11 Quick Actions You Can Take Right Now To Set Your Blog Up For Explosive Success

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Quick Actions To Set up successful Blog
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You can browse and read all the blogging tips on the ShoutMeLoud, but they will be meaningless unless you take action.

For your blog to be successful, you have to brutally channel your efforts on the things that matter most for your blog growth, and stop squandering time on trivial things.

Right now, I’m going to make it simple for you to take the necessary actions required to positively enhance your blog and set it up for explosive success. All I want from you is to set aside a few minutes and implement the 11 easy tasks I’m about to share with you here.

I promise to make it simple for you to follow. The good thing is that the more of these tasks you complete, the more advancement you’ll make toward making your blog a success.

11 Quick Things To Do To Attain Blogging Success

1. Start Building an Email List

Start Building an Email List
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Let me be blunt:

If as a marketer in 2017 you’re not yet building your blog email list, you’re a comedian.

And you’re greatly missing out on many good things.

Having an active email list is a good way to drive repeat visitors to your website without depending much on other external traffic sources, especially when your blog is relatively new (I’m sure you’ve read much about this before).

Follow these easy steps to start building your email list in minutes:

  • Sign up for an email marketing service like Convertkit or  Aweber
  • Create an email form to capture email on your blog
  • Design an optin form and put it in all the strategic places on your blog.
  • Create a lead magnet and offer it to the people that join your list (this will help entice more people to give you their email address).

Don’t waste any more time, and start building a list right away. The earlier you start, the more your list will grow, and the more traffic and customers you’ll start driving to your site.

We’ve already covered this topic a lot on this blog.

Check out: 

2. Comment on Related Blogs in Your Niche

I’m sure you know about the enormous benefits that come with blog commenting, including the traffic it can drive to your website. Let me tell you, all the sweet things you’ve been hearing about blog commenting are not false marketing tactics.

Blog commenting really works.

I was able to generate a whopping sum of $650 a few months ago from a single comment. That’s not all, I also know of many bloggers that have benefitted immensely from blog commenting.

See why I will always vouch for blog commenting?

By leaving engaging, thoughtful, and informative comments on relevant blogs in your niche, you will not only drive loads of traffic to your blog, if your blog is properly optimized for conversion, you can make a hell of a lot of money.

Therefore, if you’re not yet leveraging the massive benefits of blog commenting, you have to start now. It’s never too late.

Check out:

3. Interview an Influential Figure in Your Niche

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When your blog is still new, you don’t have answers to every question on your niche, and your visitors understand that – you need to take time to develop your own unique voice.

In that early stage, you don’t have to see yourself as an expert; rather, assume yourself as a facilitator. But you still need to regularly bring expert advice to your readers even though you cannot create all of it yourself.

One of the best ways to ensure you always provide your audience with the useful information they seek is by interviewing some of the experts in your industry. That’s not all, interviewing experts will also make your readers start thinking of you as one of them, which is what you want.

Also, once you’ve published the interview, there’s every possibility that the interviewee will mention the interview on his/her own blog – this will also make his/her audience pay you a visit, and if your blog is worth it, they might eventually become repeat visitors.

Here is an example of my interview published on YourStory.

4. Try Different Content Formats

If your content marketing format only involves writing articles, you might be missing something big. This is because people prefer consuming information in a variety of ways.

For instance, some of your readers might prefer watching video tutorials over reading text. Some might like consuming information via podcasts. Some others might prefer visuals (images and infographics). Some people prefer the Seth Godin style of writing to the regular 1,500 words posts you’re used to publishing.

The point is to try a different content format that you’re not used to.

It doesn’t matter what style you’ve been using for blog posts; I challenge you to try other formats. Some of the ones you might consider looking into are:

  • Audio
  • Infographics
  • Video
  • 1.500 words or more
  • 500 words or less
  • Interviews
  • Case studies
  • Quiz

Whichever format you chose to try, do it well and to the best of your knowledge, or outsource it to an expert.

