To best understand how blogging works in South Africa you will need to know what different types of content bloggers focus on. This is ruled by the trends in South Africa as well as the culture that mostly draws people to the country hence marketing the bloggers.
However, you don’t have to be confined to South Africa simply because your blog is from there, anyway the content will end up online and there are all sorts of people interested in all sorts of content.
The sky is not the limit to your blogging content, like literary you can blog about the multi-universe and people will read your blogs in multitudes.
The blogging world is a place of many talented bloggers, to start or upgrade your blog like a pro, you need to put into consideration all the necessary hacks for blogging.
I am going to take you through the tips that blogging experts in South Africa use to stay at the top of their game.
But before we get there, first things first, let’s dive into the understanding of some of the most popular types of blogging styles in South Africa.
Table of Contents
Types of bloggers in SA
Lifestyle bloggers
When you set your niche as a lifestyle blogger you aim to give your audience insight into interesting places, sights to see, shops or products to try, food to try, and experiences to enjoy in South Africa. Mostly you document events according to personal experiences, interests, and daily activities. In general, as a lifestyle blogger, you write literally about anything but reference your writing from your personal life experiences.
Travel bloggers
A good number of the world’s population have travel as a life goal and those who don’t still read about it from the comfort of their blankets. Before we go to a new place, we like researching about the place and this includes, among others, online reading.
Travel bloggers in South Africa are specifically inclined to travel content and everything related to travel in the country and outside the country. As a travel blogger, you are expected to share your experiences of traveling to different places locally and abroad while giving travel stories and tips, and activities that people can indulge in.
Food bloggers
If you love food, this is your forte, where you can offer your audience all the food-related content including restaurants, recipes, culinary products, food trends, or healthy eating guides.
You can either choose to be a food critic, meaning you will be going from restaurant to restaurant, trying different meals, and sharing your experiences. On the other side, you can be the cook at your own home or restaurant and document your recipes through blogs. I mean, welcome to the 21st century where every man or woman in the kitchen for cooking must use the internet for recipes.
The benefit of being a food critic is that you get to dine for free in restaurants and you can land business deals like publishing cookbooks or collaborating with food networks. The benefits of being the cook are that you get to advertise your restaurant if you have one or publish your cookbook.
Health and fitness bloggers
With everyone striving to live a healthy lifestyle, health and fitness blogging is one with high traffic. People want to know tips and hacks for living a healthy life and being physically fit. Besides it being almost everyones’ new year resolution, healthy living and physical exercise are not easy to keep track of with the current busy schedules. Giving your readers the motivation to start or keep exercising every day is a catch for keeping your audience entertained and coming back to your blog.
A health and fitness bogger in south Africa can write about their workout routine, as well as healthy living habits. You can also specialize in a specific sport in South Africa. If you are a certified personal trainer or dietician, this is the best way to market your services or sell your products i.e. workout guidelines, workout outfits, workout tools, healthy recipe books, and diet supplements.
Fashion and beauty bloggers
Fashion and beauty is a very diverse niche since every cohort prefers different styles starting from young urban professionals who are currently in pursuit of elegant looks to teenage and kids who are seeking freedom and expression. Fashion in South Africa also includes traditional attire, luxury wear, and street looks.
As a fashion and beauty blogger, you are expected to give cognizance of current fashion trends, product reviews, and outfit inspiration. You also can reap lots of benefits from this field such as free clothes and beauty products, fashion event invites, or even selling your outfits to people who want to buy your look. In exchange, you only need to promote companies, boutiques, and beauty shops from where you get your deals.
Photography bloggers
With this métier, you only need to invest with a quality camera plus your other blogging tools, that is your computer. Capturing the moment and telling the story is the summary of photography blogging. South Africa has so much beauty and moments that you can show the world as a blogger.
As a professional photographer, you can market your services, workshop, or art store through blogging. You can also teach others who are interested in photography about tips and guidelines for capturing a perfect picture as well as camera settings used for different types of pictures.
Personal bloggers
You can choose to tell personal stories following your personal experiences and perspectives. In day-to-day life, people are looking for others with similar stories and experiences to relate to or get motivated. In this case, your can write dairy-like blogs and update your audience on what you are up to or where you are at. You can talk about life experiences, how you are tackling them, and the results of your actions.
With personal blogs, there are limitless opportunities and especially with the potential to build yourself as a brand and your e-mails will be over-flowing with business deals.
Parenting bloggers
Parenting is not an easy job and often are the times when most parents and especially newbies question their methods and even feel like they are failing at it, hence most parents seek tips and advice from blogs.
Parenting blogs are basically about giving parental advice and sharing parenting experiences. Bloggers can also give insight on maternity and baby shops, toys, toddler accessories, study materials and even review different parenting apps. You can also attach affiliate links for recommended products to online shops in South Africa for ways to monetize your blog.
Another very popular topic is post-maternity care and management tips. New parents are worried about their body and lifestyle changes and some good advice can go a long way.
Just make sure you do detailed research and give genuine advice or share your own experience and recommend products that were helpful through your journey. You can also share advice on baby food, baby care products, and accessories, baby clothes, and child behavior management.
Music bloggers
In South Africa, people enjoy a huge variety of music genres from the world’s popular music like pop to folk music like the Zulu isicathamiya. The country has a global music industry hence endless content for music bloggers.
