Do I have a resume to be able to blog about blogging? Nope.
Why should you take my advice? You might be a better blogger if you didn’t.
I’ve been blogging since September 2007, about a year and a half. I am by-no-means an expert. However, I do think I’ve been able to figure a few things out.
I gauge blogging “success” by page hits, comments, subscribers, friendships made, but mostly by how well you hit your goal for blogging. Everyone blogs for a different reason and success should be gauged in that way. If you blog so your family knows what is going on in your life then gauge success by how many family members you stay in touch with now that you blog compared to when you didn’t blog. If you blog to network with people in your field, judge success by how many friendships you’ve made. And if you blog to make money, gauge success by hits and subscribers.
Here is my unorganized list for what makes a successful blog:
- Engage your readers. What I mean by this is don’t let someone come read your blog and have no reason to comment. If and when they comment, don’t just let them comment and you not reply in some way. Blogging is not one way communication, it is a conversation. Reply to a comment by email or by posting a comment of your own. If you don’t engage, people will stop commenting and then stop reading.
- Focus on one topic. I fail at this miserably, and yet you all still read which is amazing. If you can create a niche where you are an expert, your blog will take off. Unless you are already famous, the odds that people will read your rants about anything and everything is really low. But people will read a thoughtful blog that focuses on a niche even if they don’t know you.
- Write short posts. I’ve been to the blogs that write posts that are 2,000 words each. I also leave those same blogs after 2 scrolls down the page. No one engages with a blog that is long-winded. Blogging isn’t writing a book.
- Once you have a blog, don’t switch hosts. I started blogging with Blogger and about 5 months in I switched to WordPress. I’m very happy with the switch, but it took about 2 months to get the same number of readers onto my new blog. If you do switch, keep posting on the first blog in a certain niche and link to your other blog often.
- Link away. This all goes back to blogging being a conversation, not one way communication. I have always gone to blogs that link to me. I haven’t always gone back, but if you want readers linking provides one way.
- Blog consistently. Nothing is worse than the blogger who blogs once every 2 months. I also think you probably have to write 200 to 400 posts before you really figure out what you are doing anyway. The only way to get a number that high is to blog often.
- Don’t blog about politics. I failed at this too. If you risk it, you will be labeled and put into a group that will be viewed as negative by a good percentage of your readers. That is just how it happens.
- Read other blogs. It will help you get ideas for how to blog. It will also help you figure out things you want to try and things you want to avoid in blogging.
