what does it mean to build an audience? How big should a real audience be?

Most of the people who say the above are people who hardly get results…because they don’t even have the plan to monetize. They are not monetizing out of fear and they probably will never get over it.

Don’t let that be the case for you; stop procrastinating and start monetizing now. Let your guiding light be the genuine passion to help your readers, and if it is you won’t be afraid to recommend a paid product that will provide them the solution they need.

5 – Be Professional with Your Approach

Blogging seeks professionalism and a great reason why most bloggers just can’t seem to break through the mediocre is because they are not professional. In every aspect, make sure you’re professional. This includes with your design, your content and your approach.

I was reading somewhere (I think on Twitter) a while ago that John Chow designed the current theme being used on this blog at the time of writing this article for several thousands of dollars, and that the company that designed it doesn’t charge any less than $7,500 for professional design. Now, how’s that for being professional?

We all know this to be true, someone who is willing to spend $7,500 on a blog design has already taken it as a business. Of course, you might not have a business the size of John’s right now, and you don’t need to go into debt to design a cool blog but that doesn’t mean you should neglect good design altogether. There are great premium templates out there today for around $47+ and you can easily customize them to your taste for less than $300.

Another aspect of being professional is with your approach; stop all those posts apologizing for your not having written a blog post in ages, stop all those emails barraging your readers for not having gotten in touch in a while. Choose a plan and stick to it and when you fail to do so discipline yourself.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t apologize when you’re wrong…readers appreciate it when it is rare but they hate it if it is starting to become too often.

6 – Get the Experts on board

It might seem like a great idea to keep on contributing your message to your audience by sharing your own opinion and getting people to guest post won’t be as effective because guest bloggers are easy to find today. One thing, though, is very difficult to find online today…and that one thing is expertise.

For a moment, imagine how much influence getting someone like John Chow as a guest on your blog will do for your brand; imagine the credibility, the potential visitors from him sharing the interview and the expertise he can contribute to your audience. Even better, you can easily get most experts to contribute to your blog for free these days; all you need to do is interview them.

Getting experts on board by interviewing them also has another advantage; you will have an opportunity to introduce a new medium of communication and as a result build better relationships with your readers. For example, you can easily start an expert interview series and use mediums like video and audio…something you aren’t probably doing on your blog before. That alone will get your readers to know, and trust, you and as a result they will happily spread the message about your brand.

John Smith is an expert that researches and review TRX coupon code and the flex belt coupon for his readers.