11 Things Successful Influencers and Bloggers Do [2023 Influencers Guide]

What Should Influencers do to establish and maintain a successful business?

1. Research Target Market.
2. Create a Well-Designed Online Blog (Website).
3. Choose Topics That Appeal to Your Target Audience.
4. Create a Well-Written and Easy to Digest Content.
5. Optimize Your Blog and Content for Search Engines (SEO).
6. Be Active on Social Media and Video Sharing Platforms.
7. Review Each Post Before Publishing.
8. Secure Your Blog (Website) and Social Accounts.
9. Stay Organized and Motivated.
10. Collaborate with Other Influencers and Bloggers.
11. Build and Promote Your Personal Brand.

Influencers and bloggers should decide what kind of business they need to adapt based on their skills, experience and ability to learn. Here are list of successful businesses to consider:

• Fashion and Beauty.
• Travel and Adventure.
• Health and Wellness
• Hospitality and Restaurants
• Technology and Innovation.
• Retail and Automotive.

11 Things Successful Influencers and Bloggers Do

1. Research Target Market.

Market research is the steps businesses follow to gather information about target markets, competitors and potential customers. Influencers and bloggers use market research to study and identify new business opportunities and markets.

When you start any type of business, make sure that there’s a demand for the services and products you provide. Don’t consume your time and energy trying to promote something that target market audience don’t need. Market Research is the best way to get the information you need to decide what services and products you should promote or sell.

Why you should do market research?

The market is getting very competitive day by day, and it’s important for influencers, bloggers and business owners in general to understand target market and consumers’ needs. Conducting a Market Research is one of the best ways to achieve customer satisfaction and reduce the risk of targeting a market with undesired products or services. Here are the main reasons why you should conduct a market research:

• Provides information about the value of your services and products.
• Provides information about consumers’ demands and needs.
• Allows you to stay ahead of competitors.
• Allows you to build and execute the right marketing strategy.

Knowledge is power, and market research will give you the knowledge you need to build your business strategy based on target market consumers’ needs. Read How to Conduct Market Research article for more information about market research

2. Create a Well-Designed Online Blog (Website).

After identifying your niche and target audience, design your blog and present your content and information in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they want and take action. The average internet users like to get to the information they need as quick as possible, so they scan your website content instead of reading each and every word to check if the content is relevant to what they need.

Your design elements, content and call to actions should be placed strategically to engage your blog visitors and encourage them to take actions and to provide your blog visitors with seamless user experience.

What are the characteristics of a well-designed online blog (Website)?

• Strong visual style and branding.
• Consistent and integrated branding elements.
• Organized content.
• Simplified navigation and menu
• Strong visual structure and easy to use forms.
• Effective use of content and images.
• Clear and consistent call to action elements.

Get more information about Good Website Elements by reading our article What Makes a Good Website: 7 Key Elements of Good Website

3. Choose Interesting Topics That Appeal to Your Target Audience.

The topics you choose are important for your blog success. Content when written right can help drive more traffic to your blog, but if your content doesn’t satisfy your target audience needs, you may lose them and waste the effort and time you invested in writing about topics that don’t attract your targeted audience.
 

What should influencers and bloggers consider when choosing blog topics?

• Choose familiar topics that you know.
• Choose topics you love and have passion for.
• Choose interesting topics that attract target audience.
• Choose topics that you genuinely want to learn about.
• Choose topics that are related to your niche.
• Don’t write just to write and make sure the topics are useful.

4. Create a Well-Written and Easy to Digest Content.

Content writing is not easy as you think. It might be time consuming process if you don’t plan it right. Structure your article, research the topics, and get the required information and references in place and then get busy writing.
 

What to consider when writing an article or blog post?

• Brainstorm and research keywords.
• Check and analyze your competition.
• Choose clear and unique titles.
• Write accurate description and page headers.
• Write for people not search engines.
• Spell check the article and make sure it’s free from grammar errors.

5. Optimize Your Blog and Content for Search Engines (SEO).

When you write a blog, you need to address two things: Target audience interests and search engines. In this section of the article, we’re going to focus on search engine optimization to help you drive organic traffic to your blog or website.
SEO optimization can be divided into 3 main aspects:

• Technical SEO (Page Quality).
• On-Page SEO (Content & Internal Linking).
• Off-Page SEO (Link Building).

SEO is something you need to understand and implement in order to get the best out of your blog online and attract search engines users to your blog.
 

Why SEO matters for your online blog?

• Organize your website and enhance user experience.
• Send strong and positive ranking signals to Search Engines.
• Enhance your website rank and visibility on search results.
• Increase your click through rate (CTR).
• Drive organic and free traffic to your website and content.
• Reduce pages bounce rate and increase conversion rate.

6. Use Social Media and Video Sharing Platforms to Create Awareness.

With the rise of social media platforms and how it affected our lives in positive and negative ways, we can’t deny the value and power that social media have in branding and advertising.

Social media is support to what you already do, so don’t establish your business in a way that depends entirely on social media. Social media can help you create awareness about your brand, service and products, and it will help generate extra traffic to your blog.

Creating a unique and engaging content is not easy as people think. Some influencers and bloggers prefer to manage their accounts personally and create their own content because they have the time and skill to do so, and some prefer to hire dedicated employees or marketing agencies to manage their social media accounts.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube can be all used to create awareness and promote your brand, products and services. Social Media Platforms have their own advertising tools to help you reach wide range of audience, but you need to know that you are their target customer.

