As an aspiring digital marketer, consultant or entrepreneur, starting a digital marketing blog could be one of your biggest launch pad to build the next world class digital agency regardless, of your location.
It could also serve as the best platform to build thought leadership, attract the right audience, get new customers and make a killing with your digital marketing business.
But, starting a successful digital marketing blog is not a walk in the park. It demands loads of hands on experience, critical thinking and a lot of strategizing.
After almost a decade of running one of the frontline marketing blogs in Africa, in this guide, I’ll be taking you through the proven strategies you can use to build a thriving digital marketing blog, grow it and make a decent living from it.
Choose your Audience
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One of the first steps to start a digital marketing blog is to choose your audience wisely. This is a serious deal breaker that can make or break your success.
Although this might sound cliché, as a blogger, you live for your audience. Everything you’re doing is tailored towards getting you a better visibility, improved traffic and a larger audience. And only your audience can deliver this.
So, before starting your digital marketing blog, be sure to figure out your audience. Find out who they are, where they are and content that matters to them.
Knowing your audience affords you powerful insight to create content and implement strategies tailored to meet the needs of that audience.
And, the more you’re able to meet their needs consistently, the more they come back to your blog.
Done well, this becomes the foundation to build your success easily.
Make a Plan
Starting a blog is like going on a journey. At some point, you’ll need some sort of guidelines to keep you on track.
Since you’re about getting started now, go ahead, write out the things you want to achieve with your blog and how you plan to achieve them.
This is one of the most crucial steps you must take before starting a digital marketing blog.
In addition to setting out your goals and expected outcomes, add some deadlines to it. Doing this keeps you in check.
At intervals, you’re going to come back to this plan to ensure that your daily, weekly and monthly activities are working out just as they should and according to plan.
Create Great Content
One of the pillars of successful blogging lies in creating content that meets the needs of your target audience, always.
A great content is content that is very useful to the target audience. It’s the kind of content that’s informative, educational or entertaining.
This kind of content could be industry trends, popular niched topics, keyword driven content etc. Whatever you choose, be sure your content is useful to your audience, if you really plan to start a digital marketing blog successfully.
Also, beyond creating content, focus on delivering high value content aimed at providing solutions to existing needs of your target audience and you’ll build a loyal tribe.
PS: To create useful content, you must also understand the different types of content and kind of content that works for your audience, be it written text, videos, audios etc.
Optimize for Visibility
When planning to start a digital marketing blog that thrives, keep in mind it’s not enough to write great content. There are millions of valuable contents out there with very limited visibility.
For your blog posts to stand out and get noticed, go the extra mile to optimize and get it ready for search visibility.
Using search optimization best practices including keywords optimization as well as the use of on page and off page SEO strategies, go all the way to optimize your content for improved visibility.
This is a key strategy that can make or break the success of your digital marketing business.
PS: This might also extend to using catchy post titles, optimizing for social media and adding images or videos to improve your content
Promote Massively
It’s possible for content to get stale on a website because there are no website visitors.
At the initial stages, instead of waiting for your target audience to come to your blog, take your content to meet them right where they are. Eventually, they will start coming over to your blog on their own.
There are both free and paid options to promote your content to audiences across different platforms.
Choose what works for you and be sure to take note of your outcomes for future improvements.
PS: If you have a decent budget, you can use social media ads, Google Ads or Sponsored ads to promote your blog. Doing this can give you the needed head start in your early days.
Audit & Evaluate
Starting a digital marketing blog calls for a lot of work, strategy and effort. Sometimes your best strategies may not deliver on expected outcomes.
Instead of continuing with a strategy or plan that’s not working, take out time to reassess your blog and the results from your effort.
From time to time, evaluate your plan to find out what’s working and what’s not. figure out areas that needs improvements and what’s already working.
Doing this gives you an idea on things you can do to build on sustainable growth for your blog and other part of the strategy that needs a total overhaul.
Rinse & Repeat
Blogging is a marathon. Sometimes, it’ll take months and years of work and sweat to build a digital marketing blog successfully.
Even with your best efforts, there are days you’ll feel down and out but one thing you have to do, is to keep blogging day in, day out and build on your successes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are a few other tips that’ll help you as you get to start your blog but these are some of the surefire strategy that’s worked for me and many other bloggers.
Using these strategies will get you started on the right footing as you go about building your own digital marketing blog.
And of course, to get even better results, sign up for our blogging course here and we’ll get you equipped with all the right skills from scratch.
It’s your turn now. What’s your biggest challenges when it comes to blogging? Drop your comments below.
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