5 Essentials for a Successful Blog

Creating a blog is something that anyone with an Internet connection can do, but only a small percentage of people end up doing well. However, the people who have figured out the tricks to create a successful blog didn’t simply get lucky, or wave a magic wand and have it all work out for them. Creating a successful blog requires you to dedicate an extraordinary amount of time and effort to your online presence. And it can’t be done haphazardly, either.

The most known bloggers on the Internet had many years of planning, study, and practice before reaching their current levels of success. The upside to this is that anyone can create a successful blog, as long as they make sure it has the following elements:

1. Purpose

A blog without a central purpose has absolutely no chance of succeeding. If you’re simply using your blog as an online diary or journal, that’s fine. But don’t expect others to want to read it. However, if you do want to gain a following, you need to figure out what you want to write about, and why you want to write about it. Don’t fret over the fact that there are likely hundreds of blogs discussing the same topic; your voice and your experiences are what will make your blog unique and worth reading. Of course, if you’ve discovered a specific topic that no one else has really dove into yet, you’ve found your niche!

2. Focus

Once you’ve decided on a purpose for blogging, you need to focus on that purpose relentlessly. It may be tempting to use your blog as a soap box at times, but unless the ideas you’re having relate in some way to the overall purpose of your blog, they have no place within its pages. Think about it: If you visit a blog to read about ski trails in Colorado, but the latest post is a long-winded political diatribe, you’d click the “back” button right away, right? However, nothing’s stopping you from maintaining multiple blogs! Use one as a personal journal if you like – but always keep the central purpose of each of your blogs within focus.

3. An Engaged Audience

Having a large audience is one of the definitions of a successful blog. But that doesn’t just mean having thousands of people read your writing. Your goal should be to create a community of like-minded individuals who share ideas and words of advice with each other. The tie that will bind these individuals together into a community is your writing. Although your ultimate goal as a blogger is likely to get your name out there and profit from doing so professionally and monetarily, this will only happen if you show your audience that you truly care about the ideas you write about, and the people who read them.

4. Multimedia

Although your writing will likely make up a majority of your blog’s media, you should also mix it up as often as possible by including pictures, audio, and video relating to your posts. If you’ve set up a blog focused on the top fishing spots in New York, you might want to include maps to specific lakes you especially enjoy fishing at, or videos of you reeling in a lunker to prove you know what you’re talking about. Not only will multimedia backup the claims you’ve made, but it will also keep your audience interested in your material (especially those who are turned off by long strings of text).

5. Links

Perhaps the best part of the blogging community as a whole is everyone’s willingness to share each other’s ideas freely. Linking to other sources has a variety of benefits, for yourself and the blogging community as a whole. When you link to other people’s work, you show you’ve done your research, which allows your audience to put their trust in what you have to say. You also give credit where credit is due, acknowledging the giants whose shoulders you have stood on to get where you are today. Finally, you give the big names in your industry a reason to check out your blog, which may lead to bigger and better professional opportunities in your future.

Featured photo credit: Blog / GotCredit via farm9.staticflickr.com

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