10 New Year Resolutions to take your Blog to the Next Level
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 |Its the beginning of a New Year, and its a fresh start for all of us. Its time to let go of any or all of the disappointments that you may have faced as a blogger.Although I started blogging 6 months back, as a blogger the last 3 months have been very productive and inspiring for me, because of some great support from my blogger friends and decent success with the social media. I would also like to thank all my readers who take some time out to comment on some posts they like.
The success of a blog is measured in various terms like the Traffic Rank, Number of subscribers, activity on the blog (comments) and buzz about the blogger in the Social Media.There are quite a few things that I have learned from blogging last year and I would like to share some things that are critical to follow and commit to, if you would like to get better results for your blog.
1) Plan a schedule carefully and stick to it:
You might have a 9 to 5 job and you barely get time to blog, or maybe you are a full-time blogger, who gives all his time to blogging. Either way a proper schedule will help propel your blog to the next level. If you follow a schedule you can get more things done and be more productive. I have seen that I have always been able to post regularly and get more subscribers, traffic and activity on my blog if I follow a schedule.You should plan well so that you can accommodate reading blogs, posting on your own blog and social networking properly. Try and keep a track of not only of posting time, but how much time do you dedicate to reading other blogs, skimming through RSS Feeds and interacting in Social Networks.
Also, keep a notebook ,or a diary or a cell phone, to note down ideas. No Idea is a small idea and with some brain storming, you can make it a big one. Noting down would help you accumulate some nice concepts to write about in the future or a rainy day. It is also effective against writers block.
2)Write for your readers,but don’t ignore the search engines and Social Media:
Before you write every post, think how would this benefit my readers. Will writing this post add value to my blog. Will this post be valuable from a year from now? Its not always that a post can fit all these criterion. Sometime you need to blog about a special offer or a free service, which may not be valid for more than a few days. But don’t make this a regular feature. Make sure every post you write benefits the reader in someway.
As on this blog, I don’t have a clearly defined niche. I am a technology enthusiast who is a interested in blogging and involved in social media. What I write is about technology that would benefit bloggers and regular internet users. As I learn about new tips that would benefit any of these 3 niches, I write about it. And this is why The community I have around this blog are people who are interested in any or all of these niches.
Writing for search engines is important as, after the tons of traffic you receive from social sits starts waning, the search engines provide a constant source of quality traffic.You should try and make sure each post has proper SEO attributes and use a plugin like AIO SEO Pack to get maximum benefit from search traffic.
Also try and build a culture around your blog, in which you encourage your readers to submit your articles to social media, if they are good enough.
3)Start building a community around your blog:
Building a community around your blog can be a difficult task,but if you invest time in it, it will pay both in terms of loyal readers and also regular traffic and promotion. In order to start building a community you should first set a minimum number of subscriber number, like about 500 to 1000, as small communities tend not to work very well.
Get your readers involved by helping them out in any way possible. If you are a technology blogger you can ask them to send technical queries. Same goes for other niches. Not only would you help readers and build goodwill, but also get great ideas for future posts.
Surround yourself with bloggers from your niche to keep abreast with the latest happenings and to learn from collective experience, what works and what doesn’t and plan the content accordingly. You can also build a community and connect well with other bloggers by either offering to guest post on their blogs or letting them guest post.
4)Link to blogs in your Niche:
One of the mistakes I made last year was not to connect to some excellent content produced by bloggers in my niche. You can start a post which would contain some of the best work produced from around the blog-O-sphere, related to your niche. This has two advantages. Not only would you provide you readers with valuable content but also get get appreciation from a fellow blogger for linking.
Think about it for a second. You work on a post for several hours and create value for your readers. If some fellow blogger appreciates this and shares it with his readers,he would not only provide some good content for his readers but also get your gratitude. You can make great friends in this process. I missed this last year, but from this year, I would share with you some of the most original and well written content from around the web, from now on.
5) Don’t pretend to be A-List, Be an A-List blogger:
What does an A-List blogger have that you do not?? Hmmm….Answer anyone? Traffic you say. Yes, thats correct, but you don’t have enough of what he does : Value Packed content. All A-List Bloggers, have been known to be different from the crowd. Creating head turning, jaw dropping, link baiting content. Its not that tough really. If you take some time out (about 30 mins everyday) for contemplating, how you can write about an already written story from a different angle, you can make heads turn too and get more back links than you had imagined.