Read: 9 Quick and Substantial Blog Posts for Your Business Blog

5. Update Some of Your Older Posts

Update Some of Your Older Posts
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This is something most bloggers are ignorant of. Some of the blog posts on your blog might be outdated, and therefore, serve no purpose.

These posts might have been epic and educational when they were first published, but as time goes by, they became irrelevant.

For example, if you’re someone that writes about SEO, I bet that any SEO guide on your blog that is more than two years old is already useless or about to get outdated, and is no longer driving any traffic to your blog. This is because SEO is a frequently evolving aspect of internet marketing.

Therefore, it’s highly advisable that you revisit some of those old posts and freshen them up. The moment you’ve given them a breath of fresh air, they’ll start ranking well in the SERPs again, thereby bringing in new and excited visitors to your site.

Check out:

6. Promote Old Posts

This is very similar to the last point. However, there are some blog posts on your blog that are evergreen and just need a little push for them to start generating traffic again.

But you don’t have to rewrite these blog posts; all that is required is for you to take them to your readers again, so they know they exist.

You really have to try this one right away because some of these posts might be very useful to some people, but they’re deeply buried in your blog’s archive.

Apart from sending the posts out to your email list, other brilliant ways to promote them is through social media and content syndication sites. Interestingly, with a cool WordPress plugin like Revive Old Posts, you can automatically start sharing these posts on Twitter and Facebook again.

Revive Old Post – Auto Post to Social Media
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As you can see from the image above, the plugin lets you decide on the time to share each post, and it also lets you choose the number of posts to share.

Check out:

7. Answer Questions on Quora

Quora is an online Q&A platform where anyone can ask a question and immediately get reasonable answers from experts in the community.

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The site was launched way back in 2009, but has recently become so popular that even people you don’t expect to be answering questions are answering questions on Quora (like Barack Obama).

Once you land on the Quora homepage, you will find answers to any questions you can think of. You just have to locate the questions that are relevant to your niche and start providing useful and insightful answers to them.

Trust me, if you do this properly, Quora might end up becoming your number one source of traffic.

Check out:

8. Add Social Proof To Your Blog

via GIPHY

Social proof is a formidable influencer. When people discover that others are doing a particular thing, they’re very likely to do that same thing themselves. If they notice that a lot of their peers are subscribed to your email list, they’re more likely to subscribe too – this is pure social science.

However, this can only work when you have impressive numbers. Don’t expect people to start flooding to your email list after seeing you only have 51 subscribers.

But when you land on a community website like ours (ShoutMeLoud) and see on the homepage that over 900,000 people are subscribed to the blog, you definitely want to join too because of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

This means more traffic and leads coming into your blog.

Add Social Proof To Your Blog
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Therefore, start showing social proof when ever you could. I usually start showing numbers when I reaches 3 digits on any social media platform.

Check out:

9. Display Your Best Stuff

When people visit your site, you need to put your best foot forward. The simplest way to do this is to stylishly link to some of your best posts, either on your blog’s sidebar or in some other visible place.

 Display Your Best Stuff
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It’s entirely up to you how you decide which posts will be selected. It could either be your trending posts, your most viewed posts, your most commented on posts, your most shared posts, etc.

Showing most popular posts or trending posts also have SEO benefits. Since they are linked from all the pages, it improves internal link flow & helps in better ranking. I have already talked about SEO interlinking here.

To display your popular posts, you should choose a good widget plugin on the WordPress plugin directory to effortlessly do the work for you.

The bottom line is to give people your best stuff so that they stick around and share your content with their friends.

10. Show less ads/pop-ups

When you’re just starting, and your blog only has a few readers, plastering advertisements all over the place is not a smart idea.

Think of it, how much can those ads earn you during those critical formative months anyway? I doubt the earnings will even be enough to buy a cup of coffee; but having them up will cost you a lot.

