7 blogging lessons I learned from Men’s Health magazine

Health is not really my hobby or something I really interested in.

However, I like to read the Men’s Health magazine and I find the magazine particularly interesting to me.

So what really interest me there?

• Hot chicks? Nah, I can only see half naked man there.
• Free? Nope, I have to pay for the magazine.
• Content? Exactly!

It is the contents that keep me buying more magazine to read every month.

After a period of time, I realized that I actually learn something about blogging from Men’s Health magazine that I had been following.

7 Lessons learned from Men’s Health

1. Provide useful content

Although I don’t have a big interest in health, but I love their contents because they are helpful.

The whole magazine consists of ways to stay healthy from what you eat, how you exercise and even how you sleep.

Having myself keep reading and reading the magazine, I realized that providing useful content is extremely important.

You don’t always need the right audience that specifically interested in your niche as long as your articles can help them in many ways.

2. Paid Membership works

I consider these kind of magazines are paid membership just like how you build a website that only provide valuable contents and require your user to pay an amount of money every month.

The way it works in Men’s Health magazine or any other magazines is I need to buy the magazine every month in order for me to get fresh content.

I can also subscribe with a one time fee and have it delivered to my home (just like your email in our scenario).

So if you have plan to run a membership site, I bet it will work as long as your contents are helpful.

[Read: Bounce Rate Tips]

3. Frequency is not an issue

If someone tells you that you need to publish everyday on your blog in order to succeed, then he/she is probably wrong.

I believe it is not about the frequency that we are talking about. It is consistency that matters.

As long as you set a consistent period for your blog post to publish, it should be good enough.

It does not have to be frequent where you can also set your schedule like weekly or monthly (Just like this magazine).

[Read: How to make your blog post URL SEO friendly]

4. Advertisement is not an issue as well

I had been flipping through the magazine lots of times and I don’t find the advertisement annoying. I might be blind to the advertisement but this is related to ads optimization skill (nothing to do with this article).

Some bloggers are concern about having advertisement that could spoil their site’s image but that is not always the case.

Take a look at johnchow.com. There are advertisements on the right side bar and the top fold of the content and that is one of a very successful blog

So, even though it is good that you don’t have advertisements, but it is also not a bad thing as long as you don’t over do it.

[Read: How advertising affects your Google PageRank]

5. Have a broad niche

Lots of bloggers made a mistake by having a very niche blog that they run out of contents eventually for their blog after an amount of time.

So, what I learn from Men’s Health magazine is I should always have a niche, but a broad one.

Take a look at them, you can clearly see that their niche is health but they don’t limit themselves to certain part of health only.

When I read the magazine, I can learn how to stay healthy by sleeping well, eating well, exercising regularly and also how to cook some healthy food ocassionally.

As a result, don’t limit yourself or your blog.

6. Headlines are important

The first thing when I got the magazine is to do a quick scan. How I scan the article is by reading each and every headlines of the article.

Once I found the article that interest me, I will read the details.

This goes as well for your blog I believe.

If your blog reader subscribes to your blog, chances of your reader subscribes to other blog is very high as well.

As a result, most of your readers will read all the headlines and if yours is not interesting, he might just ‘mark as read’ or ignore the article.

Take a look at my RSS reader below. The only reason that I should read your article is to have a good headline, don’t you think?

[Read: How to get early traffic from blog commenting]

7. ‘Interview’ type of article is a must

Of all the types of articles such as how-to, list, story type, interview and etc, I find that interview article is the most interesting.

The main reason why is because I can read a real case study of the person on something that he is working on or I can learn from people’s experience from the interview.

Last but not least, interview kind of article is always unique because very rare that two person can tell the same experience and express the same point of view.

[Read: Five Ways to Better Define Your Audience]

Final Say

After reading the Men’s Health magazine for years, I finally able to relate them to my blogging business.

What about you there? Have you learned something about your niche from a magazine or newspaper that can help you grow your business?

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