Successful Lifestyle Blogger: How You Can Become One

09 January 2018 Anne Laing

What Do You Call It? Lifestyle?
Have A Content Plan
Choose Hosting And Domain
Pick a Domain Name
Learn From The Best
Choose A Theme And Customize Your Blog
Promote Your Blog

Dreamed of starting your blog, waited for the “totally ready” moment, hated yourself, Googled “how to beat procrastination” twice, and …. nothing?

This article will teach you how to set up a lifestyle blog.

If you don’t care about clicking the “new post” button today, tomorrow, and the next day, read something else.

What Do You Call It? Lifestyle?

Some believe that lifestyle blogging means writing about anything. Lifestyle bloggers need their page to speak more about their interests, fashion inspirations, food and fitness choices than life stories.

The more specific you get with your niche, the easier it will be for you to build up readership. Limiting your sphere of interests could eventually establish you as an expert. Other bloggers will want to channel their readers to your page by linking to it.

Even if you adore many things and hate restrictions to creativity, blogging without any particular focus won’t work. Create your own blend of topics and stick to it.

Have A Content Plan

Top bloggers know that consistency is crucial to winning and keeping the audience. To have a popular blog, start with a content vision. Marketing, SEO, and even page design can be taken care of after you brainstorm content strategy.

Set out the frequency of publishing in an editorial calendar or a GoogleDocs spreadsheet. Keep track of your content by date, type, topic, and theme. Also plan new blog posts ahead in order to publish a balanced set of content weekly, utilizing the times when the readers are most active. The schedule may also serve as an idea bucket and a tool of strategic marketing. Check out some ideas you could use for the first blog post and take a look at the list of the top lifestyle bloggers in 2017.

Choose Hosting And Domain

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world. If you ever wondered which blogging platform is used by Facebook and NASA, now you know.

Here are some of the benefits:

To set up your blog is rather easy. It is an open source technology.
It is very customizable. If you have at least some minor tech background, you will set up your blog with no problems. For the rest of us there are ready-made themes with the best WordPress plugins included in the package; just take a look.
If you still have questions about setting up your blog correctly, use the support forum.
With WordPress, you will be able to make your blog SEO-friendly and monetizable.

WordPress requires third-party hosting. You could use one of the many web-hosting companies available on the market (if you need suggestions, try looking here). You might also choose to start a free blog on their website, but there are many valid reasons against free blogging:

Your WordPress blog will not actually belong to you. That’s enough of an argument! If the owners of the platform decide that you violate their rules, they may shut down your WordPress-based blog right away.
You will have a clumsy domain name that ends with “wordpress.com”
Free bloggers usually cannot have ads on their pages and make money
There will be no free themes and the ability to upload media will be limited.
It will look amateurish. You will save $3 and put your entire work at risk. Instead, you can buy WordPress templates that have a hosting package included in their price. Check out the link.

Pick a Domain Name

I hope you are full of determination to set up a lifestyle WordPress blog. Now it’s time to name your blog!

“Lifestyle” is a broad term, so perhaps the name should not be related to only one of your interests, e.g. to fashion, cooking or gardening.

Think about using your own name and promoting your personal brand. You could plunge into thesaurus.com if you run out of words. And check out the Google Keyword Tool before making a choice.

You can use the world's top bloggers as examples and borrow some naming inspiration from them. But don’t steal ideas or use brand names.

Check if the blog name is available on the domain purchasing site. You can use “.com”, “.net”, and “.org” URL’s depending on their availability. Just bear in mind that pages that end with “.com” tend to be more popular.

Learn From The Best

Authors don’t succeed by ignoring the writing community. Learn different blogging techniques from star bloggers here. If you are a beginner, I would recommend having a dose of inspiration and healthy envy every day. But don’t steal ideas, beware of the karma police!

Choose A Theme And Customize Your Blog

Thank goodness you don’t need to build your lifestyle blog from scratch! You can use free WordPress themes and customization options to design your blog the way you want it.

