At one point she, slightly angry, asks me: “Sorry but what is a blog then? What is it for since I have been writing for a year and I still haven’t received anything? “
This is the discussion I had the other night with a potential client. She is a girl and wanted to figure out how to start a blog to earn some money. The problem is that if you lack the basic knowledge, it will be difficult for a blog alone to keep your entire business on its feet.
Yet, that’s exactly why you should have it: make yourself known, gain the trust of visitors and lead them into your world of products and services.
What is a blog? Other than a personal diary
Blogging is a real phenomenon, however, relatively recent since it was born in 1997 in America. Of course, the meaning of blog, since then, has taken on really varied shades.
The definition of blog on Wikipedia is this:
a blog is a particular type of website where the contents are displayed in an anti-chronological form (from the most recent to the furthest in time).
Although basic is a correct definition, telling what a blog is in this way seems to be very reductive.
Blogs started out as personal diaries, web spaces where “bloggers” told stories and thoughts, where they noted experiences and expressed points of view. It was a new way of telling oneself where everyone could make their voices heard, without the need to be a professional-level journalist or writer.
Over the years, things have evolved to the point that today it is rare to find blogs where this almost “romantic” vision is still true.
So what is a blog today? Blogging is still a means of making people understand your point of view through content, except that – to respond to that girl – you won’t just have to write a lot to write.
Give me another minute we get there.
A blog is a web project based on optimized content
Wanting to give a more precise definition of a blog, we could say that a blog is a web project based on optimized content, useful to people.
This “profit” is the key to any self-respecting blog project.
Once a blog was your personal diary, it was a way to express yourself, to create friendships, to find like minds.
What is a blog now? It is almost always an editorial project for business purposes, and as such, ultimately, it must allow you to earn in order to make sense and be kept alive.
Maybe it loses a bit of poetry compared to the concept “the blog as a personal diary”. However, one thing does not necessarily exclude the other.
In the most successful cases, the blogger’s personality proudly prints behind every word, creating irresistible empathy and inspiring personal stories.
Combined with the clear organization of useful and understandable content, these stories create a world-class user experience, capable of transforming readers from occasional visitors to true loyal customers. People are faithful to the word of the blogger, inspired by his knowledge.
And this translates blogging into the most effective tool for building the trust needed to sell anything.
A blog is a good starting point for changing your life
We are getting closer and closer to understanding what these blogs are. Let’s take an even more concrete step forward.
What is a winning blog?
A winning blog – today – is an editorial project with precise objectives, capable of addressing a specific, attentive and interested audience, capable of developing, precisely with this audience, involvement, contact and sharing.
In other words, it’s a very powerful marketing tool for building trust.
Success almost always derives from the blogger’s desire to get involved, from his generosity in expressing his knowledge and his ability to create content oriented to business objectives.
A winning blog does not have to please everyone, because it is not made for everyone. Its strength is all there: it simply has to be the point of reference for those who empathize with the blogger.
These people are initially the ideal readers to whom you have decided to turn (that’s right: you choose them) and it is easy to transform over time into the Buyer Personas of your online business (your real customers).
In other words, today a blog is a set of irresistible content, created with skill, capable of intercepting the needs of selected people and proposing real solutions, represented by your offers of products and services.
Now, we have all the elements to understand how this works.
How does a blog work?
“The blog is capable of intercepting people’s needs” “.
The concept seems simple, but let’s try to make it more concrete to understand well. Did you know that 93% of any online experience comes from a search engine?
It means, in a nutshell, that people spend most of their time searching for content on the web. And what are they looking for, if not information and solutions to their problems?
Imagine a city housewife, passionate about cooking and – consequently – also about spices. The idea of growing her own aromatic plants has been running through her head for a while. The problem is that she only has a small terrace, she lives with her family on the second floor in the city and perhaps it is not the best place for a small vegetable garden.
Ok, I see you, what does this have to do with a blog? 1 minute and we get there.
Here’s what happens: moved by curiosity, she starts searching the web for information on how to grow aromatic plants. And he will find answers, oh yes, he will find many. And almost all thanks to Google or other search engines.
Now, it is clear that someone has dedicated himself to designing and writing a specific content that responds to the intent of that research, which is precisely to cultivate aromatic plants on the balcony.
How does a blog that makes money work? You just found out.
A blog works because it can place specific content in search engines that people are looking for. And this, if it coincides with your business goals, allows you to make money. Business objectives such as :
- The writer who published the book on how to grow aromatic plants and wants to make it known;
- The company that sells a specific vertical greenhouse for terraces and then intercepts these people to show their flagship product;
- The eCommerce sells tools and tools to take care of potted plants.
Do you understand? How many opportunities does a blog offer you? Of course, you will have to write for us technology useful content for the needs of that specific person (if you don’t know how to do it, we talk about it everywhere in the blog and we also have a specific training course to write useful content for your business ). But once written and positioned, then that same content will work for you by intercepting strangers and taking them to your pages.
That’s what a blog is for: to make your voice heard
Do you know why I wanted to write a post on the definition of a blog? To make you understand how many opportunities you could seize by having one.
Believe me, if you are not there, your competitors will be there. If they don’t find your content, they will find your competitors’ content.
So it’s clear: if you don’t know how to move, if you don’t know how to write, you risk doing more harm than good. Let’s try to understand it better as it is vital:
- What is a blog that does not place content for? It is useless.
- What good is a blog that attracts the wrong people? It serves to do damage since a wrong customer is always a dissatisfied customer.
The art of positioning content on search engines is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It is a difficult job, which requires research, knowledge and sensitivity that not everyone has.
Read More: A Cheap SEO Company Can Help You Make More Money
You know how a blog works but it is not enough, you will also have to understand the basics of SEO, in order to take advantage of it and get the results you deserve. There’s one piece of advice that’s eternal: When writing content, think first of satisfying the search intent of your prospective reader. What answers do you expect? With what contents? Do it, and if you’ve focused on the right topic, the results will come.
