So I finally have a blog, now what?

Check out Red Dress Boutique.

They were on Shark Tank and their web redesign was budgeted at not $100s or $1000 but $100,000s!!

You can find the episode on Youtube...I'd embed it here but it seems they get wiped out and reuploaded every day so an individual version wouldn't last.

Look at how they created engagement.

You can do that.

When I first saw their appearance, which was a rerun but they hadn't gone ahead with their redesign yet, I thought, "Oh dear, here come some more dreamers"...but I was wrong. They were just nervous. Turned out they had serious chops and serious results.

I'm not sure a blog is the right platform for you, but Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook might be.

EDIT:

Or maybe you won't find the episode on YT...looks like the "full episodes" are fakes.

Anyway, what the owner did (it was a wife & husband team, and the wife did all the buying and marketing) was find affordable, great-looking clothing and post pictures on social media...and ASK the followers their opinion. If they went nuts about it, she'd stock it. If they didn't, it was lost at sea and never heard of again.

Really great idea.

Content should be related to the blog. I think sharing pictures only isn't enough.

I would get clear about exactly were your products and your sales funnel for those products before I worried about writing a ton of blog posts especially if you don't like doing it.

Content can be video or interactive content like quizzes. And, yes, cool pictures. Maybe with a small written blurb about it. It doesn't have to be a written blog.

Since you said that you are not a writer than you have to hire writers to write quality content for your blog. Adding only pictures isn't a good idea. You have to add content. Later when traffic flow grows you can monetize your blog with Adsense or Affiliate marketing.

You can always turn your blog into an e-commerce site and place a bunch of e-commerce related content on it. Stuff like delivery, pricing, policies, guarantees, etc.

The thing is that your blog is a great opportunity to get ranked high by Google. But this will require quality content. However, you always can fill it with images, which will only make it more attractive for your visitors.

Make it a fashion blog and put Amazon affiliate links on it

OP, you should have made a strategy from the beginning. Before you build a house, you make a plan, not the other way around.

Anyway, I don't know what you could put on your website, but have you taken a look at your competitors? Sometimes they're a good source of inspiration. Most of the time, obviously, they're worse than you, so be careful with what you take from them.

Why did you start a blog if you didn't know what to put on it?

If you're good at graphic design, maybe you could offer graphic design services on Fiverr, creating logos for example. Or put your designs on TeeSpring and sell them.

Check out copyblogger and problogger for resources on blogging, how to build a plan, what and how to write etc.

Cheers,

C.G.

For you to benefit for a blog I would say you should have written content as well as pictures, yes. What's most important however is consistency, make a commitment to write say 2-3 posts a week and do it every week on the same days. If you're not a writer, hire a writer!

Iseult

Bloggers = FAIL!
Bloggers + Internet Marketing = Success..

By the sounds of it, you haven't really came up with a plan on how to generate traffic to your site.

For starters, you must have content on your site. Don't want to write it? Outsource it!

Second, engineer your site to either capture leads or sell your services...

Either way, do you know what you need to do to get traffic to your site?

I think you need to plan better. You need to know what it is your blog REALLY is all about. 13 - 20 something women is NOT a niche. It's too ambiguous. Let me give you a quick example. I started an Identity Theft Prevention blog just yesterday under an alias, and within 12 hours and absolutely NO promotion whatsoever, I received HUNDREDS of page views based on keywords alone and with ONLY two articles posted on there. SO, you need a blog concept that offers something people are actually LOOKING for. If you typed a keyword phrase into Google, like I did "identity theft" and you took a look at the bottom of the page for "Searches related to identity theft" you'll see keywords that matter. That's exactly what I did... and it paid off.

To add on you can take help of Instagram, one of the best platform to get order directly to your phone. If you use Instagram for your niche it will really help you.

You've had some good suggestions here so I won't repeat them, but let you know what I did. I was struggling to write enough content for my sites so decided to outsource part of the writing.

Now, a lot of people will say DON'T use Fiverr for content writing, however, I followed some excellent training, and was very careful about who I chose to do the writing. I was also specific in my request, I knew what I wanted.

The result was 5 well written articles which passed a plagarism test and 1 article had twice the amount of words I asked for.

