Every blogger wants to be successful, but just what exactly is a successful blogger? How is success measured in the world of blogging? Some may say that a successful blogger is one whose blog has many followers. Others define success as the ability to come up with interesting, engaging and beneficial content. The rest might opine that a blogger is considered to be successful when he/she earns a reasonably good income from advertising revenue. Whichever definition of success it is, it all boils down to the blogger’s ability to influence people. Bloggers would want readers to return, remain loyal and subsequently lead to the achievement of the objective, whether it is to garner popularity and publicity, generate income through advertising or to improve sales.
The success in attracting and retaining readers depends on two components — the contents of the blog and the awareness of the blog’s presence. Let’s tackle the first part on how to first attract readers with your contents.
Have passion
You need to be passionate about the issue that you are blogging about. Not having passion will just make your post monotonous and unconvincing. Only with passion will you be able to write smoothly and whole-heartedly.
Know your topic well
You can’t convince or influence people if you don’t even know what you are talking about! If you need to write about something that isn’t your forte, I suggest is that you read up well enough to be able to write from your understanding. For example, I have to do a lot of reading and research to be able to write for the articles on my web hosting review website. Without fully comprehending the topic, your writing will only seem disjointed.
Be original
Readers do not want to read something that they have most likely read elsewhere before. You lose your credibility and might also get into trouble if the original author of the post finds out that you have duplicated his content. Besides that, having the same article as another blogger doesn’t actually serve any purpose for it is most likely that only the earlier entry will be listed in the results page of a search engine.
Connect, agree or argue
It isn’t all the time that bloggers have to come up with a post that explains everything from A to Z. An interesting way of creating content is to provide your points of view on a topic that another blogger has blogged about. Say your opinions, challenge his/hers or agree with further arguments on your own and then link your post to the blogger’s. Remain active in the conversation in order not to be seen as just an effort to direct traffic to your blog.
So now you know the keys to having contents that would lure readers. But while these used to be sufficient in attracting readers, contents alone aren’t enough now in the current time when there is such a vast number of websites and blogs out there jostling for the attention of web users.
It is pointless to have great contents if no one even knows of their existence. You would need to know how Google’s rules are on Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERP) to make your blog’s presence in the World Wide Web noticed.
Use keywords accordingly
Many bloggers make the mistake of peppering their posts with keywords, thinking that the higher frequency will elevate it to the top spot on the search page. Instead, this only results in the post being penalized by the search engines. The keyword count should ideally be 2% of the total number of words. Your readers will be happy too to receive variety instead of reading what looks like a case of keywords diarrhea!
Add links in your posts
Having several links will put your blog in a better position in the SERP. However, having too many will annoy readers. Make sure the links take readers to relevant information, not just for the sake of adding them. You could also link to fellow bloggers and then request that they do the same too. Another method that is gaining popularity among bloggers nowadays is to write articles on other websites/platforms, and then link these back to your blog.
Once you have a steady stream of loyal readers, it is then time to focus on earning through advertising, if that is your idea of blogging success. Else, you would have already achieved your objective of delivering information to people who believe you and keep coming back for more.