As a South African blogger, you can choose to be a fan or a critic of a certain genre where people with the same interest will be your audience, aiming to bash or praise a certain new or trending song. You can also write about the industry as a whole and display music as an art, and the growth and contribution of music to society. You can also write exclusively about South African folk music and its evolution as well as its current trends.
With sufficient research about music in South Africa or globally, you can write about artists, songs, and albums news and reviews, music releases, music charts, music creation technology, and even earn tickets to report about imminent exclusive music events.
Business bloggers
Most people today prefer the self-employment lifestyle, hence there is a need for information, strategies, and tips for starting and managing a new business. The school does not give you all the knowledge you need to own a business and most people end up learning a big lot from real-life experiences.
To blog about business in South Africa, you need to do enough research about the topic and find updated data about business trends. Business owners and new entrepreneurs will be looking for more business knowledge, the latest news, and new business challenges in South Africa.
To stand better chances of learning about new business trends, you can choose to interview the business industry leaders or perform market analysis with valid data.
Interior design bloggers
Blogging about interior design can include sharing advice on how to decorate, furnish and accessorize spaces, showcasing different design projects, tutorials on interior design skills, marketing your design services, or selling interior design products.
To start blogging about interior design in South Africa, you need to study the design trends and equip yourself with popular interior designs in the country.
If you are blogging about personal projects, you can show the steps and choices made during the project and the before and after looks of the space, you were working on.
Generally, as an interior design blogger, you can offer your audience design guides, decorating tips, and inspiration for specific holidays or seasons.
To choose a blogging niche in South Africa, it’s important to consider the topics that you are either an expert or are passionate about.
You can choose more than one type of blogging style as long as you are comfortable and able to coordinate the different blogs.
Also, choosing blogging content that you already have connections to leaders in the specific fields can be added advantage especially when you need to interview people for content.
Let’s look at the way the blogging experts in South Africa do it.
How to get started like a pro
1). Get a personal site
The first and most important step after you have identified your blogging niche is to choose the best e-commerce platform to host your blogging site in South Africa. You want your site to be unique and trendy, and to achieve that you need the best website features possible.
Some of the e-commerce platforms in South Africa offer a free basic plan like Olitt.
However, to get a google ranking and also to get recognition by brands, you might need to purchase a higher plan.
Olitt still prides itself best-priced e-commerce platform in South Africa offering a pro plan at USD 6.99 per month and USD 29.99 per year and a high developer plan at USD 80.00 per year.
With a unique and trendy personal site, you are sure of a high ranking in Google SEO, which is the biggest search engine, hence high traffic to your site. The big the audience the more the business deals. Most successful bloggers in South Africa invest in the best website hosting and hence gain popularity fast and build their brand names.
2). Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You have to learn SEO to excel in blogging in South Africa and also for google to rank your blog among the top web pages when people search for related content to your blog content. You want to be on the first google search page to be found easily by people and brands.
3). Technical stuff investment
To excel in blogging in South Africa, you need to invest a good amount of time and energy to learn the technical stuff. To be recognized as an influential blogger, you have to do adequate research, take quality pictures, edit your content and optimize your blog before publishing. You have to be willing to spend hours of your time doing all these for your blogging career to take form. You also need to keep up with your fans on social media, read e-mails regularly, and keep marketing your blogs.
Since there is so much to do behind the scenes to be able to produce eye-catching and engaging blog posts, you need to plan your time and activities well. There are several planning tools aimed at maximizing your productivity through planning well for your projects. E.g Trello
4). Consistency
You need to be consistent on your blog posting, for readers to get familiar with you and to want to interact and engage with you. You also need to learn to respond to people’s comments and answer their questions promptly, which means your online availability needs to be consistent as well. You shouldn’t neglect your social media platforms as well. Learning to post short videos or pictures and using them to remind people about your blogging is a free marketing strategy for your blogs. But, the key word is consistency, for people to keep getting reminded of your existence. To ensure you stay on top of your tasks, remember to always check with your planning tool.
5). Events and social media
Appearances at events are another way of looking like an expert in the blogging world. Dress up nice, put on makeup (whether you are male or female), and go to bloggers’ events. At first, they can feel a handful, especially not knowing people, but that’s how you begin. Put on your confident face, talk to people and make connections, take pictures with other bloggers, and post on your social media. The next time you attend an event you will be having friends already and it will get easier.
Through social events, you can meet brands or make connections that will point you towards a business deal. The same goes for social media since most people and brands will spot you on social media. Make sure to include a business e-mail address for those who want to do business with you.
6). Earning
Despite that some people can be doing blogging for fun, it hurts no one to earn some extra money.
You can earn from blogging in South Africa and it’s important to know how to monetize your blogs.
A few people talk about making money through blogging hence there is less information about the idea. You can register with PR companies or make business deals with brands where you promote their products and in return they pay you.
To advertise for businesses, you just include clickable links to their site on your blog. You can then charge a reasonable amount for a certain number of views.
Blogging can be a lot of fun when you know what you are doing and how to do it right.
On the other side, it can be very hectic and discouraging if you don’t know how blogging works in South Africa. All you need to do is make the boss moves and start blogging like a pro.