Imagine waking up one morning and realized that you’re a 2-year old blogger.
That was what happened to me. I started blogging in August 2011. So if you calculate it, I think I’m 2 years and 3 months old doing this thing called (blogging).
It’s been a fun-filled adventure. I’ve failed countless times but that doesn’t make me a failure. I’ve come to realize that failure isn’t a person, but an event.
Note: I actually started internet marketing in 2007 as a clickbank affiliate. But in 2011, I started my blog. So, this lesson may not apply for affiliate marketing, but blogging.
I’ve learned so much, but instead of listing the top 10 lessons, I want to draft it to just 1 hot lesson. I call it hot because if you concentrate on this one lesson and apply it to your own blogging business, then nothing can stop you from achieving tremendous success.
Why lessons are powerful
In School, we often take lessons on various courses. This is to prepare us for what lies ahead when we leave the four walls of College or University (depending on what you call it). But the truth is that life itself is a lesson.
Oftentimes, we underestimate how much education life itself gives to us. You can’t find or learn those hard-knock lessons from any book, blog or from any keynote speaker (not even from the great Tony Robbins).
Whatever lesson you’ve learned whether good or bad should motivate you. It should make you a better person & a better blogger.
Don’t be like those who despise change and complain when it happens. Change is inevitable. Embrace it and the potential that lies within you will rise up strong.
Here is the 1 powerful lesson I’ve learned blogging for 2 straight years:
Without epic content, your blog is already dead
This might sound scary, but it’s true. The harsh reality is that a blog that isn’t growing is already dead. When I started blogging, I read somewhere (I can’t recall) that giving value to your readers is what builds engagement and inspires them to trust you.
I made a decision to always produce good content. But as a newbie, I didn’t know what makes up a good content even though I was advised to imbibe the habit of writing it. At the time, I would stuff keywords in order to get my content ranked in Google top 10. Did it work for me?
Of course, it worked so well. But the problem was that stuffing keywords has never been a good SEO content strategy. As a result of that, when Google first released their Panda update, my rankings drowned.
Then in 2012, I attended a conference and there, one of the speakers explained what epic content is – content that inspires, helps people & solves a problem, relevant to your blog and interesting as well. That’s what defines good content. He didn’t mention quality content – because the word “quality†is relative.
The moment I discovered the truth about epic content, I started writing it and within 3 months, my blog started to increase in organic traffic, email subscribers and clients started coming my way.
If your blog is stagnant, you can take these simple action steps to quicken it. Start by identifying your target audience, find out what they’re desperately looking for (do keyword research), then pull a seat and write epic content consistently using the specifications from my Speaker friend.
From 2012 till date, I’m proud to announce to everyone that my blog is growing faster than I imagined. In fact, 85% of the articles I wrote in 2012 are still pulling traffic from search engines. I also get over 50 referral traffic daily.
I didn’t try to stuff keywords on those, I just followed a simple step by adding the keyword on the title and then “got lost†in a world of passion for my niche – I wrote blog posts that were detailed, helpful and engaging. You should do the same thing and your blog will grow – it’s a guarantee!
Take action on this…
Marketing/promoting your epic content is another lesson I learned. But the one that changed my life and grew my blog is providing value in whatever content I publish, on my blog as well as a guest post.
There is a hidden secret behind blogs that have epic content in them – they ALWAYS pull targeted traffic without investing heavily on advertising.
For instance, moz, copyblogger, Johnchow, Wikipedia, searchengineland and several other internet marketing blogs out there don’t waste money on advertising – people (you and I) happily link back to their posts because they’ve epic content. Think about it.
That is my one hot lesson after 2 years of blogging. I hope the lesson isn’t too common to you. Yes, you may have heard/read that epic content is king, but are you producing it regularly? Learn more about good content at www.content marketingup.com.
What is your own lesson and how long have you been blogging? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it. See you ahead!