6 Tips to Accelerate Your Blogging Career Have you opted Blogging as your primary profession? Here are a few tips that can help you in the quest

From the Bollywood stars to a teenager living in the next door, there is no one who isn't capable to blog. Blogging is no more just a way to write and express but rather a way to boost your personal brand, connect with people, show-off your skills and expertise and monetise your skills at the same time.

"There are various perks of blogging- some write for passion, some of them write to establish their credibility and expertise, while a few others look at blogging as a platform of collaboration by inviting other bloggers to contribute some blog to make money online and so on. Blogging is not rocket science, how much ever people talk about it- you have to stick to the basics to become a successful blogger," believes Yaagneshwaran Ganesh, a well known TEDx speaker and the Director of Marketing at Fiind Inc.

There are billions of bloggers on the web today, some are thriving and some are still trying to gain a foothold. No matter what stage you are, blogging needs a lot of patience and dedication in the process of being successful as a blogger.

Not just people have started to take blogging as a serious profession but rather companies are also using blogging as a marketing and branding tool.

To help out the bloggers and teach them how they can improve their blogging skills, Entrepreneur India spoke to some industry related experts.

"What started as a hobby of maintaining an online diary, developed into a marketing technique used by companies across industries to engage customers at various stages of their buying journey," says Shweta Saxena, Founder of Up The Reach, a Content Creation and Marketing Agency.

Prepare Before you Write

Writing is not a job that you can do in a hurry, you need to be patient and prepare a little before you write to end up with a masterpiece. To write a valuable blog post, you need to gather a lot of information, write a rough draft first and then go with the final edition. "Always create an outline before writing a blog post. It structures your views and results in a smooth flow of thoughts balanced throughout the article," says Shweta,

Decide your Tools

You got an idea while driving and when you reached home, you have no idea what was it all about. It does happen a lot of times. But thanks to God that many developers realised it and create a bunch of helpful tools for the bloggers and writer. "Use tools that are developed to catch all the ideas that hover around your head anytime, for example, Evernote or Pocket," says Saxena.

When you craft something, your priority should be the content that your audience craves for. If you just write or post what you like, you will never be able to thrive as a blogger. Explore what is the need of your targeted audience and how can you fill the gap. "As a blogger, it is your job to know the needs of your audience and serve according to it, " believes Mudit Jain, the Founder of Talkers Code.

Call to Action is the Key

Whenever you start to write a blog post, you need to create the whole post keeping the call-to-action in mind. Your blog post should be able to tell people about their next steps. Don't expect that people will do something unless you direct them to do so. "You can't expect people to take a certain action unless you tell them to do so. Use a specific call to action and give them a reason to follow it through your blog post," says Mudit.

Focus on Email List Building

You may get thousands of people who are following you on various social media platforms but only some of them will actually visit your blog and check out what do you write about. Your email subscribers are your real follower, they subscribed because they discovered that your content can help them somehow. Focus on building your email list and you'll have a bunch of people visiting your blog every time you post something. "List building should be the priority, you also need to be consistent with your newsletters, " says Mudit.

Keep Sharing

Your posts are of no use unless people read them and in order to make people read them, you need to share them. Try out 2-3 social media platforms that are related to niche, build your audience over there and share your content. Using more than 3 platforms can result in a backfire because every platform is different and so are their purposes. "If you like to blog then you should know the importance of sharing. Share your posts, reach more and more people through your amazing content," says Deepanshi Tiwari, Co-Founder at Ilkway Digital Company.

Be a Real Person

It's a matter of no surprise that people like the human touch over anything else. You might own a big brand or you have a lot of employees to write for you but what will make your blog stand out from the crowd is your personal touch. Be a real human in front of your audience, revert to every comment, use your own social media accounts to share your posts. "This is my personal experience, if you write in a friendly way like a real human then you get connected to your readers in a better way," says Deepanshi.