Social media platforms store and track its users’ information to sell it to advertisers like you; hence, make sure you have the right content and solid marketing strategy to benefit from the money you pay for advertisement on their platform.

What can blogger and influencers accomplish using Social Media?

When you use it in the right way, social media can be beneficial to you and your brand. Here are some benefits that advertisers, bloggers and influencers can get using social media platforms:

• Create awareness to your brand, products and service.
• Reach wider range of audience around the world.
• Communicate directly with your audience and customers.
• Generate leads and define new opportunities.
• Drive more traffic to your blog.
• Eventually increase sales and revenue.

Facts about advertising and branding using Social Media:

While social media can be beneficial to your brand and business, it also have risks and here are some:

• Advertisers like bloggers and influencers are their main source of income.
• Social platforms track and collect users’ information on and off their platforms.
• Their Artificial Intelligence (AI) works automatically by analyzing users’ behavior and interests to recommend the most related content and products to keep them engaged all the time.
• Their main interest now is to generate revenue, so you have to know what you’re doing instead of listening to every suggestion they give you.
• You’re creating free content, so make sure your effort is not wasted.
• Using social media can be time intensive and costly if you don’t know what to do.

Social platforms and search engines make a lot of money from people who try and fail. The way they present their platform as the easiest way to success and the ultimate solution for marketing and advertising deceives so many people who don’t have the necessary skills and knowledge to be successful using the platform, so we had to highlight the benefits and risks of using social media platforms for bloggers and influencers to help them decide where to focus on and which direction or strategy they need to take in order to get the best out of their social media accounts.

7. Review Each Post Before Publishing.

By reviewing your posts before publishing whether it was a blog or a social media post, you might find typing errors and grammar mistakes. You can ensure that you have covered all the points, and new ideas might cross your mind to make your post more understandable, engaging and exciting.

8. Secure Your Blog (Website) and Social Accounts.

We see data breaches and hacking news all the time, and there’s nothing worse than losing all your hard work because of such events.
Your blog and social accounts are your assets online, and it’s important to keep them secure from hackers and spammers. Hackers don’t care what type of business you’re running and how small or big your online business is. When they find an opening, they will attack.

What can you do to secure your blog or website from hackers?

To minimize the risk of being exposed to hackers, you can follow the below basic steps:

• Use strong password and unique username.
• Make sure your passwords are secure.
• Install SSL certificate (HTTPS).
• Install security plugins.
• Keep your website platform up to date.
• Use automatic backups.
• Limit file uploads and use precautions if you need to allow it.

There’s more that can be done to protect your blog but it involves more technical knowledge from you. Securing your blog and learning how to protect it against hackers is important to keep your site safe, healthy and functional in the long run.

The topic of website and blog security is important, and we will discuss it in more details in a separate article soon.

9. Stay Organized and Motivated.

Most influencers and bloggers work from home, working from home sounds fun and easy, but to be successful, you need to be organized and motivated all the time.

The industry is very competitive and to be successful you need to stay focused on your goal, learn and innovate new ways to reach you audience, customers and suppliers. As a freelancer, you will face many challenges and set-backs even if you did the right thing. Don’t worry! Just keep working and learning!

How freelance influencers and bloggers can stay organized and motivated?

• Schedule your day and establish workday hours.
• Get out of bed and change you PJs.
• Clear your mind from any issues and focus on what you do.
• Have a specific work area and avoid distractions.
• Track your work hours and streamline your tasks.
• Prioritize your to-do list and set time for every task.
• Don’t get frustrated and keep adjusting.
• Don’t lose sight of your goal and keep learning.
• Take breaks and vacations to relax and energize.
• Stay active, workout and spend some time out in nature.

Discipline and commitment are the key to any freelance job success. Like in any other business, persistence and hard work will pay off eventually.

10. Collaborate with Other Influencers and Bloggers.

Collaborating in any work environment is beneficial and sometimes is the key to get the work done efficiently. When you collaborate with other influencers, you will be exposed to their audience and they will be exposed to yours.

Collaboration will help both influencers get more traffic and followers to their blog and social accounts, and it also improve the brand reach for both of you.
 

What are the benefits of collaboration between influencers?

• Easier to manage projects.
• Access new network and audience.
• Expand brand reach and increase awareness.
• Save time and money.
• Learn from other influencers’ expertise.
• Create different kind of content.

11. Build and Promote Your Personal Brand.

This is one of the most important points, and it’s not something you do once and stop. Building your brand is the way to build sustainable and ageless business.

We kept this point till the end as it’s an ongoing process that you need to keep in mind all the time you work as an influencer for others. Brand building is not a one day or a year job. It requires hard work, sacrifice and persistence, but being an influencer will give you a huge advantage and will make it much easier for you than others.

You promote other people products and services and you get paid to do so, right? Which means you have the ability to sell and promote your own products or services. Being an influencers will make it easier for you to start your own brand as you have the experience, knowledge, connections and audience to start with. 

Why should influencers build their own brand?

• You have the experience, connection and audience.
• Another source of income.
• Expand and increase your influence.
• Stay longer in the market.

Our advice to you as a freelance influencer is to study what kind of brand you should start and what products or services you should provide. Use the time being a freelance influencer and the experience you acquired in the market to plan your future from now! There is no limit of what you can sell when you build a successful brand. Be passionate about what you do and keep working toward your goal.

Now, we have covered 11 Things Successful Influencers and Bloggers Do, you should have a better idea on where to focus and what to do next.