Maybe this is you: You started a blog. You posted enthusiastically your first few blog posts, excited about sharing your expertise and advice with your readers. But then, nothing! Barely anyone reads it. Nobody shares it. Nobody seems to “get” what you’re offering… or how amazing it is!

Here’s the good news: What you are sharing is probably totally excellent and amazing. There are just a few tweaks you need to do to make your readers happy and your blog successful.

Why You Need a Blog

You probably already know how important a blog is for your marketing.

Which is why you want to learn how to effectively manage your blog in a way that supports your business.

A blog will help your SEO, so you show up on Google and new students can find you, you have content to share on social media, you establish yourself as an expert and deepen the relationship with your existing students.

So why, oh why, do so many yoga teachers and wellness entrepreneurs I talk to still have a laundry list of excuses for why they can’t maintain a blog?

Well, the time for excuses is over and I’m going to give you clear strategies and tips that you can put into action right away to find new joy and success with your blog.

Create a Content Calendar

When you wait to write a blog post until you feel creative, or inspired, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

The truth is, blogging is work. Writing is work. You can’t sit there waiting for divine inspiration. You need to have a plan, and a little bit of discipline.

The first step is to sit down and brainstorm ideas for blog posts.

What do you want to write about?

What do you think your audience would love to hear from you?

What would help them, for example to deepen their practice?

When you come up with ideas, try to stay within your niche. For example, when you’re teaching prenatal yoga, don’t write about hand stands or share meditation tips or recipes, share things like ‘3 yoga poses for expecting mums’ or ‘what you didn’t know about practicing yoga when pregnant’.

Your blog should have a definitive focus, this will help you attract new readers interested in this topic, it will establish you as an expert and it will also help you with Google because Google loves expert websites.

You can have a notebook or planner where you write down your ideas. I have a board in Asana, my project management tool, where I save all my content ideas. Here’s an article where I share how to set up your content calendar in Asana.

Once a month, sit down and plan your posts for the next month. Now that you have this treasure grove of content ideas this should be really easy.

Tell Epic Stories

Your readers want more out of posts than basic, generic text. Tell them a story.

As Seth Godin said, ‘Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”

The more you share with your audience the more they will trust you and help root you on in growing your brand.

Don’t just share facts that read like you copied them out of your yoga teacher training manual. I see this so often, and really, it’s boring to read.

Instead share for example your story trying to master a pose. What you’ve learned on the way. How you failed.

Focus on how you can make your reader feel special, learn something, get inspired or laugh.

This can take you some time to master, and that’s fine. What helped me is reading other people’s blogs and look at which blog posts I liked, what did they do that made it interesting me to read? What did make me want to read more?

You can also add a video to your blog post, for example if you want to explain how to do a certain yoga pose this is a great idea.

Write a Catchy Headline For Your Blog Post

Okay, now we have an amazing piece of content that you wrote, full of stories and interesting insights.

You lean back to admire your masterpiece. Everything is delightful. Oprah would be proud.

There’s just one piece that’s missing.

A headline.

Otherwise known as… a “title”.

You want to make your titles so intriguing that readers HAVE to click on it. Few people will read your content if your title isn’t drawing them in.

You should also consider what people are searching for. For example, you might be interested in things like Dharma, or the Chakras. But are your potential students searching for that on Google or YouTube?

Here’s an example:

Instead of writing “How to find your dharma” you could write “Feeling stuck? 3 ways how yoga can help you find your purpose in life.”

Here are some commonly used headline formats that are “commonly used” for a reason. Because they work!

How to Headlines

Your crazy-busy customers love discovering tips, tricks, and methods to make things better, easier, and happier. Who doesn’t, right? So: what can you teach?

Why I… Headlines

Your readers will love it when you divulge intimate, true-story details about your life, the behind the scenes story. Here’s an example: “Why I shut down my first business even though it was successful“.

List Headlines

Lists like „5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Hiring A Private Yoga Teacher” are an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise and provide solutions to specific problems — in a quick-fire, zippy format. People love them.

There are a lot more headline formats, but these should get you started.

Promote Your Blog Post

Those folks hanging out on your email list? They subscribed for a reason: because they’re hoping to hear from you when you’ve got something cool and new to share!

So, pop them an email to let them know, “Hey, I made something new for you!” and then point them to wherever they need to go to find it.

Don’t assume that people are religiously visiting your blog or homepage, eagerly refreshing-refreshing-refreshing every five minutes to see if, maybe, there’s something new.

They are not doing that. So, you MUST take it upon yourself to send your work to them. Take the love and bring it to the people!

You can do this in many different ways. Here are two options to consider:

You can copy & paste your entire piece of content or a slightly shorter version right into a newsletter and blast it out! Done. Somewhere in your newsletter, you put a link back to your website so that your readers are encouraged to visit your site, share your post, or explore MORE of your work.

Or you can craft an email where you start with a personal message at the top and then link to a few of your recent pieces of content in a list-format, you can also add upcoming events you’re doing or promote new offers.

Next share your new piece of content across ALL of the social media platforms that you use.

I love Pinterest and get really good traffic from it, so I create a pinnable image for every blog post and post that on Pinterest. A pinnable image means that it’s portrait format, not landscape, because that works better on Pinterest, and I also add some text on it and my url.

You can also get crafty! If you create a piece of content and think to yourself, “So-and-so would LOVE this!” then send it to them with a little love note explaining why you thought it would be absolutely perfect for them.

Be Consistent

If you are an entrepreneur, and you are ready to make a bigger impact and reach more people, you need to be strategic about your efforts and this means being consistent.

Now, I know that blogging every single week can be exhausting and it might not be possible for you.

If that’s you, commit to posting once per month. That’s doable, right? Once per month, that’s 12 posts per year.

What I don’t want you to do is post weekly for 4 weeks in a row, and then stop for 6 months, and start again and so on.

This won’t get you anywhere. Consistency really is everything.

Don’t Skimp on SEO

I’m far from an SEO guru but the longer I blog the more I realize how important SEO is for the long game.

Keyword research is not a fun subject but it’s crucial for long-term blogging success.

I usually write my blogs first based on advice or stories I’ve got to tell. I then look for the keyword afterwards and find a way for it to fit naturally into what I’ve written.

And then I use that keyword in my post. I add it to image titles or descriptions, in headlines and the site URL and sprinkle it throughout the content.

If you want to learn more about SEO, click here to learn more on how to get found on Google.

Finally, give yourself some grace, be patient and kind to yourself.

Your blog writing skills are probably going to suck at the beginning. It’s okay, it happens to everyone.

Remember that it takes time to get really good at anything. Writing is no different.

Stay consistent, read a lot, and keep learning. Eventually, you will get awesome!

Blogging has the potential to change your business. I truly believe that, and it’s what helped me most in my business. My growth all comes down to showing up and sharing valuable advice on a consistent basis.

That’s how you build trust and turn your website visitors into paying customers.

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