The art of sharing your insights and documenting your life has reached new heights, thanks to digital media. Now, blogs and social media accounts have taken over the internet, allowing people to share their thoughts and feelings in creative new ways with a few taps and clicks. While this can be seen as merely a hobby, many folks have found ways to make money off of their blogs and social media profiles, all while still keeping an uncompromising personal touch.

Our guide on “How to Make Money Online in India? 5 Ways to Grow Rich” points out that there’s a desire for people to ditch their traditional 9-to-5 jobs and pursue an online career because the latter is not restricted by time nor location. You can work anywhere and anytime you want, simply because you’re your own boss.

However, competition can be tough. AP News reports that at least 67% of social media users want to be paid influencers, so if you want to make money out of your online presence, you have to do it the right way. Here, we’ll give you some tips and tricks on how to start your digital career.

Enroll in a Digital Marketing Crash Course

It’s important to know the ins and outs of the online content creation industry before trying to infiltrate it. While there are tons of blog posts online that could give you insights on how to market yourself in the digital world, it’s always best to start with a comprehensive marketing crash course. And even though experience is a good teacher, blindly making your way into the blogosphere and social media can be tricky.

This is why it’s best that you learn the basics of digital marketing like being acquainted with industry terms, how to reach out to advertisers, and planning your content strategy to gain a diverse audience, the easy way through sites like Udemy.

Find Your Preferred Platform

When starting on building your online presence, it’s important to find a platform that only needs a minimum amount of set up and doesn’t demand coding skills. However, building your own website isn’t bad either. With your own website, you’re not limited to a blog hosting platform’s rules and you can add any features that you want, as long as you have the technological knowhow or the cash to hire a web developer who does.

With social media, you’ve got to make smart moves when choosing which platform to upload your content in. The trick to achieving the most engagements and clicks is finding a social media platform that specialises in the content that you want to release. For videos that might mean YouTube, and for photos that might mean Instagram. But don’t limit yourself to just one social media platform! While you can focus your content on one medium, you also have to find a way to address your followers who prefer a different social media website.

Grow Your Follower Count

Social media is all about the numbers. The more followers you have, the higher you get paid to promote products and services. Petal Card touches on the so-called influencer ladder, and how it translates to profitability, which starts with micro-influencers. And, yo know micro-influencers make at least $88 per post, but those who have at least 250,000 followers can make around $670 a post. You can price yourself depending on how much you think your reach is worth, but having a high number of followers definitely appeals to marketers more.

So, how do you get more followers? The easy route would be to purchase bot followers, but this would spell disaster on your engagement rate since bot followers don’t actually engage in your posts and translate as actual customers. Instead, do your best to grow your content organically. By simply optimising your content with hashtags and consistently posting interesting content, you’ll eventually get your follower count to a profitable value.

Quality Over Quantity

Of course, not all blog or social media posts are created equal. Forbes emphasises that you shouldn’t get under your audience’s skin by posting too much content. Most times, it’s hard to sustain the quality of posts when you’re churning them out like crazy. Instead, create timely and relevant content that speaks on current trends in your niche. Doing this allows you to converse with your audience, usually through comments and lengthens the life of your post.

Moreover, brands and marketers would rather be acquainted with someone who puts out quality content than with someone whose posts lack substance. So, take your time optimising and streamlining your content; there’s nothing to gain in spewing out content that you’re not proud of.

Overall, being able to make a job out of blogging and social media isn’t an easy task. You’ve got to put in the hard work, and make sure that you’ve got the right knowledge to succeed. It’s never too late to start your own blog or social media empire and there’s no better time to start than now.