Blogging tips: What I've learned from writing 85+ blog posts
What’s the deal with blogging? Can you make actual money with it? Do blog posts help build your online business? What comes first: the business or the blog? Aren’t blog posts just a thing of the past? How do you write a blog post to find new paying customers? Let’s cover all of these questions plus my best blogging tips as I share what I’ve learned from writing more than 85 blog posts starting waaaaay back in 2010.
When I first started blogging, and to this day, I use it to grow my business and income. And I’m not talking about having ads every other paragraph, or autoplaying videos popping up on the screen after 3 seconds.
I’m talking about finding new clients that pay me thousands of dollars for 1:1 coaching (I’ve sold everything from $19 meal plans to $5,000 coaching packages through my blogs and email lists, you can see my detailed yearly income breakdowns here, here, here, and here).
Social media was barely a thing back when I started my online nutrition business in 2008, and other than old school marketing strategies, like speaking at local businesses for free (I did a lot of this), radio or newspaper ads (never did these), and yes, a few trade shows (barf!), there wasn’t really a way to grow my business outside of my immediate geographic area.
Other than Google ads, there were no Facebook pages, Instagram feeds, or YouTube channels to reach new customers around the world. A website with a blog was the place to be if you wanted an online business, which I desperately did at the time so I could leave my soul-sucking day job.
But then came social media, and with it the influencers and “experts” telling you that you don’t need a website or a blog, but you can find new customers and clients much easier with endless posting and documenting everything about your life 24/7 for all the world to see.
To which I say a big old “no, thank you!”.
No, thank you to feeling like I always had to experience big moments in my life from behind a screen, making sure to record it because my followers would love seeing it on my Instagram stories.
No, thank you to spending more time on my phone than with my husband and son.
No, thank you to having to create endless new content to satisfy the algorithm.
I mean, yes, I create consistent content for social media, but I still make an income if I don’t have the time or energy to (like if I’m creating a new program and want to stay 100% focused on it).
Blogging has allowed me to create a sustainable, organic source of new clients since 2012, and that hasn’t changed. Every single month, for almost 10 years, I’ve found new clients and customers (and therefore, income!) from blogging, and your business is no different.
If you put the following blogging tips into action, I promise that you can build your business. Ready? Let’s go!
Blogging tip #1: Collect emails
This was one of my top 3 mistakes in my first year in business. The sooner you start growing your email list, the sooner you can generate a full time income in your business.
The quickest way to grow your email list through your blog is going to be a content upgrade right in the post itself (click here to learn all about content upgrades) OR a polite pop-up that shows them a relevant opt-in/lead magnet.
P.S. When I say polite pop-up, I mean a pop-up that comes onto the screen after 30 seconds, instead of coming up right away and instantly pissing new website visitors off. If you use Squarespace (my website and blog building software of choice), this is super easy to include on your website by following these instructions here.
content upgrade
Promotional pop-up
You have to give people a good reason to give you their email, it’s not going to be enough to put “sign up for updates”. Take the time to create an opt-in/lead magnet that will help solve a problem them have.
Once you have their email address, you can add them to a nurture sequence (an automatic sequence of emails they get once they first join your list) that can establish your expertise, build trust quickly, and possibly turn them into paying customers or clients within days.
You’re also going to email your list every time you write a new blog post to let them know about it. Again, this helps build ongoing trust and keeps your list warm and active between launches.
You might feel like it’s overkill to email your list when they’re most likely following you on social media, and therefore seeing posts about your new blog post, but just because someone is following you doesn’t mean they’re seeing your social media content.
Open rates on emails is about 5 times higher than organic reach on social media, so it’s a more efficient and effective form of marketing than social media posts.
You can also use email addresses to create cheap social media ads, especially around launches of your paid programs. I’m just starting to get into paid ads and it’s fascinating what you can do with an email list that you own.
Blogging tip #2: Write fewer, but longer and more in-depth, blog posts
There is no need to blog every single day, that’s completely unsustainable. If you want to grow your business faster, I’d write a longer and more in-depth blog post once a week, but create daily content for social media based on that blog post (see tip #4 below).
