Blogs have been around since the early 2000s, and they continue to grow in popularity. Many people are turning to blog writing as a way to generate passive income. Blog writers use blogs for various purposes, including promoting their business or other websites, making money from advertisements on their website, and so much more. Blog writing is one form of content marketing. This article details the basics of blog writing, its place in content marketing and answers often asked questions such as:
- What is content marketing?
- What is a blog?
- What is a blog post?
- Why do bloggers fail?
- What is the difference between blog articles versus blog posts?
- How do I write content for my blog?
- How can I earn money by blog writing?
- What is a blog writing service?
- How does a blog writer differ from a content writer?
- What to look out for when hiring blog writers or a blog writing service?
- Do bloggers hire blog writers?
- How much do blog writers charge?
- How do I start a blog post?
What is content marketing?
Content Marketing is a form of marketing that involves content creation and sharing of information with customers, prospects and other audiences. This content may be in different forms such as blogs, videos or infographics to attract more people to your business. It should be a part of your digital marketing strategy because it is an affordable and effective way to reach potential customers through various written content channels.
The goal is to establish yourself as an expert in a specific field by providing valuable insights while also promoting the products you sell on the internet. Thus, blogs are a type of content marketing.
What is a blog?
A blog is a type of website where the most recent post appears at the top of your browser window. A blog provides valuable information from a company’s perspective to its target market. In addition, blog content with appropriate keywords enables your company to rank higher with search engines bringing you organic search traffic.
The term “blog” comes from “weblog,” another word for journaling online with regular entries. Anyone can read these online journals, and they are usually written by a single individual or a small team of writers with similar interests. Thus, the blog writer is like the columnist at your local newspaper, sparking a discussion about current events in an accessible way.
There are several different types of blogs that people may have:
- Personal blog. Celebrities often use these.
- Company blog. Employees from within the company usually write these.
- Marketing based blogs. Companies share advice on how their product or service could help others on such types of blogs in certain circumstances. These blogs will often advertise products as well.
There’s no clear-cut definition for what constitutes blogging. Bloggers, who write these journals, often share their thoughts on current events or whatever else they find interesting enough to discuss. Sometimes, they also offer personal commentary on happenings around them, ranging from what they ate for breakfast to their thoughts on politics.
A blogger might use social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter to write a commentary. Individuals, who blog, may also maintain personal websites where they share posts about themselves and their daily lives alongside more extensive editorials on various topics.
While a personal blog may be very informal, a company blog or a marketing-based one is quite formal and professionally managed. The writing style also reflects this.
What is a blog post?
Blog posts are content published on the internet with an end goal to provide information or entertainment for readers. Blog posts can be opinion-based, informational or educational. They usually include short paragraphs and often contain links to more detailed content on a specific topic. Creating your blog post is termed ‘blogging’.
At its most basic level, to write a blog, you need three things:
- Content ideas.
- The ability to gather information about your topic.
- A way to share that content with the world.
They have a conversational style with a personal voice that creates the impression of two people talking formally or informally. The tone will vary according to what’s being discussed at any given time. There may be times when you get more serious (for emotional reasons) or happy (when discussing something joyful), just like we do in our everyday conversations, with friends and family members! The tone will also change depending on whether the blog is a company blog, a personal blog or a marketing blog. Company and marketing blogs tend to use more professional language, and the tone is business-oriented, while a personal blog can be quite informal.
A good blog post provides value and information to readers on topics related to their needs and interests. So naturally, the more valuable and informative your content, the more people will want to read them.
Why do bloggers fail?
Bloggers can fail for many reasons. Blogging is becoming more and more popular. Due to this, the bar to become successful has also risen and gone higher. Gone are the days where you can spend a few hours a week and maintain a successful blog. Blogging offers a much sought after lifestyle as one can work from anywhere in the world as long as you have a laptop and a good internet connection. Due to this nature, bloggers tend to work most days of the week, which has pushed the bar higher and higher to become successful at it.
Now, blogging is a full-time activity where successful bloggers may spend all days of the week on their blog. But, of course, if the blogger is passionate about the blog, doing so is not a task but something they like to do.
The primary method for bloggers to attract people to their site is by having great interesting content that pulls the reader to read more, pushes them to share the same on social media and encourages the viral network effect of the internet. To do this, bloggers need high-quality content. Unfortunately, content writing takes time, and that’s where the brakes are felt. High-quality content requires even more time!
What is the difference between blog articles versus blog posts?
A widely accepted and recognised difference between a blog post and a blog article does not yet exist. Instead, a common observation is that the two are synonymous.
- A blog article is popularly considered long-form content that includes anywhere between 500 – 3000 words, while some recent studies suggest 7000 words. This article is a good example of a blog article.
- A blog post is popularly considered a shorter form of content, such as a listicle or a tutorial.
Both are important to your blogging strategy because they each have their own place within the context of blogging best practices. Short-form content or blog posts help drive traffic back to your blog, where you can convert it into an engaged audience. In contrast, longer-form content or blog articles are useful for SEO ( search engine optimisation) and content syndication, in addition to driving traffic to your site. Get inside SEO content writing for details.
How do I write content for my blog?
Given below are some tips on how to write the perfect blog post or blog article:
- Include a keyword in the content title.
- Make sure your opening paragraph is written in such a way that it holds readers attention. State what problem/solution you are about to address. Create a compelling introduction with information about the topic or question.
- Write content that answers questions people often ask online.
- Be transparent with readers by telling them upfront who will benefit from reading it (and why they should read it).
- Link to other related posts or articles you’ve written.
- Place a call to action at the end (for example, “read on for more insights!”).
- Make sure the ending of your post or article leaves people wanting more.
