Why You Absolutely Need a Blogging System

This guest post is by Shaun Connell of Live Gold Prices.

People like things to be predictable. Formulas—or patterned systems—are all around us.

Many popular action movies have the same basic plot, every criminal trial is supposed to be run with the same basic principles, the planets follow the same basic paths, and billions of dollars are spent every day in stocks, futures, and currency trades using complex formulas. Long story short—formulas are important, and for a good reason.

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Formulas allow our world to be predictable, and then allow us to repeatedly get what we want out of the world by simply learning those systems.

In this post, we’ll be discussing what systems are, why you need some for your blog, and then discuss some ideas for systematic blogging in order to help you create a repeatable, actionable process for making multiple successful and profitable blogs.

Why you need a system

The world’s rich usually fall into at least one of the following two categories: lucky or systematic. If you inherit a billion dollars, then you’re lucky. If you have an investing strategy that works, like Warren Buffett does, then you’re systematic.

If you find yourself short on the luck scale, then the fact that systematic success is, well, systematically predictable should come as pleasant news. If you have the formula for success, then you’re able to take a one-time good thing and turn it into an effectually infinite number of good things.

This is why so many “investor” guides and tutorials try to focus on finding the holy grail of technical analysis—they know if they can find a predictable pattern, they can make a fortune trading on the basis of that pattern.

Of course, most of those patterns just don’t work anywhere near like they’re supposed to work and a lot of “technical analysis” is rubbish, but that’s another topic for another time.

An introduction to systematic blogging

While blogging is obviously more of an art than an exact science, the notion of systematic blogging also still usually works as well. If you look at most successful bloggers who manage more than one successful blog, you’ll usually see that they employ plenty of the same principles, methods, and systems that give them predictable, repeatable blogging success.

Let’s look at a few arenas where this should be evident:

• Staff writers. Hiring multiple freelance writers allows you to automate your blog. There’s a reason most of the biggest blogs on the Internet often have multiple writers—this allows the blog to be a little more manageable by the owner, while also allowing a new, fresh perspective to be added to the website’s content.
• Content patterns. The need for being systematic couldn’t be more powerful than when it comes to your content. Consistent posting, learning basic headlines that are powerful, keeping a repeatable style going, etc. Each of these both builds your brand, systematically keeps traffic coming back because they know what to expect, and lead to longer-term success.
• Social media building. Creativity is obviously absolutely critical to getting content to go viral. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be systematic as well. Strategically adding a Share or Like button is an obvious first step, but hard-wiring in a simple line asking for readers to spread the word so you can keep your content free can lead to an incredibly high response rate.
• Design principles. Web usability is something many bloggers completely forget to master. Having a professional looking web design is just step one. Having a functional web design that gets conversions and is easy to use is another matter entirely. There are entire blogs based on finding the most compelling way to build trust and relationships with different color schemes, textures, and other bits of design.
• Newsletter marketing. Mixing a great newsletter offer with strong conversion-usability is probably the best way to get systematic success. Newsletter readers are often highly responsive, and you can reach them directly in their email box whenever you need to. To say this is “powerful” is an understatement. Mixing high-quality blogging with a strong understanding of email marketing is pure systematic, repeatable income dynamite.
• Website usability. A pretty design is good, a usable design is better, and a beautiful and usable design is the best. Website usability is essentially the field of figuring out which little changes to a design/content get the most results. Using subtitles, figuring out where to put the sidebar, and knowing where to put ads can literally increase your traffic and earnings by 10 fold over time. I once spent some time buying smaller niche blogs, installing different designs, and then just updating them with content—it’s possible to double revenue with the same amount of traffic. That’s systematic success. This arena overlaps with design principles, but because of the nature of how usability is part of all of your content production, it includes a bit more than just the main theme of your blog.

As with everything worth doing in life, building a systematic, repeatable blogging model takes time, experience, and research. Learning how to do this correctly can thrust your blog into the realms of higher earnings, higher traffic, and even give you some extra free time without costing you a penny.

What are some ideas of systematic tactics that can make everything you do more efficient, more profitable, or more popular? Share your ideas in the comments below.

Shaun Connell has been a full-time professional blogger since 2008, and focuses his time at his newest blog Live Gold Prices, where he writes about investing in gold, predicting future gold prices, and finding financial security.