8 TIPS THAT HELPED ME BECOME A BETTER BLOGGER.

Since deciding to rebrand my blog (and after teaching my first workshop), I've gotten quite a few questions from readers and friends asking for advice about how to start a blog, how to stay consistent, grow readership and create an overall successful blog.

As someone who has experienced the different sides of the blogging spectrum, I can offer up these 8 honest and authentic tips that have helped me become a better blogger.

FIND YOUR PURPOSE

In addition to being a fashion and lifestyle blogger, I am also the Founding Principal of Arreis, a Portland-based PR + marketing boutique agency. Often when I take on a new client, some of the first questions I ask are, "what is your purpose? Why are you in business? Who are you helping? What problem does your ideal customer have? How are you helping them solve this problem and why are you the best one to solve their problem?

Knowing the answers to these questions is really important because they play a huge role in the success of your blog. Knowing your purpose helps guide your decisions on what to post and how to approach your audience. Purpose gives you direction that without it, you are likely to post any and everything making it hard to develop loyal readers.

Not having a solid purpose can also cause you to play the comparison game by comparing yourself to other bloggers who’ve “made it.” Comparison makes it really easy to feel overwhelmed, frustrated and annoyed when you don’t see the same level of success.

Truthfully, your purpose is what keeps you grounded and on track with who you are and what you have to offer. When I first started blogging, my only purpose was just to share pieces of my life, beauty and fashion. I would post random things about random topics without a specific audience in mind and without purpose. I literally blogged just to blog and eventually burned out.

Take it from me and ask yourself these questions:

What is your purpose for having a blog?

What do you want to blog about?

What value are you giving your readers?

Why should people read your blog vs all the others out there?

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Having a well-defined understanding of your audience is also an important factor to having a successful blog. When you know who’s reading your blog, what kinds of things they like and what they don’t like, you can create content that you know your audience will like. By doing this, you’ll create a community of people who regularly read your blog, comment on you posts, engage on social media and share your content with their friends.

A common misconception about defining a target audience is people think it means you can only engage with those who fit within a specific description. So not true. Identifying exactly who your audience is, simply means figuring out who is most likely to read your blog and engage with you. This allows you to focus your time and create marketing strategies that will reach the people who will most likely be interested in you and what your blog has to offer.

CREATE AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR.

I can't even begin to tell you how my life changed when I decided to make an editorial calendar for my blog (business blog, clients, etc)!

An editorial calendar is essentially a calendar that maps out all the content (blog posts) that you intend to publish within a specific time period. Editorial calendars help keep you organized and ensure that you consistently publish quality content in a way that is time efficient and stress-free. Your editorial cal is also a way to schedule and keep track of topics and story ideas that you want to cover on your blog.

So, how does this calendar keep you on track? Well, if you plan your topics ahead of time you are able to plan photo shoots and collect images well in advance. Also, when you know the topics for your next three posts you can write them ahead of time and schedule them to post automatically, alleviating stress and giving you time to focus on other responsibilities.

Having to create content on a daily basis can be time consuming, not to mention stressful. If you've ever sat in front of your laptop for hours wondering what to blog about, you can see how having an editorial calendar could be useful.

Of course, we know that things aren't always going to go according to plan but having a calendar gives you a general framework. It's much easier to move post ideas around to accommodate changes than to try to think of new topics every time you need to write a post.

I've been loving this stripped 2016 Kate Spade Planner for organizing my content calendar and jotting down notes.

SET SPECIFIC DAYS TO CREATE.

Once you have a schedule, the next step is to pick a day and/or time that you can spend a few hours focusing only on creating content. Dedicating a chunk of time each week is another way to hold you accountable and to make sure that the content you plan is actually being produced. It's also a lot easier to knock out a few posts each week in advance and have them ready to go ahead of time, rather than trying to write them the day of.

You'll feel a lot less rushed, trust me.

I've played around with different days and times but so far Tuesday mornings has been the winner. During this time I try to finish at least two posts per brand that way I'm always ahead of the game instead of trying to keep up. Did I mention how helpful having an editorial calendar is?

DIY PHOTOSHOP + DESIGN + HTML SKILLS

As a blogger, developing skills in Photoshop, HTML and general design is a must. I'm not saying that you need to be a pro, but having these skills definitely comes in handy. It can get quite expensive and time consuming to have to pay someone to constantly create images or fix your website for you. I've gotten pretty good at Photoshop and even learned a bit of HTML coding simply by using Google, watching tutorials on YouTube and of course, through trial and error.

KEEP INSPO SOMEWHERE

Whether you keep your ideas in digitally on your phone or computer or, on pen and paper, make sure you have a place to store ideas for blog topics, photo ideas and any inspiration that comes to mind.

Call me old school but I like to write my ideas the good-ole-fashioned-way...pen and paper. I donno, I just have a thing for Kate Spade stationary! 

JOIN ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Joining online communities such as PDX Bloggers on Facebook and blogging groups on Google+ has increased my readership tremendously. With so many bloggers and blogs out there it's easy to get lost in all the commotion. Online communities are great because they are centered around promoting and supporting each other.

REMEMBER WHY YOU STARTED

Sometimes as bloggers, we can get so caught up in watching other people's success that we lose focus on why we started blogging in the first place.

The desire to become a top blogger, have thousands of followers, get invited to NYFW and other awesome events causes us to lose sight of our purpose. The stress and desire of trying to "make it" causes blogging to lose its appeal and no longer be fun.

Similar to my advice last week, the biggest piece of advice I can give new and seasoned bloggers is to remember why you started blogging in the first place. True, there are many of career and monetary opportunities in fashion blogging that sometimes makes blogging a bit stressful. But, it helps to remember that at the end of the day, we all started blogging because it was fun and because we liked sharing our opinion with the world. When you start comparing yourself to others, that's when blogging stops being fun and doubt starts to creep in. 

Hold true to yourself and to your purpose, and you’ll be just fine. Beyonce didn’t become Queen B over night. Jus’ sayin’.

The Look |

What are some tips and tricks that have helped you with your blogging?