If you’re anything like me, sometimes you want to punch the so-called “blogging gurus” in the face.

This is probably because you’ve done everything they’ve told you to do. You’ve implemented their social media strategies, and tweaked them for your own blog. You’ve written about controversial topics with a strong, original voice, and you’ve made your blog look clean and spiffy.

Yet no matter what you try, it always seems like a failure.

But guess what?

There’s something very important about all that work you’re doing, a blogging success secret that no one wants to talk about. And it all has to do with that ever-so-frustrating word: failure.

Labelling yourself a professional is an act many bloggers for hire won’t immediately embrace.

Mind-chatter like “I don’t have enough writing samples” or “my posts don’t get a lot of engagement” fuels a bloggers’ belief that you can’t —or worse, mustn’t— call yourself a pro.

But what does being a professional blogger really mean?

Do you need to have written X number of articles before you can call yourself a pro blogger?

To answer these questions, let’s dig into the habits and characteristics of well-known professional bloggers, and compare them to your own distinguishing traits.

Routinely writing about the same topic, category, or concept gets boring fast.

To keep your content fresh and engaging for readers, you need to incorporate content hooks that catch your readers’ attention and reel them in. We can call these “connection hooks”, because they’re ways to connect a concept to something else readers care about.

The next time you’re brainstorming an article idea, try building connections with your concept through one, or more, of these content connection hooks.

To help you see how these hooks work, I’ve included examples of how Be a Freelance Blogger uses them to connect you, the reader, with the concept of blog writing.