Five steps to solve your blogging problem

You can solve your blogging problem if you understand what blogging is about and why you have become a blogger.

Blogging is a career and as with every other career, you will come across several problems that will put the brakes on your daily activities.

• Your blogging nightmare
• Why is blogging so difficult?
• How to overcome blogging problems
• Solve your blogging problem - Summary

Your blogging nightmare

When you wake in the morning the first thing you will do is check your stats.

You have just started out on your blogging career and after watching hundreds of Youtube videos you expect to see visitors flocking to your blog like the "gurus" tell you.

That is everybody's dream but unfortunately, most of us have to work very hard to achieve any success with our blog. Most bloggers struggle to get ten views a day and give up on the first five posts. 

You might feel that after doing all the research and taking advice on content creation you are still banging your head against the wall.

Still, nobody is looking in your direction, and instead of looking at what you are missing or lacking you are ready to give up. When you decide to create your blog make sure that giving up is not an option.

Why is blogging so difficult?

Most newbies will struggle in the beginning and think that blogging is difficult but most of the time it is because they did not think it through well enough before starting.

Blogging is actually very easy and one of the most fun activities you can start with no money and develop into a money-making business. It is the same as any other activity you have done in the past. The longer you do it the better you get at it.

For any blogger patience and persistence is the key and if you don't possess any of those characteristics blogging is not for you. Blogging will throw a lot of obstacles in your way that will make you think it is difficult but all are easy to overcome.

There are a lot of things happening that will make blogging difficult for you. I can only highlight a few that I came across starting off.

• Setting up your blog for a good visitor experience
• Getting organic traffic to your blog without any cost to it
• Lack of technical knowledge such as HTML, Scripts, etc
• Not finding ideas to write about for your niche
• Doing everything yourself
• Marketing your blog on social media
• Finding time to do it all
• Procrastination

All of these are things you will experience while blogging but I see them as all activities that have to be done to understand the blogging game. It is an opportunity to build up a brand new skillset that you didn't have before and that few others possess.

What the "gurus" don't tell you is that they started off like this but at a certain stage they all started outsourcing these activities so they can focus on the monetizing aspect of the game.

When you start achieving success with your blog you will be able to afford to do the same and grow even bigger.

How to overcome your blogging problems

So before you give up let's have a look if you have checked some important points and make sure you have covered all your bases.

The only way to get better at blogging is to pause every now and then to have an overview of what you have done so far. You will be surprised at how many things you have half-heartedly done and left behind incomplete. 

The best way to do this is to break down the blogging process into various sections and then scrutinize each to see how efficiently you have done your part. These five areas are only a small portion of what you need to pay attention to for now to improve your blog.

Step 1: Blog Layout

Have a look at your blog layout and see how user-friendly it is for visitors.

• Are all your ads sitting in an area where it is nonobstructive? 
• Are the colours of your blog page encouraging enough to keep readers on your blog? 
• Can the reader easily find what he is looking for? 
• Have a look at it as if you were a visitor.
• Did you take into consideration future expansion? 

Whatever you find, change it immediately as it will already be an improvement.

Step 2: Blog content

Always keep in mind that your blog is only visited because of the content it has and the benefits it provides the audience. Most blogs are of informative nature and information is what people are looking for.

• Is your content interesting enough to keep readers coming back? 
• Do you have enough variety in your content that covers the niche?
• Do you have anything special to offer that others don't? 
• If you were a newbie in your niche would you be able to benefit from your blog?

If you feel that your own blog cannot add value to your visitors then you will need to improve your content. The Google algorithm can also detect if your content is useful and if not the search engine will ignore it.

Research is the most important part of your blog content and you will spend most of your available time on that instead of writing. The benefit of research well done is that it makes the creation part much easier and quicker.

It also kills procrastination.

Step 3: Headlines and keywords

As with the layout of your blog, it is important to have catchy headlines that contain keywords that people will be searching for. Headlines are what readers can see when they first find you in a search or land on your page.

If they don't find it interesting enough they will move on. Unfortunately for us bloggers our catchy headlines are not always as catchy for the Google algorithm and that makes keywords more important.

Open your page and see what catches your eye first. Is what you see the promise you made to the reader?  Do they see what is expected from your headline or not? Most users will click away elsewhere if they don't see what was offered in the search engine.

Do some more homework on creating quality headlines and what visually attacks readers.

• Use Google Keyword Planner to see if your keyword attracts any searches
• Type your keyword into Google and see what your competition is doing
• Visit forums and social media platforms to see what words people use when asking for solutions
• Google only displays a maximum of 60 characters so keep your headline under 60
• Make sure it relates to the post content
• Include your main keywords in the title

Once again research is popping up as the most important part of your blogging career and therefore you should pay proper attention to this task.

Step 4: Graphics and other visual content

The purpose of graphics on your blog is not to make it look pretty. The primary function of graphics on your blog is to grab attention without distracting the visitor.

Any blogger will tell you that there will always be doubt about what visuals work the best. You will have to keep trying until it works for you and you can achieve the primary objective. You can take advice from the experts but that will vary from person to person.

The graphics on a blog is a bit like home decoration. What looks good for one person will be a total turn-off for another. You just have to focus on your niche and make sure you have visuals to match that. Look at your website and compare it with others in the top ranks then ask yourself:

• How good is your graphics? 
• Is it visually appealing to your audience? 
• Is it original and related to your niche? 
• Does your graphics tie in with the story you are telling? 
• Did you tag all your graphics to assist in search engine optimization? 
• If related do you have infographics or other explanatory visuals on your blog?

Fortunately, graphics are fairly cheap to outsource to a freelancer on Fiverr. That is only if you really suck at putting together something that will look good inside your content. There are many free online software packages and phone apps that will give you some form of a template to work with. Just check the license to see if it can be used commercially after creation.

Step 5: Audience retention

As if it is not hard enough to get visitors to your blog you still have to try and retain them for future visits. Always keep in mind the hours you spend on social media and other platforms just to get a few visits from each. Losing them after one visit will make you work even harder just to keep consistent traffic coming to your blog.

Once again look at the blogs and websites you visit on a regular basis and ask yourself why you keep going back there.

• Are you doing enough to keep visitors engaged?
• Have you got something that can engage visitors? 
• Are you connecting with your audience with your information?
• Have you got a subscription service for those who like to stay informed? 
• Do you know enough about your audience to know what they are looking for?
• Can you find a long-term online service you can offer for free?
• Are you giving away free usable content on a regular basis/

It takes a big effort to build up your blog to the stage where you can spend more time on audience retention and interaction. Once you have confidence in your content you will find it easier to find what is lacking and how you can improve it.

I have learned one important lesson. If you stop promoting yourself in the beginning then traffic will dry up immediately. The only way to do it is to be everywhere all of the time.

Solve your blogging problem - Summary

We can now see that there are many things that can go wrong and these 5 are just some of them. You can sit and break down your blog process even further to get down to the nitty-gritty of blogging. 

This will enable you to ensure that you have looked at all aspects and make continuous improvements to your blog. Many bloggers who achieved success have been at it for a very long time and you can get to the same level with commitment and persistence.

Giving up is not part of the blogging process and having an audience of ten thousand might not even be the main reason why you started blogging in the first place. So why stop now because you can also join those classy bloggers ten years from now because of your perseverance. 

By then you would have all the experience in the world and have built up a significant database of content for your visitors.

Don't expect to reap rewards immediately bet rather work on getting better and building bigger. All good things will happen in good time and at the end of the day, your audience will love you for it.