What makes a blog successful? Is it the content? Is it the readers? Or is it the niche? How often should one post? What narrative should you use? Should you publish a RSS feed for your blog?
These are some of the questions I’m asked as the Founder and Executive Editor of Smedio. In that context, I strongly believe that you must adhere to the following 7 fundamentals for establishing a successful blog.
Quality
Content is king and blogging is no exception to that rule. If your blog lacks quality content, it will never be successful – period. There is no substitute to quality content and I can say that by personal experience. If you offer valuable insights and thought provoking content, it’s bound to bring in more readers than sensationalized/ controversial content.
Quantity
While quality is of absolute paramount importance, the right quantity (volume and frequency) also plays a key role in establishing a successful blog. Blogs which don’t get updated often enough risk the danger of being termed as dormant while others which stuff tons of posts every day to gather eyeballs achieve little. Balance is key.
Audience
A blogger needs to write like a writer but think like a reader. In other words, it’s crucial to know your target audience. This is often a crucial factor in deciding the overall fate of a blog. Most blogs cater to a certain niche and it’s best advisable to offer timely quality content based on your target audience.
Size
While there’s no golden rule to define an optimal blog post length, I strongly believe size matters in determining the appeal of a posts and overall popularity of the blog. I personally prefer to read blog posts which are well segmented into paragraphs with sub-headings as appropriate. IMO, it’s a pain to read blog posts with no markers of what’s coming next.
Marketing
A blog needs to be marketed. You can’t rest on quality content or high profile writers to bring in traffic. A number of blogs have grown manifold with effective social media marketing via email, Facebook , Twitter, other social media channels, and old media.
Impact
At the end of the day, a blog is all about the impact it creates on a reader. It’s key that your posts connect with your audiences. The headline of your posts often determines whether your readers will read the body content or not.
SEO
SEO is a crucial factor in promoting a blog. Choosing the right keywords and having a solid SEO strategy in place are key factors which determine how much traffic your blog gets. A lot of Smedio posts get ranked on the first page in Google Search Results – that’s not by accident.
What’s your secret of running a successful blog? Please share your tips/ opinion by leaving a comment.
NOIt bad!
Excellent advice! I agree with all of your points, especially that there is no magic length for blogs but they should be well formatted.
I would also add that bloggers should connect with others in the blogging community. The longer I blog the more I realize that a supportive blogging community is essential. It’s too hard to do this alone.
Thanks for sharing this with us!
Thanks Carolyn for your always contributive comments. As you rightly pointed out, we are a community of thought leaders. The more we realize our position as bloggers and business people the more impact and contribution we’ll continue to make, not just to our readers, also to the blogging community.
I’ve got a question. What if your blog is in the category of weight loss (as mine is). Even with all posts being focused on weight loss, there seems to be no way to even rank in that category/keywords. Are small bloggers with too popular keywords doomed, and does SEO still matter?
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Good suggestions.
I think it’s a real challenge to identify your target audience but you need to have at least one person in mind when you do start marketing … Knowing your voice and how you want to move forward can often help you find that audience – kinda backwards when you go by traditional methods but it does work!
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Whenever I at first commented I clicked on the Notify me any time new comments are added checkbox and currently each and every time a comment is added I receive four messages with the same comment.
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