Hi. My name is Crystal and I’m a blogger.
But what does that mean, really? Everyone has a blog these days, but not everyone deserves to be called a blogger. In recent times, it’s become a fully fledged profession – that is, once people started making money off of it – it was taken seriously, as a legitimate source of income. Bloggers like Song of Style and our very own ThisisEss have changed the way we look at blogging, from a hobby to a potential full-time job.
So how do you earn the right to call yourself a blogger?
1. You post regularly
And no, twice a year doesn’t count. You don’t need to upload content every day, though I know of bloggers who post twice or thrice a day – mindblowing, and mostly reserved for those who blog full time. You just need to post regularly enough to hold the interest of the people who read your blog. Better yet, only post when you have something post-worthy rather than just trying to meet a deadline. It makes the content so much more worth the read. Quality over quantity.Pay attention to the quality of your work
2. Pay attention to the quality of your work
That means using spell-check. Capitalise your letters, paragraph your work. Sloppy posts won’t get you very far in the blogger sphere. And while you’re at it, write about things that your audience care about and don’t spew foolish opinions just because you have the platform for it. There’s enough of that on the internet already, don’t you think?
3. Love what you do
You have to be passionate about what you do, regardless of whether a thousand people read your work or one person does.
You know the saying, don’t live for the applause? It really applies to blogging. If you obsess over the number of people who click on your posts/visit you site, you lose sight of what really matters. Be careful not to become a traffic hungry blogger because your readers will eventually figure out that you only care about the next score and not their interests.
4. Interact with your readers
Reply or acknowledge all comments, at least until they’re an overwhelming number. And even then, one way of investing in your blog is paying assistants to reply for you. I’ll cover more on the options available to a blogger in a future article, but you must be sure to appreciate the people who drop by your blog – and show it. They reached out, so the least you can do is respond. Don’t ever take it for granted that someone took time out of their day to hear your thoughts.
5. Invest in your blog
It takes a hell of a lot of time to come up with a post idea. You need to know that if you want to start blogging, you’ll have to put in a lot of your time and depending on what you blog about, a lot of your money. Get a good photographer or become a good photographer because we all know that readers respond to good quality images in posts, be they of food, travel of fashion.
These are a few ways to tell how serious one is about blogging. Put in the work and the benefits follow … after a while. I’ll cover the types of blogging in my next post, but first allow me to reintroduce myself.
‘I’m a lifestyle blogger based in Nairobi, Kenya. “Lifestyle” blogging means that I blog about everything from fashion to food to travel – every aspect of a full lifestyle, giving my readers a glimpse into my daily activities.
It’s not always as glamorous as it sounds, so my revamped column here will be geared towards giving you a behind the scenes look at what it takes to succeed in the blogging business as I apply these principles to my own blogging journey. Thanks for reading!
