With all of the buzz about starting a blog, it leaves people wondering, “How can I create a successful blog?” Many people and businesses start blogs with the intention to spread their words of wisdom and provide a valuable place that users can go to find information about a particular subject, product or service. This is great….but what happens when all of that initial motivation is gone? What happens when you no longer write in your blog? What happens when you give up too soon? Your blog will fail!
There are certain things you can do to basically assure your blog will become successful. This is no guarantee because blogging is a huge and competitive market but these tips will help you get your blog where you want it to be and in the hands of the readers you are searching for.
1.) Create a UNIQUE blog. I understand that it’s often hard to come up with a new topic or a new idea for a blog. Chances are someone has already beat you to it. So, what do you do in this instance? Make it better than what’s already out there. Provide your unique opinion on the topic. Be controversial. Think out of the box. Provide your users with something of value.
2.) Commit to writing in your blog regularly. You don’t have to post 10 different blog topics a day. You don’t have to post 10 per week. You just have to create a routine that you can handle and stick to it. The number one reason blogs fail is the lack of updated content. Keep it fresh. If you don’t want to write about what your blog is about, create a misc. category and post about what you ate last night or write about your last vacation. Just make sure you don’t neglect the blog and let it sink to the bottom of the blogosphere. Starting out, I’d say if you can write a quality blog post every other day, that’s a good start. When you create your routine, never do less or your readers will not rely on you for updated content. If you say you will post one blog post per day….stick to it. Don’t skip a day. You can always increase your blog posting frequency but never decrease it. Find a routine you can handle initially and start writing
You will often get writer’s block and find it hard to write about something unique or interesting. On days that you are full of ideas, write as many different blog posts as you can and save them for days that you have nothing to say.
Use blog plug-ins that are available. I am a huge fan of Wordpress. It’s a free blog platform with tons of functionality. You can use their standard template if you want to go basic or you can add on plug-in modules that will increase your blog’s functionality. Wordpress plug-ins can range from monetizing your blog to stopping spam and there are modules to help you get better search engine optimization and web analytics. As of this post, I beleive there are around 1,500 plug-ins on the Wordpress website.
Monetize your blog. If you generate enough blog traffic, there is no reason you should not try to monetize your blog. There are tons of ways to monetize your blog but the most common are Google Adsense, Commission Junction and also Text Link Ads. There are thousands of other ways but the three mentioned above are a great place to start. From there you can decide the best way to monetize your blog and your blog traffic.
Get RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Subscribers. RSS feeds are a great way to spread your blog content and gain readership to your blog. You can allow people to pull your RSS feed and post it on their website to spread your content, the can add your RSS to a reader so they are updated regularly on your content or people can sign up via email to have your blog articles emailed to them directly. FeedBurner (acquired by Google) is a great place to manage all of your RSS subscriptions. Readership is essential for blog survival so this will be an area you will want to focus on.
Get involved in the blogging community. Go out and talk with other like-minded individuals who are interested in the same topics as you. Join forums and discussion boards to discuss new ideas and topics and ways to help your blog. Join other blogs and leave back valuable comments to their posts. Make sure you leave a link back to your blog when you are posting on forums and other blogs. You can do this in your signature and it’s a great way to become a leader in your industry and generate more traffic to your blog.
Most importantly….just keep writing. It will take time and some effort before you see the traffic start to pour in but keep up the hard work. Stick to your schedule. Come up with new ideas. In the long run, your blog will become successful, you can make some extra money (or possibly full-time money) and you can enjoy writing about something that interests you while helping other people learn.
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