How to Start a Successful Blog in 2024

Contrary to popular belief, blogging is absolutely not dead in 2024. In fact, it is alive and well, waiting for you to take advantage of its perks! And no, while it may not look like it did back in 2014 when you could grow your page by sharing your favorite clothing trends or a new recipe you decided to test out, blogging is still just as impactful ten years later.

You may be asking yourself, “How?”—and you have every right to be curious. In today’s digital climate, short-form video content is all the rage! After all, we live in a world where making a video showing people your morning routine can draw in millions of views (and dollars, depending on the person posting it).

The reason is actually simple: Blogging is familiar. People often trust information coming from an official blog post rather than watching an Instagram Reel or TikTok. Sometimes these platforms just don’t carry the same credibility as a blog posted by an established website and blogger.

This is where you come in! Optimizing the popularity of search engines like Google and Pinterest is crucial to having a successful blog. With over 400 million monthly users, Pinterest is one of the most underrated platforms you can use to reach your target audience. When done right, blogging can become your main source of income! But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s cover the basics!

Niche Down

If this isn’t your first time doing research on how to start a blog, or even stepping into the digital creator space, you’ve likely heard the term “niche down” a thousand times. For those that haven’t, essentially it means that you need to find the “main idea” of your content.

An easy way to do that is to think about what you are most interested in. This can become something you’d be considered an “expert” in. For example, if you love to cook and that’s something you’d be interested in writing about, you either know enough to share your “expertise,” or you’d enjoy doing more research on it. “Enjoyment” and interest in your niche are crucial; you’ll need both of those to stay consistent with posting.

Choose the RIGHT Blogging Platform

This is crucial to your success! In addition to learning how to optimize Pinterest and Google through Search Engine Optimization, you’ll need to pick the right blogging platform! This is because using an established platform and trending keywords work hand-in-hand.

There are hundreds of hosting sites out there to choose from, but WordPress would be considered “Industry Standard” for many. This is because of its user-friendly interface and large user base. WordPress is also designed with SEO in mind, so that your blog has that extra push it needs to get in front of people. Keep in mind, to have full ownership of your WordPress blog, paying for a hosting site like BlueHost is important.

Write Interesting + Professional Content

Now, I won’t lie to you. If blogging is something that you want to do strictly to make money, you are going to need to know how to write. I mean, DUH, right? When I say you need to know how to write, I mean you need to specifically know how to write persuasively. Remember back in high school and college when you had to write all of those dreadful persuasive and argumentative essays? Well, those skills that you need to write those should always be in the back of your mind while blogging.

This is because you need to sound like as much of an expert in your niche as possible. If you don’t know how to engage and persuade your audience to trust in your opinion, purchase a product from you, or find you interesting, you’ll end up with an “Invisible blog.”

In addition to the obvious grammar skills and basic reading comprehension skills needed to write, your tone and ability to engage your audience are a must. Your SEO techniques, products, and pretty pictures won’t matter if you can’t maintain that audience. Don’t let this scare you! Think about a time when you had something interesting or helpful that you wanted to share with a friend. How would you write to them? Apply that thinking, add some professionalism and you’ve got compelling content!

Master SEO

I know I’ve mentioned “SEO” and “Search Engine Optimization” multiple times in this post. For those that aren’t aware, SEO is how you utilize keywords within a search engine to get people to see your posts. There are a lot of people out there that will make you think you need to use expensive tools to properly master SEO. While tools that you need to purchase can be helpful, you don’t necessarily need them when you’re first starting out. Google Trends and Pinterest Trends are great websites to use when finding trending keywords in your niche! Note: You do need a business account on Pinterest to access Pinterest trends, but it is free!

Starting with these free tools, you can get a good idea of what people in your niche are currently searching for and even do prep work for trends that are soon to come! This kind of research is crucial because we want to get as many eyes on your content as possible!

While there is a lot more to blogging than what we discussed in this post, these are four solid steps to get you started come 2024! Now, it’s all up to you. Who knows, maybe I’ll come across one of your blogs in the future. Melikayspeaks is always around with the tips and tricks you’ll need to be successful!