If you are serious about the blogging business, dive into TemplateMonster and buy a theme with just one click. Remember that the design should suit your personality. Then think about your readers. Does it speak “lifestyle” to them? Will they be comfortable navigating your page? Or will they get distracted from any blog post by glaring colors and amateur graphics?

Bear in mind that people don’t enjoy feeling puzzled, so it’s your responsibility to take care of the user experience . Or you can leave it to the professionals.

LIVE PREVIEW | PURCHASE

You may have noticed that in almost every stunning looking blog, much space is left unfilled. Whitespace lets readers’ eyes rest and helps them pay attention to the things you want to highlight. Have a look.

LIVE PREVIEW | PURCHASE

You will also need a strategically designed sidebar. While blogging, you’ll notice that there are very few things you need in it:

Categories
Categories should be logical and reduce the time spent looking for an article, not increase it. If the same post is found in several categories or none of them, people may become annoyed.
Search widget
I recommend Live Search widget that does not come pre-installed on WordPress. It allows people to choose among search options and results even before entering the whole keyword.
“Subscribe” button
This one is obvious. You will want people to leave emails, so the “Subscribe" widget must catch their eyes.
Social media icons and social proofs
Apart from liking and sharing, the visitors may be curious how many followers and comments you already have. Do not leave them in suspense.
Contact information and personal bio
Relationships matter, period. People will take your texts seriously and become your brand advocates only if they sense your personality and story. You should introduce yourself with a compelling message and an appropriate photo. Given the lifestyle niche of your blog, there will be more than enough pictures of you but the one in the bio should be selected most carefully as it will communicate your skills and overall attitude even faster than words.

Check out what an uncluttered lifestyle blog site looks like!

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While you have fun and customize your blog, bear in mind that many visitors may also want to access it from their tablets and smartphones. Your new WordPress blog needs a design that is mobile-friendly. Responsive design adapts to different screen sizes and does not require zooming or much scrolling. Think about how many readers look through lifestyle tips on the go! Don’t try to save money by sacrificing traffic.

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Promote Your Blog

Now we can move on to creating successful blog promotion mechanisms. You will not have to invent something, just pick a set of promotion methods that work for you. I’m sorry but some trial and error is inevitable. Here are some tactics to consider:

More And Longer Articles

Researchers say that blogs that publish more than 16 posts a month get 3.5 times more visitors. Click the publish button at least 2-3 times weekly and have a steady flow of readers! Research shows that Google puts the posts that are more than 2000 words long higher in the SEO rankings. Articles longer than 3000 words also get shared twice as much as.

Differentiate

Infographics, Slideshare presentations, pdf and ebook versions of content can do wonders to traffic. Just put a bio with a link to your page in them.

Offer Email Subscription

Top bloggers point out that there is a sharp rise in the number of visitors to their page every time they add new posts and notify the readers via e-mail.

Write Elsewhere

The web author community is really huge. One of the best things you can do to get noticed and build readership is guest blogging. Choose several blogs, not in your niche, and contact their owners. It is a common practice for bloggers to allow other authors to write articles for them and include the authors’ bios and links to their blogs at the end. Guest blogging will improve the SEO status of the blog if you get links from the sites that have a decent amount of traffic.

Comment On Other Blogs

You should know all the major players in your niche and comment under their posts. This may help you to get noticed by their community of readers, and the traffic will increase.

Having started a blog, don’t wait until your readers come. Get the blog set up and start planning your content outreach. Every other post should contain links to and from influencers in the niche!

Use Social Media

Include social media buttons on your blog and think of a social media strategy! Posting and commenting on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Quora is a must if you want to build a readership. Try different social platforms and resources and see what works. Facebook and Linkedin groups can get you lots of new visitors if the stuff you publish is clearly differentiated from the spam.

I hope that this overview made you want to get your hands dirty. Grab a cup of coffee and start a lifestyle blog!

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