Why is more important than How…
Meaning why you want to become an expert blogger is more important than how to become an expert in whatever niche you are in.
You want to become an expert blogger or an expert in your niche because you want more money? Or you want to become expert because you really care about your customers?
Whatever the case be, if people perceive you as an expert 90% of times they will pay you more.
Ok. These are just made up stats but you got my point.
Becoming an expert blogger in your niche comes much more into limelight when people are told to write a blog.
I have worked with clients who said that writing is not there best skill, some believed that people who write blogs are more knowledgeable and various other reasons.
There can be various reasons why a company or a business blog.
I don’t say this…there was a survey by Ubersuggest.
3 out of top 5 reasons directly or indirectly relates to making money.
Number of companies writing a blog is increasing two folds every day.
According to Hubspot, companies that are regular at writing blogs will have 13 times greater chance of positive ROI.
But everybody out there is saying that to start your blog, you have to become an expert in your niche.
What do you think it takes to be an expert blogger?
Before diving into the topic directly let me first tell you about two famous and different school of thoughts…
Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers popularized a system which says that if you dedicate 10000 hours of your life in any field, you will become an expert in that field.
10000 hours….
Even if you dedicate 2+ hours learning your craft it will take 10+ years to become an expert.
Are you ready for that commitment?
No idea?
Let me tell you the other school of thought…
Josh Kaufman says that you can learn any skill within a week, if you go about it with intense focus and deliberate practice.
More than 10 years to less than a week…
Already thinking what all this has to do with you being an expert or your blog?
I tell you this has EVERYTHING to do with your blog and your writing skill.
Google’s most important ranking factor is E-A-T.
Google has been ranking site base on EAT since 2018 algorithm update of Google.
Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness. This is how Google describes three core pillars of website evaluation, as conducted by its quality raters. The quality raters manually assess the quality of the search results by studying the top-listed results. The quality raters’ work according to a handbook drawn up by Google, and made publicly available, called the Google Quality Rater Guidelines.
Searchmetrics
If you are anyone of these industry…
- News
- Law
- Finance
- Health
- Science
You have more reasons to take care of Google’s EAT metrics.
The more people see you as an expert more authority is given to you by Google, which helps you rank on the first pages of Search Engines, which brings more people, who again see you as an expert and on and on goes this holy cycle….
But the first step of this whole cycle is creating content that not only makes you believe but also the person who reads your blog, that you are an expert in your field.
Let us take an example here,
An SEO Expert, like Rand Fishkin, knows all the knitty-gritty of search engine optimization, he has invested more than 10000+ hours in learning and applying his craft.
He is the ‘EXPERT’, no doubt.
But suppose, an average Joe, has been studying about SEO for a few weeks now, his friend who has a blog on xyz niche.
Now Joe advises his blogger friend about how to make his blog more visible to search engines, does he not become sort of expert for his blogger friend?
Do you see what I am talking?
For now, DO NOT LEARN FOR BEING MASTER.
If you are in hurry, this is the conclusion of this whole article.
Still here?
Let us see how to start writing your first few blog posts to become an expert blogger.
Follow the thought leaders to become an expert blogger in your niche
Well, the first step to become an expert blogger is to write a blog article on your website.
Find out the thought leaders in your niche.
For example I have this blog related to internet marketing, I follow people like Neil Patel, Brain Dean and many more.
I follow their blogs, videos, interviews, newsletter… Anything on which I can get my hands on will be one.
By following the leaders, by reading what they write, your thought process starts developing and you start thinking in ways you were not capable of at first.
This opens up a lot of new opportunity for your blog. The quality of your thinking improves. And takes you one step ahead of becoming an expert blogger.
Content curation
70% of google is duplicate content.
So don’t bother to copy paste content, because Google is very good at finding duplicate content.
Now I will tell you, how to go about creating your first blog post.
Answer is content curation…
Don’t know what it means?
Content curation is when you copy the content strategy of your competitor.
Let me clarify, I said copying the content STRATEGY and not the content itself.
Your competitor is on the first ranking page of your targeted keyword.
>what is the average length of article on the first page of google
>what is the content structure
>what do you think is not included in those articles (there is always something)
>are those article based on scientific research and studies?
A BONUS TIP: if the DA of your competition is high but the PA is low, use the Skyscraper technique by Brain dean and chances are you might rank for the keyword with a certain amount of backlinks.
If the DA+PA both are high, forget about the keyword, try something different.
Share your Knowledge
This is the part where people start looking at you as an expert.
Share your knowledge on as many channels you think you are comfortable with.
I agree that you are already going to write blog to share your knowledge.
But that is not enough.
Be willing to share your knowledge without any expectation of getting results.
Use platforms like Quora, Linkedin, Medium etc to build a loyal following for yourself. Creating a fb page is also an option.
Learn in context
For starters, don’t just start learning everything.
Let me give you my example, I want to learn Digital Marketing…
For about a month I was confused between Social Media Marketing, Fb ads, PPC, and many other things. Then I decided to just focus on one thin SEO. Now I put all my focus on learning, applying, and sharing SEO.
What Josh Kaufman says in his TED Talk
Not interested in watching the video?
Here is a brief conclusion of this video:
Deconstruct: decide what you want to get done after you are done with learning that particular skill.
Now deconstruct that skill into the smallest part you can and then start working on that.
Learn enough to self correct: Read 2-3 books relevant to the skill if needed.
Start working on that skill tangibly.
For example if you want to learn coding, then read a book, watch a tutorial and then start coding.
Then after if you get into a problem, read another book, blog or audiobook anything that is related to your topic.
This way you are learning plus self correcting yourself.
Remove practice barriers: This one is a bit cliché but important.
Remove all the barriers when you are practicing.
Remove phones, people and anything that might distract you.
Remember, these 20 hours should be focused deliberate practice.
Practice at least 20 hours: The major barrier to skill acquisition is not intellectual but EMOTIONAL.
By emotional he means that we do not start learning anything is because we know how bad we are at it, and by doing this we might show others, or even to ourselves that we are stupid.
By putting ourselves into a time frame of practicing for 20 hours will only mean that we don’t judge ourselves for these 20 hours and keep practicing with complete focus.
Conclusion
I have written this post because the number 1 reason people say that they never wrote a blog for their business is that they don’t consider themselves as an expert in writing.
Writing, like any other skill, can be learned with deliberate practice.
And that is what I want you to do today.
Pick up a pen or laptop if you prefer start wring the first post for your blog.
If you have no idea what to write find the ‘experts’ in your niche and see what type of content they write and then use content curation.
And most importantly…tell me if this works. I would be happy to know.
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