- Keep up with posting content regularly (every day if possible).
- Finally, give a concluding statement mentioning what readers should take away to help reinforce why you wrote it in the first place!
How can I earn money by blog writing?
The more subscribers, followers, or readers your blog has, the higher its possibility of making income in some form. As a blogger, you can make money by receiving a commission for the products you promote or advertise using your blog. For example, bloggers who use their blogs to drive traffic to businesses’ websites will typically be paid based on how many visitors they send, an average rate ranging from 30 cents per visitor in some cases up to $100 per sale.
The blogger does not control the price of goods sold but earns commissions as long as they maintain a list of followers without going inactive. Bloggers with more than 100,000 subscribers can earn six-figure incomes annually.
There are several ways to monetise your blog and get paid for what you write. Some of these are:
- Sponsorships from brands who want their products advertised on your site in exchange for something.
- Offer premium content like webinars or courses that people pay for after reading free articles on your blog site.
- Sponsorships by companies who will pay you to talk about their product in posts you create – this often includes giving away free samples of their products for reviews too!
- Write guest posts where other blogs compensate you for writing blog posts.
- Ask businesses if they would be willing to sponsor one of your posts in exchange for mentioning them at the end so readers know where they can go.
- You could also become an affiliate marketer and get paid when someone clicks on the links to your posts within your blog post.
- Another great way is to monetise blogs through advertisements from third-party companies displayed at the bottom, top or sides of pages in exchange for payment of any profit gained.
What is a blog writing service?
Blog writing services provide professionals who can write custom blog content. However, hiring a professional blog writer can be expensive. Also, the blog world is full of companies and individuals offering writing services. Some of them are reputable, while others will just take your money without delivering anything in return. Since this profession is a relatively new one, you find many blog writers offering services who are inexperienced and not skilled enough to produce great content yet. They may use you to learn and get experience. Check out our article on buying blog posts. For buying blog articles, refer to this guide.
How does a blog writer differ from a content writer?
Content creation is a broad area covering books, user guides, videos and others. Content writing is one part of content creation and deals solely with writing. Content creation for blogs is a niche area. Writers need much more than writing skills to produce content for this niche area. It requires written content optimised for search engines.
A blog writer requires skills in article writing, domain knowledge in the subject matter, search engine optimisation (typically referred to as SEO) and some social media skills to produce quality content for the internet. This new age requirement combines age-old content writing skills with the digital era requiring writers to be much more knowledgeable than the traditional content writer. There are many content writing services available, as well as blog writing services. Recommend you do your due diligence before you engage with any of these.
What to look out for when hiring blog writers or a blog writing service?
Here are few things you need to know about hiring blog writers or a blog writing service:
- They might not produce quality work.
- They may not deliver on time.
- They may simply cut & paste content from elsewhere on the internet resulting in highly plagiarised work.
Here’s a list of items to look for when considering hiring a blog writer or a blog writing service:
- You find a lot of traditional content writing providers that have re-branded themselves to offer blog writing services. It is fine to do so if there is sufficient evidence to show that they have the skills & knowledge. Simply having writing skills is no longer good enough!
- Blog writing services need to have writers who produce blog content popularly searched for by users on the internet. Are they writing on popularly searched topics?
- Is there proof of specific keywords being targeted in content? Blog writing services must be able to convey keywords their writers have targetted in written content.
- Finer details of these blog writing services are not apparent at the outset. Is the blog content based on quality-verified sources? Does the blog content provide hyperlinks to the source of the information so you can verify the content, if required? It’s all very well to state that, for example, turmeric is good for health. Why? What makes it good for health? Is there any evidence to show that? Hyperlinks to documents searched and referenced provide clarity in such a scenario.
This list can go on. The traditional model of writing content is resource-based. It can prove expensive.
Our recommendation is to use a newer business model offering pre-written blog content. An online store for blog articles and blog posts is our solution. Visit Blogwriting.co.
Do bloggers hire blog writers?
Bloggers usually post articles daily or weekly, and such high-frequency requirements can make it all time consuming with very little time available to do anything else. So, in short, yes, hiring blog writers is an option, but an expensive one and fraught with issues, as iterated earlier in this article.
How much do blog writers charge?
A blog writer can charge anything they want because there is no set price. In addition, blog writing and the blogger profession are relatively new careers that do not yet have a defined place in the market.
Currently, we observe, the average cost per blog article ranges anywhere from $100-$1000, but this varies according to the difficulty of the topic and length.
How do I start a blog post?
You may not want to hire blog writers or blog writing services but try writing yourself to get a feel for it. Given below are the basics of writing a blog post or blog article to get you started.
Step 1: Select a topic
Find the topic you want to write about, one that has not been written about too much and is something people have shown interest in on social media or elsewhere. You may also find topics by conducting research online using tools like Google Trends, which will tell you what’s trending in terms of popular searches at any given time; these could become ideas for future posts!
Step 2: Brainstorm the main point
Once you’ve found a good topic idea, it’s time to start brainstorming the content. What’s your main point? How are you going to make it interesting for readers and keep them engaged?
Step 3: Research the content
The next step is researching. If you’re unsure where to find information (or if Google isn’t cutting it), try using databases such as Ebscohost, Proquest, JSTOR, SAGE Journals Online Plus, Wiley Interscience Databases; these may require some payment. Then, just choose what helps support your thoughts and get on with it! As you will notice, this is a time-consuming exercise, sometimes taking days to complete just one blog post.
Blogwriting.co offers a solution making available a range of pre-written (also called ready-made) articles for you to browse and buy.
We hope that this blog article has helped you understand the world of blog writing and blog writers. Visit Blogwriting.co and check out how it makes buying content easier and more cost-efficient than ever before.
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