For many, blogging starts out as a casual hobby, with no specific goals nor aspirations. Your first few months in the public blogging arena is like a crash course in many ways. You become acquainted with a couple new languages, namely HTML and Blog-ese. You find and frequent various blog communities like The BlogFrog and SITS.  You start following others’ blogs and developing relationships with those women, too. You also hopefully find your tribe.

Once some of your greenness fades and you find a bit of footing in this new world full of memes, Linkys and RSS feeds, your focus may change.

You may decide that you want to make your blog the best it could be.

In order to do this you need to step up your game, all the while learning as much as you can about all things blogging and social media.

The longer you are at this bloggy gig, the more parallels you start to draw between building a successful blog and building a successful business.

Obviously, one of the largest factors in building a successful blog is your content. Your posts are your product, and they need to be high-quality, consistent in tone and voice, and engaging for your “customer” if you want people to stay and read, and then come back again tomorrow for more.

Next would probably be your blog’s design. Things like header, colors, fonts, subscription options, site navigation and searchability all tie in to your “packaging,” and need to be as reader-friendly as possible. Your site’s look is something that can either help it stand out from the masses or cause it to fade into the background of this giant blogosphere.

After content and look, the next area for focus would probably be the branding of your blog, like making sure your email address and Twitter handle match your blog title. Some other aspects, like using Twitter to drive traffic and build a community around your blog, and putting together a media kit, fall under marketing and promotions.

At this point in the post, you are either nodding your head along while reading, or you are thinking, “Ladies, I don’t want to turn my blog into a business!”

We are not suggesting that all bloggers need to turn their blogs into businesses. However, so many of us dedicate a very large amount of time to blogging and social media; spending some time tweaking and fine tuning a few things on our blogs and within our social media profiles can help us tremendously to put our best foot forward.