Once you start working with paying clients and have less time to blog, reduce your blog posts to once every other week. This means that you’ll be emailing your list at least twice a month with your most valuable content, and if you want to email them more often, you can send them an email in the week between with other content.
There are 2 reasons why you want to write longer and more in-depth blog posts:
Search Engine Optimization (aka. how to write content on your website that ranks higher and gets found easier on search engines like Google) loves longer form content.
Blog posts that are 2,000 to 3,000 words in length tend to be favoured in Google’s search algorithm (the most popular search engine in the world).You can create social media content much quicker from that blog post.
This is a technique I’ll cover in more detail in blogging tip #4, but when the content is already written, it’s much easier to break into smaller, more digestible pieces in individual social media posts or use as scripts or outlines for video content.
For example, I could make this blog post into 1 regular Instagram post, 2 carousel posts for Instagram, 1 Reel, 10 Pinterest pins (including 2 Idea pins recycled from the carousel posts for Instagram), 1 live which gets turned into an IGTV recording, and 1 YouTube video.
So instead of writing 5 separate 400 word posts each week for social media that will only be used once, write one longer, 2,000 word blog post once a week that can be found using social media engines over the next 1-5 years.
Blogging tip #3: Write strategic blog posts
Now we get to the ultimate question …
What comes first: the business or the blog?
There are 2 different business models to make money from blogging:
Ad and/or affiliate model
This is where you put paid ads on your website that make pennies (or even fractions of pennies) from each view, or include affiliate links where you get a portion of income when a visitor from your website purchases that product through your link. Your income from this business model will depend solely on volume of website traffic, which you will have to build up through SEO and Pinterest.Service or online course/program based model
This is where you sell your services or an online course or program you’ve created yourself. Prices could range from a few dollars to thousands (or tens) of thousands of dollars per sale.
Your income from this model will depend on how you price and position your paid offering, and how well your website traffic matches up with the problem that your paid solution solves.
In this model, you probably won’t make a successful sale in the blog post itself, but from a sales page on the same website, or from email marketing you do after someone joins your email list.
For the ad/affiliate model, you’re wanting the most amount of website traffic, since your ad payout will be based on those numbers alone.
For the service or program based model, you need to have a match between your expertise, and the services or programs you create from it, and the types of website visitors you’re attracting.
For example, if you’re selling a program to help young, single women in their 20’s to start saving money for retirement, you probably won’t make a successful sale from a 60 year old woman who just retired (unless she refers her granddaughter to your site).
When it comes to writing blog posts, you want to start by asking yourself:
What does my ideal client need to learn or hear to move them closer to hiring me?
Think of your last 5 paying clients, or the last 5 people who inquired about your paid offerings but didn’t become clients yet.
What questions did they ask you before they hired you? What were they uncertain of? What didn’t they understand about your area of expertise or your paid offering? What were they afraid of?
Answer those questions or concerns in your blog posts.
The people who inquired about your paid offerings but didn’t become clients yet plus any other potential clients who haven’t reached out yet will all read the same blog post.
The more objections you can overcome with your blog posts now, the more successful your sales calls or launches will be later.
Also, anytime you brainstorm blog posts from frequently asked questions, the better chance you have of someone typing that FAQ into Google and finding your blog post. In that moment, they’re in active, “find a solution” mode, and be more willing to consider investing in your help to overcome their problem faster, easier, or cheaper.
Blogging tip #4: Market your blog posts better and more often
The best part about blog posts is that you’ve already done the hard part by writing long-form content, and now you can break it apart into at least 25 different pieces to re-use on social media.
I wrote an epic blog post on this very topic that breaks down this concept in detail. I outlined a complete plan to create content for 6 different types of media on 4 different social media platforms, including a free downloadable schedule so you can market your blog posts like a master in your own business.
This is why I don’t recommend blogging daily, because that doesn’t leave enough left over for properly marketing the blog post! We’re not trying to make new content just for the sake of it, like some underpaid, overwhelmed hamster on a never ending wheel.
It’s time to start working smarter, not harder, in your business. No matter how much you dress it up, burnout is a bitch that will steal all the joy from your life. Don’t let it.
Learning how to market your blog posts fully will grow your business faster, so get on it.
