Want to Be A Blogger? Read this.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: You don’t have to be a writer to be riveted by today’s blog. (And there’s a special treat at the end!) 

If you’re an author, or a craftsperson, or a hobbyist, or an entrepreneur—you might be thinking: should I have a blog?  I SHOULD have a blog! But…how?

And how can I make it work?

Today, here and continuing on Career Authors, the brilliantly entrepreneurial Dorie Clark generously reveals all her secrets.

So grab your coffee or tea. Read this. It could change your life. 

  

How Authors Can Build a Large Blog Following

By Dorie Clark

How can authors build a massive following for their blog? That’s one of the questions I tackle in my new book Entrepreneurial You, which centers on how entrepreneurs – including writers – can develop an audience and earn more money from their work.

Building an audience for your blog is crucial for future book sales, of course, but it’s also about impact and meaning. You’re not journaling for your own entertainment: you’re sharing your work publicly because there’s a message you’d like to share. 

When you take the necessary steps to build your following, it enables you to reach more people and touch more lives.

In Entrepreneurial You, I profile James Clear, a blogger who writes about the habits that can improve physical and mental performance, and who is one of the most impressive examples of rapid list growth that I’ve ever seen. 

He started blogging in late 2012 and made a commitment to post two articles a week. Within two years, he’d reached 100,000 email list subscribers who received his blog updates; by April 2017, he had more than 400,000

Clear’s list-building success hinges on four strategies: consistency, focus, great headlines, and syndication.  Here on Jungle Red today, we’ll talk about consistency and focus. And then, at the end, click on the link to Career Authors, where I’ll continue--and discuss great headlines and syndication. 

Consistency

For Clear, there’s only one explanation for why his readership has skyrocketed so dramatically: his consistency. When he launched his site, Clear recalls, there was a health blogger he admired: “He was writing really great science-based pieces that people really liked. His audience was five times the size of mine when I was getting started. Today, my audience is twenty times the size of his, and you can’t say that it’s because of quality, because he’s producing very high-quality stuff. The only difference is that I decided to write every Monday and every Thursday starting on November 12, 2012, while he has just written intermittently.”

His consistent pace gives him two advantages. First, he says, “every piece of content that you produce is a chance to rank in Google and drive search engine traffic, or for people to share it on social media, or for someone to email an article to their friends.” More volume means more exposure. 

But second, he says, writing at least eight articles per month ensures that some of them will strike a strong chord with readers.

I’m with Clear on the importance of consistency. From January 2012 to April 2015, I wrote between 5-10 articles per month for Forbes, for a total of well over 250. That frequency allowed me to experiment, find my editorial voice, make connections with interview subjects, and have many more chances to reach new readers.

“Every marketing strategy is easier with good content,” Clear says. “We often think, ‘I just need a better strategy, or I just need a better tactic,’ when really what you need is better work.”  His frequency gave him the opportunity to produce more great ideas. (Note: even for the best writers, frequency can be hard to keep up, and during a book project, Clear backed off his twice-weekly schedule. But it remains an exceptionally powerful strategy, largely because it’s hard to keep up – so there’s less competition.)

Focus

You don’t want to paralyze readers with too many choices when they visit your website and read your blog.

“I want there to be one clear call to action on each page,” Clear told me in Entrepreneurial You. “I don’t want to confuse people by having them ‘Click here to buy my book, click here to sign up for my email list, follow me on Twitter and Facebook, and read this article.’ That’s five things that they should do. When they have five things to do, they’ll probably do nothing because they don’t know what the most important thing is.”

Instead, Clear’s site draws attention to only one thing: signing up to receive a free ebook on transforming your habits, which will also opt you into his email list. He includes no sidebars or anything else that will distract viewers from the main focus: signing up for his list.

On my own website, I used to overwhelm readers with options, from following me on Twitter to subscribing to my (now defunct!) podcast. 

I now focus on steering readers to one option as well: downloading my free 88 Question Entrepreneurial You self-assessment, which signs them up for my newsletter. (To see what it looks like and get ideas for your own “lead magnet,” as these free downloads are called, click here.)

HANK: SO fascinating! And there’s more. Would you rather read a blog called : “My Journey in Blogging” or “Five Secrets to Creating A Great Blog” ? Ah HA. Seems obvious, but hey. If you’re writing an article, you want people to read it. 

Yet some headlines get ignored, while others are almost irresistible to readers. Click here for Dorie’s take on headlines...and her incredibly successful idea for getting your blog an amazingly expanded audience.

And if you have questions? Dorie will be here at Jungle Red today to answer them! And discussing them on Facebook via Career Authors.

Dorie Clark is the author of the new book Entrepreneurial You, and this article is adapted from it. Her past books include Reinventing You and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine. She teaches for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and you can download her free 88-question Entrepreneurial You self-assessment workbook.

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