If you dedicate some time to read 30-40 blogs, you can note some idea, about a post that you a different opinion about or may be written in a different way. Another way is to check out the archives of A-List bloggers and apply the same procedure to write about things differently from your own point of view. From reading various blogs in your niche, you can generate and record ideas for future posts or follow up articles on your own past blog posts.
6) Become an expert in your niche:
As I mentioned in the point above about answering questions from your readers would be really easy if you are an expert in your niche or have an open mind to learn about new things about it. But before they ask any question, you need to prove you have a good knowledge by writing authoritative posts which pack some solid content.
Reading and following a lot of blogs in your niche would help you understand, what works and what doesn’t. Skimming through a lot of feeds daily would help you a lot in generating ideas for posts.
The day you are able to engage readers in this activity, you can safely assume that you have decent knowledge about the niche and now you can move towards more ambitions projects.
7) Create resourceful posts:
Take a Pledge. Pledge that you would invest time for creating at least one resources related post for your readers every week. If not every week then every fortnight. These are the kinds of post that have the highest rate of success among your readers and social media. Not only will this a source of perpetual traffic, but also would be accessed and bookmarked the most.
I have written just one resources post last year about Top 50 YouTube Tools and Resources on the web. I examined my traffic and feed stats for the last 4 months and I have seen that this post has been most visited and clicked on through all these months, and brings in traffic from search engines and social media alike. I now think If I had invested time in writing resources post every week for last 3 months, I would have a much better traffic flow and subscriber base.
8)Create backup for the unseen future:
When I speak about back up, I am talking about 2 things. The literal backing up of your blog and creating content for the future for days you just cant find time to post.
I learned a very important lesson a very hard way last year, when I almost lost my blog to a server crash. I moved from a cheap web host to a reliable host after that but the damage had already been done. I was able to recover all my posts, but lost all comments and had to re-upload all the pictures in the post. Make sure you back up your blog atleast once per week so that in case something goes wrong you would have things backed up and you would not lose out on all the hours of time you invested in writing for your blog. I have written a guide about backing up your blog, if you are interested in knowing the process.
There are days when you would not be able to find time to post. Either you have some important business to attend to or you have a writers block. One way or the other, in order to stick to a schedule you would need to post something. According to the resolve of being an A-List blogger you can’t just post anything. So for such a rainy day, keep some posts in your arsenal, that can be posted anytime. Make sure they are the kind that provide value and can be posted anytime.
A very good example of such posts would be resource posts that have very few resources, like 3 or 5 resources about your niche. But not only would you not break the schedule but also provide some valuable content to your readers. Your regularity would be appreciated in the long run.
9) Create a strong social presence:
2007 was the year of Social Media. Bloggers who were aware about this at the beginning of the year, not only strengthened their social profiles but also capitalized on their reach on these networks. A strong social network presence would help you build a brand name for your blog and for you as well, and get boatloads of traffic.
To build a good presence, you should at least dedicate a couple of hours for your favorite social bookmarking and networking sites, submit good content and connect with fellow bloggers and people who like the same stuff you do. A strong social presence give boost to your traffic and branding in more ways than you can imagine.
10) Encourage Readers to Subscribe and Stay:
Getting readers is easy compared to the task of making them stay. First, You are doing nothing wrong, if you ask visitors of your blog to subscribers 2-3 times on the blog, or maybe use some tricks to get their attention for subscription. You work hard to create content and you can tell the readers that subscribing would help them to stay updated with more good content that is in the pipe line, so that they don’t miss it. You can use subscriptions encouragement plugins or can ask visitors to subscribe manually by posting the link in between the posts, which reminds me, do subscribe to this blog, if you would like to get good tips about Blogging, Technology and Social Networking.
I have lost boatloads of subscribers when my blog crashed. I needed to work even more to get those 200+ subscribers back. This is something that isn’t common but you should prepare for it. There are many plugins that can spice up your feeds. In the feed you can remind the readers, that you are a good content producer and if there is no activity on the blog for a couple of days, they shouldn’t just go ahead and unsubscribe, but wait, as time interval in between indicates a great post in the making. You can use these words to encourage present subscribers to stay.
Following any and all of these resolutions would take your blog to a higher level in all the “terms” we use to measure the blogs success. This is not a compiled list of resources, but something I have learned and shared with you to help you in a little way I can, to propel your blog to the next level.
If you think any more tips that may benefit bloggers, please feel free to share them in the comments!
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