It's been over 5 years now since I started writing on Tea With Gi. I remember I started because I was doing a semester abroad in Florida and wanted to keep my friends and family updated with what I was up to. I then soon branched out from that and started writing lifestyle posts, and then writing travel guides. I've had a lot of great opportunities come from my blog and I definitely didn't expect to have any success with it when I started writing (I thought I'd only have 10 readers!). If you're looking at starting a blog, these are some of my tips.
1. Make it look as professional as possible.
I've never purchased a blog 'theme' but spent ages toggling with the blogging template, adding html's and widgets to customize it and make it mine. I'd also recommend buying a blog domain, as brands are more likely to want to work with you if you seem established and don't have wordpress/blogger etc. in your webpage link.
2. Try not to limit your self.
Finding a niche is great, but the blogging world is pretty saturated as it is. The key is to writing about stuff you're actually passionate about and not just because it's what everyone is doing. I used to do beauty posts when I first started my blog but found it's not really what I enjoyed writing about, so I stopped doing it!
3. Make sure you make every post 'SEO friendly'
SEO stands for 'Search Engine Optimization' and there are a number of ways you can make this happen. One way is making sure you use keywords that are relevant to the post and what people might be searching for. If your post is on 'Gibraltar travel tips' make sure you're using keywords such as 'things to do in Gibraltar' within your blog post. Make sure you also add text to your images and put in a post description! I wrote a whole blog post about improving your blog SEO here.
4. Social media is essential for growing.
I luckily had a few thousand followers on my main twitter account before I started my blog, so it was great to have a platform there to promote my blog in the first place. I now have a Twitter and Instagram account dedicated to my blog (teawithgi) and twitter is a great way to follow other bloggers, interact with them and promote your stuff. I definitely recommend scheduling tweets to promote your posts, just don't make your feed seem like spam! Comment on other blogs, interact with your audience on Instagram and stay relatable!
5. Collaborate with people in the industry!
One of the best ways to improve SEO and your page visibility is by improving your back-links. This means having other people and websites linking back to your website. The higher their Domain Authority, the better it will affect your ranking. You could always reach out to publications you enjoy and ask if you can post a guest post on their website.
The key for growing your blog and social media presence is to be consistent, and keep working at it. Aqueous recently published a post on ranking factors of a website which will be a useful read for things to take into consideration. I hope you guys have found this post useful!
G
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