What is a blog and how do you make it a success? If you’re thinking of launching a blog, you’ve come to the right place.
Whether it’s a company blog or an outlet for your opinions, taking a blog from those beginning stages to something that other people actually seek out and read requires a lot of work and a lot of savvy.
There are specific qualities that all blogs have and other things that only the best blogs have in common. To make yours successful, there are digital marketing philosophies that you need to adhere to. However, you also want to have an original voice that allows you to engage your readers.
Today, we’re going to give you some assistance by telling you 5 things that all successful blogs have in common and 5 more things that really original bloggers think about to set themselves apart from the crowd. If you take the work seriously, you can monetize your blog within a year of launching, and we can help.
What Is a Blog? 5 Things All Blogs Have in Common
A blog could really be anything you want it to be. Take a few minutes out of your day and you’ll find dozens of blogs in a variety of unique styles that produce completely different content from one another.
Many individuals start blogs to talk about the things they’re interested in, be it music, film, products, or entertainment. Most companies worth their salt understand that blogging is one of the best methods for attracting new visitors to their website.
No matter what the purpose of your blog is, it should have the following 5 qualities.
1. Clear Focus
To have a blog that people come to read consistently, you’ve got to maintain a clear focus. There are thousands of blogs already on the internet, so when you launch yours, you need to make sure it’s filling in some gap.
Finding your niche isn’t easy, but it’ll help you stick out in the haystack a little better. Create a list of things you’re passionate about and do some research to come up with a great blog concept.
2. Great Design
web design is really important here. If your blog doesn’t look the part, people aren’t going to believe a word you say, unfortunately. Fortunately, it’s really easy to build an attractive website on WordPress or another one of the many site builders out there.
Most blogs have a similar design. All of the posts will appear in a truncated form as links in a list on your page and if you write on different topics, you’ll have them set up as different landing pages. It’s a clean look, which is probably why it’s so widely used.
3. Regular Content
Your readers have to know that they’re getting regular content. You can help yourself out here by developing a content strategy and sticking to it. Maybe you write about what’s happened in the news once a week, or maybe you do daily product reviews.
If your audience knows what to expect from you, they’ll keep coming back. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t throw in a few surprises every now and then, but don’t disappoint them by going dark.
4. Personality
Every great blog has a brand/voice/personality behind it. Whatever you want to call it, your writing style has to be engaging enough for people to think you’re funny, smart, or that your opinion is valid if they’re going to keep reading.
Developing your “voice” won’t happen quickly. Even the most popular bloggers would tell you that it takes years to really find out what you should be talking about and how you should be talking about it.
5. Well Written
Lastly, you have to be a good writer to become a blogger. You’ve probably scrolled through a blog or two that have had spelling mistakes and punctuation errors; what’s your impression of them?
If you want to be taken seriously, you have to have the ability to communicate your thoughts in a clear way. No one’s going to give your musings on the latest iPhone the time of day if they can’t understand what you’re talking about.
5 Things No Two Blogs Have in Common
Those were 5 qualities that all decent blogs share. Now, let’s talk about the things that set some blogs apart from the decent ones.
1. Community
Being able to build a sense of community around your blog isn’t an easy thing to achieve by any means. It takes a really strong brand and incredibly engaging content to be able to hook people in for the long-haul and get them talking about your stuff.
If you nail all 5 of the qualities above and possess something a little extra, you can build this community. You’ll need to encourage your readers though. They won’t build it without you telling them to.
2. Getting Analytical
Being able to integrate data into your posts to draw your conclusions will set you apart from the crowd. It gives you an element of trustworthiness that other bloggers just won’t have.
Making the statistics easy to look at by placing infographics, graphs, and charts in your posts will engage readers without taking away from what you’re trying to say.
3. Link Building
One of the ways you’ll start to monetize your blog is by linking to other blogs, products, websites, etc. It’s also one of the best ways to get more people reading your blog.
Link to other people’s work and they’ll either pay you or link to your work. This is how word spreads quickly on the internet. Internal linking is also a great way to hook those new readers on your blog.
4. Sell Things Subtly
Moneymaking blogs are able to sell things to their audience without wavering from their own brand and voice. The ability to do this comes from establishing a strong community around your blog, then working exclusively with companies and products that you really believe in.
You don’t want to betray the trust of your readers by trying to sell them something they don’t care about. Keep it relevant and you’ll be able to make some cash from pushing good products.
5. Research
Blogging can be a serious business if you treat it as such. The best bloggers in the world put a lot of work into their posts that you’ll never see. Pouring over analytics to find out things like how long the ideal post is, how many pictures you should include, and the best way to display statistics, will pay off big time.
Start Your Blog Today
Now that you know what makes a pretty good blog and what makes an exceptional blog, you can stop asking “what is a blog?”, and start finding your niche so you can hit the ground running. Employ some of these philosophies and you’ll be making decent money from your blog in no time.
Did you find this post helpful? For more on running and monetizing your blog, come back and visit us again at Blogging Karma.
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