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Five Mistakes made by new bloggers

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We have all been there - struggling to establish our blogging identity, making mistakes along the way. Wondering, why don’t we have enough readers. Sometimes, it takes years to course correct and re-pivot. It has happened with me in my own blogging journey. I started out with a blog on marketing, very soon realizing that no matter how much I churned the depths of this ocean of marketing, there was no way I would be able to know / cover / blog about it all. As a new blogger, you may be often struggling with (well meaning) advice from a hundred different sources, not knowing what to prioritize. But some things ought to be done over others - and that’s setting your blogging goals straight - and avoiding these blogging mistakes. Mistake #1: Not knowing your blogging niche I can’t say this enough. You need to know your blogging niche - what is the area of your area of expertise + interesting for readers + and a space where you can be heard enough. I star

10 challenges faced by new bloggers and how to solve them

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Add caption New bloggers are constantly faced with a deluge of information, decisions and challenges. No sooner than one challenge is sorted, another one pops up. So how do you keep up with blogging keeping up with your busy schedule? What are some of the top challenges faced by busy bloggers? What are some of the tips that might help you on your way to blogging sanity? 1. Purpose This is the #1 challenge that I feel is faced by most new bloggers. They are certain that they want to blog - about something . But digging deeper throws up more questions: Who they want to write for? What is the purpose of their blog? What is their content strategy? Sometimes, the allure of quick fame and money is so powerful that blogging just becomes a vehicle for their larger goals in life. Since they did not spend enough time analyzing their blogging purpose, their journey is fraught with disappointment and failures. It is quite important to address the purpose of

5 tips to stay motivated as a blogger

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Blogging sometimes can be a lonely journey. Right from the realization that you need to create a blog to actually working on one, trying to build an audience, all this can be pretty gloomy at times. To top it, all of this takes time [ a long time, actually]. So how do we stay motivated as a blogger?  1. Acceptance  Instead of constantly comparing yourself with other successful bloggers, accept the fact that certain things in life take time, discipline and hard work - the tough things that we want to pass over. But it is these tough things that can produce some of the best work of people’s lives. Even with discipline and hard work being there in equal measure, out of a thousand ideas, only a few succeed.  2. Persistence  The ability to persevere despite hardships is a great skill to have. Too many people give up being quite near to the goal. But how do we know when to persevere and when to give up?  Do I really have the skills to make it big in blogging [or any

How to write more blog posts in less time

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There I was - struggling to churn out one post. And the blogs in front of me were belting out post after post after post. I was struggling to maintain something of a frequency. But they were churning out 30-50 posts of 4000 words each per month. I realized that I needed to tackle this problem head on, and not be passive. I needed to be in control of my own blogging destiny [easier said than done] So what can we do to write more blog posts in less time? We all know the (vicious) cycle of blog content: write, promote, repeat. But sometimes it is not enough - Sometimes, trying to compete with the countless authoritative websites [many of who are doing it full time] may seem like an uphill battle - but hey, everything worth having came with discipline and practice. The entire blogging process can broadly be divided into these phases: Pre-writing Researching Writing Scheduling Promoting And today, we are going to look at the fi

How to choose your blog’s target audience

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An important part of your blogging journey is choosing your blog’s target audience. You cannot be everything for everybody. I have been writing this marketing blog since 2013 and initially it was just a broad commentary on marketing trends and updates. I struggled to document, churn and curate the massive volumes of content generated in marketing, with very little success. 2014 - after a year of struggling - I realized - enough is enough - time to hit reset. I decided to focus on something slightly narrower, and hence I chose to focus on digital marketing. Along this time, I realized that along with topic specialization, I also need to narrow down my readership profile as well. Obviously, I was not catering to the CMO demographic. So I further refined my target group to early stage marketers - an area where I knew I could add value. So both in terms of topic coverage and readership profile, I managed to trim down the audience who I believed was not the corr