We keep going with our Blogging Basics series. This is Part Six – Dave returns to talk to you about success.
6 Ways to Increase Your Blog’s Success Rate
Blogging isn’t as easy as some would like to lead you to believe. It takes time, commitment, a penchant for excellence, and the guts to make it happen. It doesn’t happen overnight and you will likely not be a blogging superstar anytime in the near future. However…
There are a few things that can help you exponentially as a blogger to become the type of blogger that makes some serious noise. I’ve laid them out below, you can choose and implement at your leisure. Whether you’re new or already have an established blog, these practices can help you.
Create a Plan of Attack
Sorry but blogging just for the sake of blogging won’t sustain over the long-term. You’ve got to have a plan with an end goal in mind or you are doomed for failure. You wouldn’t start a business without some sort of loose biz plan at the very least. You wouldn’t start a marketing campaign without a solid strategy in place. Why then would you start blogging without a blogging plan? Outline a goal, create a plan, stay the course.
Create Remarkable Content
Not just good content, not just great content, but remarkable content. Do it as much as you possibly can and strive for excellence every time you hit publish. Write with your readers needs in mind and ask yourself with every piece- “Does this article provide value to my reader”? If your answer is yes, well done. If you aren’t sure, reassess.
Create an Editorial Calendar
More and more blogs are adopting the style of magazines and creating editorial calendars to plan their blog content. It’s much easier to write remarkable stuff when you have a clear picture of what you want to talk about. Creating an editorial calendar can help you map out your content direction for months at a time and help you create content that is fluid and cohesive and builds upon itself with your readers. This in turn keeps ‘em coming back for more. (NOTE: We believe in this wholeheartedly; it’s one of the things we talk about over at 12 Minute Marketing.)
Optimize, Optimize
For search engines that is. Yes the main goal is rockin’ content that delivers on value. But that doesn’t mean neglect basic SEO principles to further grow your blog’s audience. Things like catchy titles, using H1 and H2 tags within your content, anchor linking, internal linking, meta data, keywords in your content, etc. All of these things contribute to great content that the search engines also love. That means more readers for you!
Use Some Personality
No one likes to read dry, boring, interesting as dirt content. I know I don’t, do you? Think of your favorite bloggers. Are they boring in tone and style? Or do they make an impact as you read? Make you laugh? Inspire you? Motivate you? A good blogger will experiment and find their “voice” that resonates the most with their readers, and then write content in a way that engages them thoroughly.
Get a Little Friendly
OK not THAT friendly. But do allow a bit of transparency to shine through on your blog. People want to know who they are reading. They want to connect a face with the words. They want to get to know the person they are taking advice from. So be transparent, create an informative about page, use a nice, friendly picture of yourself easily found on your blog, and let people get to know the real YOU. You readers will thank you!
What has worked for you? What did we miss? Let us know in the comments.
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