For all the tutorials available online regarding SEO and marketing techniques, you could be forgiven for forgetting about the true key to successful blogging, quality content. It doesn’t matter if you are an SEO genius or have the flashiest wordpress theme around, if your posts aren’t up to scratch, you’re blog will never really take off.
And while keeping the quality up can seem relatively easy when you first start a new blog, after a few months your enthusiasm can start to fade and with it the spark that was present in your early post. So how do you ensure that your content remains attractive to your readers? I try to keep the following factors in mind when both writing and choosing what to write for my blogs.
General Quality
While it is debateable how good your content actually needs to be to rank in Google, there is no debate when it comes to attracting regular readers. Needless to say your content should be unique and grammatically correct but this is only half the battle. Your posts should also be logically structured, well thought out and interesting to read. Almost every subject is now covered by at least one blog, therefore if you want regular readers, your posts need to be interesting enough to compete.
Identify Your Target Audience
When writing posts for your blog, you should not be aiming to please everyone but you should be aiming to please your target audience. This audience needs to be defined right from the start and each post should be tailored to meet their needs. What questions are your readers looking for answers to? What news is your audience interested in hearing about? If you cannot answer these questions, you are not ready to start posting on a successful blog.
Monitor What Your Audience Likes
Use Google Analytics or your choice of analytical software to discern what type of posts get the most attention on your blog. It is not really possible to write what type of content will be the most popular on your blog because it varies both with the niche you are writing in and exactly what type of posts you are best at. But if you can establish what your readers most enjoy, you can not only concentrate on writing more of what they like but you can also stop wasting your time on writing what they don’t.
Be Consistent
Just because you can write in a range of different styles, that does not mean that all of your writing styles should be illustrated within a single blog. Once your blog starts getting repeat visitors, this means that those readers have enjoyed what they have read and you should therefore continue to write in the same fashion. If you have taken an informative and serious tone in previous posts, continue to do so. Constantly changing your writing style leaves little reason for your readers to expect more of the same and therefore little reason to return.
Stay Ahead of Your Niche
If you want to keep ahead of other blogs within your niche, you cannot constantly be late with new developments. If there is news within the niche that your blog covers, you need to post it and you need to do so fast. This is of course particularly important within fast changing topics such as tech and travel but it is not something that you can afford to miss regardless of your niche. The majority of your readers will read more than one blog daily and you do not want to constantly offer them information that they have already read elsewhere.
Don’t be Boring
Finally don’t forget that visiting a blog is supposed to be entertaining. While writing informative posts is important, the most successful blogs have posts that not only teach the reader something, they are also entertaining and fun to read. Don’t be afraid to show your sense of humour in your posts and if you have strong opinions on something, make sure that you illustrate them. There are now so many blogs online that informative content alone is not enough. You have to write with some type of style that separates you from the crowd.
Althaf Ahmed is a professional blogger and S.E.O. Consultant. He is the co-founder of Social Hacks. He recently authored The Twitter Marketing Guide for 2012.
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One of the most common complaint (or excuse) I hear from potential new bloggers is they don’t know how to install WordPress. Terms like FTP and CPanel are like a foreign language and setting up a database might as well be setting up the space shuttle for a launch. Because of the technology barrier, many would-be bloggers never start their blogs...
very informative. As a new blogger, this is what I really need to know. Thanks a lot!
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