In case if you are not aware, having too many ads on a new blog could turn off readers and ultimately hinder your growth.

Read: When to add Advertisement to a blog?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t monetize your blog but you need to ensure that you offer your content in most readable way possible.

Ask yourself:

Can you afford to limit your growth potential because of a few improperly placed ads?

You should start to gradually and respectfully introduce ads once your site is bigger and you’ve earned a little trust from your audience.

But, there are many other ways you can monetize your blog other than putting up ads.

11. Learn The Basics of SEO

Learn The Basics of SEO
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Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical aspect of internet marketing and therefore, shouldn’t be ignored. It’s because of SEO that we get more than 1.5 million page views a month.

It’s one of those tasks that requires a few minutes to learn and decades to master. However, by just knowing the basics, you can be ready to leverage the enormous benefits that come with knowing SEO. You should browse ShoutMeLoud free SEO archive to learn everything about SEO.

This is one of the things that, if you do properly, will continue supplying your blog with endless targeted traffic and leads.

Therefore, you need to start learning it now.

Check out:

11 Quick Things To Do For Blogging Success

The only thing required to make all of the techniques mentioned above work for you is consistency. You can use productivity planner to stay consistent.

You have to make them habits before you can see noticeable results. But the good thing is that once the results start coming in, you will be amazed at how massive those results will be.

Pick a few of these things that you can implement immediately and start from there.

Let me know how it goes in the comments section below!

Like this post? Don’t forget to share it!

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

29 thoughts on “11 Quick Actions You Can Take Right Now To Set Your Blog Up For Explosive Success”

  1. Sid Alexis

    Wonderful discussion Harsh.

    Driving Traffic has ever been problems for many bloggers and this had make some folks stop blogging. And this is since they’re doing it in a wrong manner or else they came into blogging just because they would like to earn some money. This guide is truly valuable. Nobody is perfect I can see like 2 or 3 things you discussed here I haven’t execute on my website. Thank you for sharing Harsh.

  2. Apoorv Sukumar

    Your every post is awesome. And would like to add up that point explained above are proven points and too much simple to understand. I liked your “promote old posts” methodology too.

    Thanks for the great article.

    Apoorv

  3. Ashwini Sah

    Nice post Harsh. But I think you should also have included using browser push notifications… They are easier to subscribe than email, and people tend to be using it a lot to keeping up with their favourite blogs.

    There are various free plugins like onesignal which can make this feature live on your website within a matter of minutes.

  4. Cory @ Growing Dollars From Cents.com

    There are some great tips here for new and experienced bloggers to grow their blogs even more.

    I think the next step for me is commenting on more popular site in my niche and interviewing some of those top bloggers as well. This is very beneficial to new bloggers such as me.

    Thanks for the tips Harsh!

  5. Krishnendu mandal

    Very nice blog. I feel initially manage traffic is very tough and we always try to put our own thought in our blog. Yes commenting is a good way to get traffic. I use canva for make infographic picture which is good for blogs.

  6. Shailesh shakya

    Hello, harsh sir

    Yes, this is a great idea to update your already published post.
    I have been doing the same practice for almost 1 week that you have mentioned here and I found 20 to 30% increment on my blog traffic. I am very happy to know that I was doing the right.

    Thanks for sharing…….

  7. Karen Hellier

    Harsh,

    I LOVE this article. I have recently started a new blog about saving money and working from home. I have had 183 views and 3 subscribers so far, and haven’t advertised the blog at all. Essentially only my husband and 3 friends even know it exists because I want to have enough content on it to make it worthwhile for people to go visit it before I start getting the word out about the blog. This is perfect timing for me, so a HUGE thank you for this post. I will be choosing a few of these ideas to get started advertising my blog. I love ShoutMELoud. Thanks from the bottom of my heart for all of the great content here.

