Success of a Blog
There are many successful blogs on the web and getting started can be a daunting task. But if you tackle it with the right attitude then success will follow.
Remember, that a blog is fundamentally a website, don't treat it with any more credit than that; it doesn't deserve it. Forget about all the media hype about blogging and all the myths that surround it. You are building a website and all the normal rules of engagement apply.
The exceptions to the blogging world is the voice in which you express yourself. Traditional websites general dictate a more formal language, with all the i's dotted and t's crossed. Blogs drop this formality and permit a much more natural, streetwise approach. The difference in tone is similar to that found between Word documents and emails. In a document you are more formal, grammar all checked, spelling all corrected, where as in an email it's a lot more rough, less checking. Many have argued that an email is a communication mechanism where as a document is an historical mechanism. Blogs follow the email world.
The first question you have to ask yourself, who is your blog for? If it is for your own purposes, an online journal of sorts, then you shouldn't worry about building up a community or increasing traffic. If no-one ever visits your blog, then you are still ahead. Generally speaking these types of blogs are rare, and people only use this as an excuse when no traffic appears.
You need to identify the sort of person you are writing for. Are they similar to you? What other blogs are competing for the same readers? Can those blogs compliment your blog? Once you have identified the type of reader then discovering what to write becomes a whole lot easier.
Realise there is a lot of information out there, so you have to ask yourself, why would someone come to your blog. Reward the visitor for investing the time to read your words. Give them value. Don't be an Internet cul-de-sac, link them onto to further reading. Any claims you make, link them to a resource that back it up.
Another key thing to realise about blogging is that each reader generally doesn't come to the home page. They will be linked to your blog because of a specific entry, that has either been referenced by someone else, or was picked up on an aggregator via your RSS feeds. To that end, each entry becomes your selling point. Each entry sells your blog as a whole to the reader and from that single entry they will make a decision to either bookmark you, or continue reading more posts from you.
Blogs thrive on links. They are the key to the success of any blog. Forgetting for a moment that it is a metric that the likes of Google and Technorati use for evaluating your popularity it conveys a lot more information to your readers. The bookmarks that you advertise down the side of your blog is crucial to establishing your creditability. This tells the reader the types of blogs that this particular blog site relates to and the sort of community this blog would like to be considered part of. It is important you chose this list wisely and advertise this list in your blog gutter. Don't expect (or ask for) reciprocal links, these have to be earned, particular from more popular bloggers.
The type of content you want to present in your blog may vary.
That's okay and in many respects to be encouraged. You can easily break
your blog down into categories and let people who are only interested
in a given topic see only those entries. Blog-City has an easy way of categorising your entries,
allowing you to independently advertise RSS feeds.
What makes blogs special is its ability to syndicate information through the use of RSS (Really Simple Syndicate). This is a small piece of XML that is available to anyone that wants to read it and advertises the entries your blog site has published. Many different applications use this RSS information and aggregate them altogether to present many different views to readers. For example the likes of Technorati and BlogLines utilise a consolidated view of millions of blogs in one interface. RSS is the key to your blogs success; through the use of aggregators you will be part of this maddening mass.
So how do people know you exist? Again, at Blog-City, as soon as you publish an entry, many of these top aggregators should be automatically notified of your entry. They will come and find your entry and index it accordingly. Do not expect to pop up automatically when you begin blogging. It takes time for you to reach a certain creditability before they will permit your content to be included. Creditability is measured through a number of mechanisms, including the age of your blog, the number of entries, the number of links you've made, update frequency etc etc.
If you expect the community to take notice of your blog, then get involved. Start reading and commenting on blogs that are similar to yours. When you leave comments make sure you leave a link back to your blog. Don't comment for the sake of leaving your blog url, but add value and people will naturally come over to your blog. One of the great features of blogging is something called trackback. This is the ability to remotely leave comments on someones blog. You write your answer or response to a given blog entry on your own blog and then trackback to the blog in question. This will leave a small link to your blog on their site inviting people to come and visit your blog. Trackbacks are popular and only some blogging hosts support this feature. Keep an eye out for it, it is a wonderful way to build traffic.
A blog is like a telephone. If you have a telephone that never rings, then don't blame the telephone, blame the fact you never told anyone the number. Make sure your blog url is included in your email signature. Any posts you make to mailing lists, make sure your blog url is included there. Don't be ashamed to advertise your blog where ever and when ever you can.
Finally, keep writing. Write small and often. A blog that is updated frequently is one that will be popping up in the aggregators. A few entries a week is acceptable for the average blog. If you have a lot of entries to write, then think about staggering them over a few days as oppose to dumping them all on the blog site at once. Tease your readers. Blog-City allows you to queue up content automatically using the future date feature.
To summarise:
Don't expect overnight success; traffic takes time
Link-Link-Link; make sure you include meaningful links inside each entry
Use your bookmarks wisely, link to blogs that are similar to yours
Compose an entry as if you were writing an email
Advertise your blog url at every chance possible
Write small and often