Recent graduate from the Australian Institute of Creative Design, Peter is sharing his Passion for Fashion on annasusanne.com!  He is also a free-spirited traveller who loves spending his holidays around exotic destinations and enjoys travelling with his friends around the globe.  Here’s 5 Steps Towards Building a Successful Lifestyle Blog.  Follow Peter on Twitter and Facebook!

Guest Post by Peter Minkoff for Anna Susanne * The Travelling Pixie

Building a successful lifestyle blog is not an easy task. A lot of people take blogging lightly and think that they can do it in their free time. And sure, this is one way you can do it, but if you want to create a top-quality blog you will have to pour a bit more effort and time into it. If your goal is to run a highly successful lifestyle blog, make sure you check out these five points.

 

Choose a platform

First of all, you will have to decide on what blogging platform you are going to post. There are plenty of them to choose from, but the biggest decision you’ll have to make is whether you want a paid or free option. Some popular free platforms like WordPress are great for beginners. You can easily build your blog, they have plenty of plugins that make your blogging job a lot easier, and on top of that, they are secure.

The biggest downside of free blogging platforms is poor to nonexistent monetization option. If you plan to make a profit from blogging, then going for a paid option is the right thing to do. Also, if you opt for paid platforms, you will be able to choose what ads to run and how often.

 

Pick your niche

The second thing you should do is select a niche. Lifestyle blog can have a wide range of categories and niches. If you want to create a professional and informative blog you will have to narrow down your topics to the ones you are really comfortable writing. This way you will attract a certain audience that can enjoy every content you present them with and, most importantly, your blog will be free of poor-quality content.

The number one rule of blogging is to write about what you like. If contemporary food photography is your niche, then start building your blog on it. It is a very popular category that is accessible to everyone.

 

Publish regularly

Once you have the platform and niche nailed down you can focus on how to run your blog. The key to a successful blog is consistency. If you want to be in top 5% of bloggers, you will have to publish your content on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean posting every day. Rather, you should maybe post once or twice a week, but make your content come out on previously set days. That way your audience will know when they can expect a new piece and they will be there to read it.

 

Know your audience

Knowing your audience is very important for building a long-lasting blog. The time in between your posts should be spent on talking to your audience. You can interact with them in the comments, or send them surveys and polls, so you can further improve their overall experience. The feedback you get from your audience is very important. For example, you can never know what type of content they want to read next if you don’t ask them.

Make it a personal experience

Lastly, blogs are a lot more personal than most people think. People don’t come to blogs to just read an article and leave, they want to be engaged. You should always try to make your posts about your audience and how they can benefit from them. For example, if you are writing about food, always include recipes and if you are writing about clothing, always leave your suggestions.

That brings us to an end. As you can see building a successful blog is not that simple, but it’s not impossible, either. With our five-point list to guide you, there will be nothing stopping you on your road to successful blogging. Just make sure you have checked all the pointers and you are good to go.

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If you would like to be a Guest Blogger for annasusanne.com or simply write the occasional guest post, email annasusanne.c@gmail.com to pitch your ideas! – Anna Susanne x