  8. Vishwajeet Kumar

    Hello Harsh,

    You really nailed it! These tips are very helpful to become a successful blogger as I am following it personally. I love to drop relevant and thoughtful comments on blogs which are relevant to my niche. Quora is one of my best places to get post ideas and allow me to help others. Email marketing is very important to become successful that’s why I recommend my users to create email list from very first of their blog. Thanks again for this informative post.

    Have a great day 🙂
    Vishwajeet

  9. Joshua Orekhie

    This is great tonic for a successful blogging. I quite agree with the following contents. However, Quora happens to be one of the best source of backlinks. I did that and the result was highly appreciative. Thanks for your write-ups.

  10. Andrea Torti

    Quora is great source of both ideas and traffic – you can really find who can be interested in your content!

    Repurposing is also a huge time saver: after all, why spending time and energy on a post, to just share it once or twice and nothing more? 🙂

  11. Hadharm Hiidee

    Nice discussion Harsh. Driving Traffic has always been problems for most bloggers and this had make some people quit blogging. And this is because they are doing it in a wrong way or they came into blogging only because they want to earn some cash. This guide is really helpful. No one is perfect I can see like 2 or 3 things you discussed here that I haven’t implement on my blog. Thanks for sharing Harsh.

  12. Karim Toulba

    Awesome post!

    I agree that commenting is having great benefits in terms of traffic and generating leads. I managed to cash $325 from a couple of blog comments with a link back to my product pitch.

    Thanks for sharing the tips. You are awesome!

  13. Meghana Pawar

    All practical and must do stuff! Have been doing most of this lately! Thanks again for your valuable contribution to the blogging world @Harsh. I am a student of your cool Shout Me Loud University 🙂

  14. Amit

    Hey Harsh,
    NIce article to read and really an informative one….. Your tips will really help beginners for making your blog a success.

  15. SMN Zaman

    Hi Harsh,

    All the actions are very effective in succeeding our blogs. As for example, the number #2 in the list (blog commenting) is a great way of connecting with fellow bloggers in the same niche.

    But one pathetic experience that I get most of the time is that many spammers are there to spread the same message again and again just to build backlinks and have exposure.

    I urge all bloggers to be honest in blogging. Without honesty, you can’t succeed in anything. Blogging is a big thing, so your honesty is much appreciated here.

    Regards,
    SM

  16. Liton Biswas

    Hey Harsh,
    Another actionable post from you. Thanks for sharing.

  17. VictorVijay

    Thanks for sharing these practical actionable tips Harsh.
    All of them are implementable by beginners but except influencer interviews.
    Do you have any specific advice to help beginners implement interview influencers?
    May be you can share a strategy to interview influencers in your next post.

  18. Susan Velez

    Hey Harsh,

    I’ve been learning a lot from your blog, thanks for sharing. You’re right, I know that I can’t spend all day reading, I actually have to take action.

    One of the things that I haven’t done is an interview. I’ve been considering it and trying to the find the best way to accomplish that.

    Now that you mentioned it, I guess I actually need to take action and get it done.

    I also agree, commenting if done correctly can be a great way to get noticed. I’ve made it a habit to visit blogs every morning and leave meaningful comments.

    Just by using this techinque, I’ve managed to write 8 guest posts. So I know that commenting works if you take the time to do it correctly.

    It does take time and effort, but it’s well worth it.

    Thanks for sharing these tips, you can bet that I’ll be putting them into action.

    Have a great day 🙂

    Susan

  19. Pranav phogat

    Hey harsh, amazing article
    I can see that you have taken all these 11 actions and now your subscribers are almost 1 million.
    Thanks for this amazing article 🙂

  20. John

    Good points. I think Pop up ads (all kinds) should be avoided by all bloggers. I tried to use them on my blog, and it scared away many readers. When I stopped, I have be able to keep my readers coming over and over. Banners can have little to no affect. Maximum of 3 on a web page is enough.

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