Blogging tip #5: Reuse your blog posts
The best part about writing blog posts is that until you take them off your website, they’ll live on and on and on. In fact, they might even get more traffic through search engines the older they get!
But what people often forget to do is to market their old blog posts on social media over and over again.
Here’s 3 ways to do that:
#1 Re-share it on social media
There’s no reason why you can take an older blog post, create a few new graphics, and share them on Pinterest again! It’s not the gold standard for Pinterest content (they love new, never before published URL’s with a new graphic the most), but it’s still good.
Or that blog post you wrote 2 years ago? Why can’t you create a swipe-through carousel and upload it as an Instagram post, then elongate the same images and create an Idea pin for Pinterest?
And I bet when you wrote a blog post a few years ago you didn’t think of making a Reel about it (because they didn’t exist).
Just like blogging tip #4, it’s time to work smarter, not harder.
Go onto Instagram, and look at your insights to see what your most popular posts were. Can you take that same quote image, change it to a new quote you pulled from a blog post, and copy the intro to the blog post as the caption? Bam, a brand new social media post in less than 10 minutes!
#2 Include it in a nurture sequence or forever funnel
I referred to a nurture sequence in blogging tip #1, where you email new subscribers once a day for 5 days to build trust and expertise quickly. When you’re just starting out and have few to no blog posts, those individual emails in the nurture sequence will be simple, written emails.
However, after you have several blog posts published, you might go back and update that sequence to include one of your past blog posts, especially if it addresses a common objection many people have before investing in one of your paid offers.
Once you have dozens of blog posts, like I do, you might decide to write a longer email sequence called a forever funnel, where you email new subscribers once a week, linking to an older blog post. This forever funnel will start the week after they receive your nurture sequence.
A forever funnel helps to educate your subscribers and keep them active even if you’re not emailing them once a week, or even once a month!
The first year of blogging I wrote a new, in-depth blog post about once every other week, totalling 17 blog posts in one year. I only wrote to my email list when I published a new blog post, so they got 17 newsletters that year.
In the last year I’ve only written 8 blog posts, yet my new email subscribers have gotten an email from me every single week without me having to write anything. It’s truly glorious!
A nurture sequence and forever funnel are the ultimate “set it and forget it” marketing system. You can review the results every few months, and update it once a year with new blog posts, but other than that it’s hands off and can generate new paying clients for you.
#3 link to and older blog post from a new blog post
While you’re writing new blog posts, you might find it helpful to refer to another one you’ve already written. Link to it, just like you would someone else’s website for reference!
In this blog post you’re reading, I’ve already linked up 7 of my past blog posts, one of which was my very first blog post on this website that I wrote 7 years ago. 7 years ago!!!!
It doesn’t look like you’re full of yourself, it looks like you’re a true expert that can be trusted to continue educating about this particular topic. You can be trusted with their time, attention, and their money when they decide to invest in your paid offerings.
Plus, if you don’t display the publish dates on your blog posts (I recommend you don’t so people don’t automatically dismiss older information that’s still relevant), they won’t even know a blog post might be months or years old.
#4 Use it in your paid offers!
If you have a blog post that is truly a complete resource on a specific topic that you’re covering in a paid offer, like a lesson in an online course, there’s no need to redo it. Simply link to or embed the blog post in your course hosting platform as it’s own lesson!
Why re-invent the wheel when it’s pretty perfect to begin with?
If any content or information within the blog post has changed, update it, and voila, you can send it out as a new email to your list, too.
There you have it, my best blogging tips that I learned after publishing 85+ posts!
If this was a lot of information for you to digest, don’t worry, I’ve got a handy dandy summary for you.
Let me take you through the entire process, from blog post idea all the way through to sustainable marketing methods, in “The Ultimate Blogging Tips for Your Business Roadmap”.
In this blogging roadmap, I teach you:
the 5 steps to write amazing blog posts that are guaranteed to get clicks, shares, and grow your email list
exactly what to do in the first 2 weeks after you publish a blog post so that it reaches more people
what to do long-term (3-6 months or more in the future) to keep getting more and more traffic to your blog posts
I’ve spent years perfecting this workflow to save time, energy, and stress so that you don’t have to!