So once you've decided on your strategy, following the advice given here, you can outsource the writing part and save yourself a lot of time and hassle!

If you're looking for contents for your blog all you have to think about is how your product can help the consumers. Posting cool pictures won't be enough but it can highlight your blogs so it's advisable to include them as well. Try hiring writers to do your blogs for you and if you want yourself to do the writing make sure that you know how. Research some other blogs to get more ideas. By the way what exactly is the niche? is it graphic design and your targeted audience are 13-20 year old women?

Thank you everyone! I have a very specific niche I do anime style artwork and I have products, t-shirts and stickers mostly but other stuff too.

I have product pages, but what is a sales funnel?!

What problems can be solved with a really cute t-shirt?

Well you can do literally limitless things with your blog.

1> Write informative and helpful articles in your niche.
2> Write review articles on the product that you've used
3> Share your blog content in Social Media to get exposure.
4> Integrate Google adsense and advertise affiliate product relevant to your niche.
5> Most importantly build your list to get long term returns from your Blog.


Hope this helps...

Solve problem . . . or feed a passion. Cute t-shirts might be more on the 'feed passion' side of things.

Maybe your freebie to get people into your email list could be a screen saver for their computer with your art. (Of course, you'd have to research and get help with that to set it up.)

Change your niche. Target lawyers or chiropractors (etc) in your local area. These people have no idea of how to design a great image/logo that actually *MEANS* something to their clients and patients. Plus you can charge the heck out of them for it. They don't know how to do this stuff. Try taking things offline. You're gonna do the same work anyway.

If you need help with the writing, I'd be happy to help.

As you said you are graphic designer your website must be product oriented and not content oriented. So you need to create business/eCommerce website instead of blog.

Good Luck!

I'll answer your questions based on my knowledge. Mind you I don't fall in your target niche.


So what do I put on my blog?

Post relevant and informative content on your blog. While having graphics is great, it won't help you in terms of the search engines. You need to have something original that answers questions and gives your readers a reason to visit your website.

Do I have to write "how to" articles, that isn't what I want to do...

How to articles are a dime a dozen. What information do you have that is relevant to your topic that you can write that will interest people and cause them to share with others?

Can I just post cool pictures? Is that enough? (By enough, I mean enough to get links and make money eventually)

People still need to find you. There is no way they are going to find you if you only post graphics. If you can't write or don't want to, source your content to an online writing company. My recommendation is Need An Article.

Basically, what type of content should I put on my blog?

Your content should remain focused on your niche. When people visit your website, they should find value in the content on your blog and it should remain relevant. You wouldn't review food or discuss celebrity gossip. Instead, focus on the topics that pertain to your area of expertise and everything else will fall into place.

You need to be on Instagram my friend...that's where you will find your demographic and yes - publishing pictures (perhaps with a few lines of engaging text like " Which one of these do you like better?" or " Would X (celebrity or model) where this?") You can do things like run a weekly or bi-weekly campaign where you will give away one t-shirt to the person who shares your post the most or gives you the most comments, etc... to kick off engagement.

Your blog can today be a hub for your social content - through blog plugins you can display your Instagram or Facebook content back on your blog - this will help you build some traffic and get people closer to your site as well as potentially monetize that traffic over time

I've run my blog for over 2 years and trust me, I'm NOT a 'writer'. Meaning, I hate writing but since I have to do it and know what I'm talking about I can handle it.

Anyway, as some people suggested, maybe some other platforms are better suited for you but if you want to make money as a blogger then I've found people love buying info products. Star participating in niche related forums with links in your signature to your blog.

Blog about anything related to your niche. How to's, realisations, designer life, etc.

Write posts 500-1000, preferably with a youtube video embedded. That worked great for me.

Good luck!

There is so much that you can put on your blog. But a good starting point is to look at your competitors. What are they doing? What type of content are they posting? What type of content on their blogs is most shared and most liked?
You need not to follow them but go a step ahead.

You first have to ask what you want to use the blog for! Is it for traffic from the search engines, is it to brand yourself, is it to market your business?

Having some content would not be a bad thing. You can have it outsourced if you want. An about page would be good to have.

You need content.