5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting A Blog

Blogging is one of the hottest trends in Nigeria and many other countries around the world. While many individuals are attempting to join the growing number of bloggers making a fortune off a hobby, few have little to no clue on how to start a blog or how to create a successful blog people will want to visit and engage with.

Starting a blog goes beyond just having the compulsion to choose a great domain name. If you don’t plan on adding any value to your readers lives and following up passionately with regularly published blog posts, success may become a real problem for you.

If you plan on starting a blog but are unsure of what it would take or whether you have the right motivation to start one, here are 5 questions you need to ask yourself before you write your first blog post:

See Also: How To Start A Blog In 20 Minutes

1). Why Do I Want To Blog?

First, you have to clearly define your purpose for starting a blog. If your reason lies on making money from your blog within a very short time, then you’re better off doing something else.

People who start blogs purely to make money from the onset churn out low quality content, steal a good number of their posts from other successful blogs, and shutdown their blogs before it even has a chance to complete its first year.

Whereas, blogging to increase your sales and acquire more customers is a positive reason. When your blogs focuses on a specific niche that helps people solve their problems, with your own product as a strong option for them to use in the process, it would eventually record success on the long run.

While there are diverse reasons for starting a blog; ranging from whether it’s a passion, to as a way to grow your business, or simply as an immature get-rich-quick scheme, you have to be clear on your goals so you can follow through on the long term.

See Also: 5 Amazing Ways To Make Money From Home

2). What Will My Blog Be Known For?

The most popular blogging category in Nigeria and several other places around the world is “gossip”. The major reason this category is doing so well is because, people always want to know what is happening at almost all times during the day. They want to see what their favourite celebrities are up to, which controversies are hot, how the government plans to improve their well being, and a lot more.

This sounds like a great category to focus on right? Here’s the problem: It’s over-saturated!

With successful millionaire bloggers like Linda Ikeji, Bella Naija, Stelladimokokorkus, Miss Petite Naija, and an extra few who have covered the entire gossip niche, 95% of newer gossip blogs would probably not succeed.

Outside of gossip, there are other categories like fashion, travel, food, health, how-tos, and more that newer bloggers can take advantage of.

By selecting a niche you have some experience in, has little to no competition, and has a sizeable number of potential readers in your country, you can position yourself as an authority in it, and take over the market before it reaches saturation.

Picking a less saturated niche with great potentials is crucial to the success of your blog.

See Also: 5 Important Things To Know Before Starting A Business In Nigeria

3). What Will I Name My Blog?

A name, just like a logo, is your brand identity. It signifies what you stand for, what you’re about, and what you generally want people to expect from you. The importance of a name drives the notion that caution, intellect, and creativity needs to be put into coming up with a great name for your blog.

When you’re starting a blog, the name you choose should either portray what people should expect from the blog, or should be slightly ambiguous to cover more potential categories. An example of a website with a great name is entrepreneur.com. The name makes you know its focus is on helping entrepreneurs through their business journey.

By picking the right name that adequately represents your blog, you would have prevented a major problem of having to rename your blog sometime in the future.

See Also: 5 Things Investors Hate About Your Business Name

4). How Often Do I Have To Post Articles?

Deciding what times of the day or week you have to post an article, is highly dependent on how much time you can free up to focus on your blog.

For a gossip blog, you have to put up a blog post as soon as there’s a hot news update. This could span through the day to involve you posting 10 to 25 times in 24 hours. With little time on the hands of most people, starting a gossip blog is not an option.

For a lifestyle, food, health, or content marketing blog, you can post at least once every week. Since what you’re writing adds intellectual value to your readers and doesn’t just give them news, they’d visit your blog once or twice a week to see what posts you may have put up.

The type of blog you intend to run ultimately determines how often you’d post. But it’s crucial to know that frequency drives loyalty, and if you want people to constantly return to see what new article you’ve put up, you’d have to post high quality content on a more regular basis.

See Also: How To Grow A Profitable Business When You Can’t Quit Your Job

5). How Do I Get People To Visit My Blog?

There are several strategies to grow your blog’s visibility. The most popular method is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is pretty much the act of adhering to strict SEO practices, so as to increase your visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, and the likes.

Other efficient ways to grow your blog’s traffic are:

• Email marketing
• Social Media
• Guest Posting
• Getting influencers to repost your content
• Posting on forums
• Sponsoring an event
• Posting the latest news first
• Advertising

And a lot more.

Before starting out, you need to understand that it would take a whole lot to grow your blog than the usual notion of “write it and they will come”, and that growing your blog would take a lot of your personal time.

It’s equally important to know that promoting your blog through any of these means would have no value if the content you post regularly is poor or adds little to no value to your readers.

If you’re willing to make out time and go through the behemoth process of promoting your blog contents and as regularly as possible, then starting a blog may just be right for you.

See Also: 10 Ways To Build A Successful New Business

What are your thoughts on these 5 questions to ask yourself before starting a blog? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

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