It isn’t enough to just have a blog anymore.  With the blogging world saturated with tons of different blogs in all niches, how do make sure that you can turn yours into a profitable lifestyle business?

What sets successful bloggers apart from the rest of the fold?

Here are some key habits of successful bloggers that can help you make your blog stand out.

Be Consistent

Set a schedule and stick to it.  Posting consistently is important both for your ranking and for your readers.  

By creating an editorial calendar, you’ll be able to plan out a posting schedule that will keep you on track with writing and releasing posts.

Be consistent in how posts are laid out and in creating a consistent aesthetic for your blog. This relates to your blog photography as well.  Once you find a style you like, stick with it and it will soon become a recognizable part of your brand.

Don’t underestimate this one.  It’s one of the simplest, yet most important habits of successful bloggers.

Develop a Process

We use Trello to manage the flow of our editorial calendar and our entire blogging process.  From post ideas to calendar schedules, having a task management system has been invaluable for keeping us on track.

We also have post procedures and processes in place to make sure that everything runs smoothly and efficiently.  When you have a process, you take the guesswork out of everything.  You know exactly how to approach different tasks.

Practice Writing Daily

A big part of blogging is writing.  Big surprise, right?  When I first started I hated writing, but I forced myself to write every day and slowly it has gotten easier for me and I've become more confident in my writing.

The more you practice, the more you’ll be able to develop your own style and voice that sets your posts apart from everyone else’s.  People come to your blog to hear your insights, advice, knowledge, etc.  Having your own unique voice is part of what makes your content different, despite covering topics that other bloggers may also write about.

Focus on Traffic

Many bloggers focus almost exclusively on the writing, and not at all on driving traffic back to their site.  This is a mistake as traffic is crucial to monetizing your blog.

Take time to reach out to other bloggers and suggest a cross-promotion, and create and grow your Pinterest account.  Pinterest is a huge referral source of blog traffic for us.

Make sure you pin every day, as consistency is important here too.  Pinning regularly will help you build and keep followers, as well as attract new potential audiences.

Ensure that every blog post is Pinterest ready.  This means having a vertical image that can be pinned on Pinterest (that always has the appropriate ALT text attached).

Want to know our exact Pinterest strategy and how it helped us go from 0 clicks to over 3k after just one month of using Pinterest?

I would even recommend that you try experimenting with a small Facebook ad promoting one of your most visited posts.  This can be a great way to promote to new audiences.

Driving traffic also requires you to ensure that your SEO is in check.  This means making sure that keywords, H1, H2, H3 headings, proper tags, meta descriptions, ALT tags, etc are SEO friendly.

I know SEO confuses a lot of people.  That’s why it’s helpful to use an SEO plugin like Yoast to automatically check for you.

Listen To Your Readers

A successful blogger knows the content you offer has to be relevant to your audience.

What problems are your readers having?  What do they want more of?  Less of?

You can always ask them.  I regularly survey my email list and blog visitors to see what content they’re most interested in.  Then, I focus my resources on creating that content, whether it’s free or a product.

Checking your analytics can also give you some insight into which posts are most visited, shared, etc.

View Your Blog as a Business

Successful bloggers know that in order to turn their blog into a lifestyle business, they need to treat it like one.  That means you need to set goals and create strategies for how you’re going to accomplish those goals.

How many daily visitors would you like to average after 6 months?  What are your earning goals?  Set these goals for yourself so that you can start implementing strategies that can help you achieve them.

Track your data and analytics and be constantly optimizing your traffic and product strategies.  Businesses evolve, your blog needs to as well.

Monetize

In order for a blog to be financially successful, you can’t leave how you're going to monetize it as an afterthought.  This is a component of treating your blog like the business it is.

It’s also one of the top habits of successful bloggers.

Your monetization strategies are some of the most important ones to figure out.

One habit that I've forced myself to focus on each day in running my own online business is to do 1 revenue generating activity first thing in the morning.

Maybe that means sending an email to my newsletter, or accepting a sponsored post or split testing one of my landing pages.

Also, be deliberate in how you're going to monetize your blog.  There are many different ways that you can monetize: Ads, physical products (using programs like gearbubble.com you can create mugs, t-shirts, hats etc with unique designs for your audience), digital courses for your subscribers, and coaching or services.

My personal preference is creating digital products as they are the most scalable and hands off after they are created, but you can mix and match and decide what is best for you.

Launching a successful blog takes time, planning, and a willingness to adapt.  But you can take a little bit of the guesswork out of it by following these top habits of successful bloggers.