Any avid blogger will tell you that blogging is very hard work, and there have been rare cases where bloggers have admitted to letting blogging disrupt their family life, friendships in the real world, finances and time.
We are not advocating extreme behavior. But sometimes we cant help admire some of the reasons they give - one of the favorites is that blogging is not just about writing or sharing, but the enormous satisfaction one gets being an active participant in exploring human experiences, knowledge, emotions and passions.
Let's take a trip into time, back to the early hay days of the Internet. You had to pay for everything; set up of the website, hosting, server managed services, email accounts, and promoting your website. Other than that one needed the services of costly website developers to change a line of text, or a simple graphic.
It was little wonder that only companies could afford these exorbitant rates, leaving individuals and many professionals as passive participants, who could view, compare, give feedback, or buy.
Today the individual has the power to be active participants on the Internet with blogs, social bookmarking and social networking becoming commonly used terminology by college students, innovative brands and even large organizations.
Blogging gave the individual the power to create attractive pages of content with pictures, videos, and share it with the world on click of a button.
The present seems secure enough, and thousands of new blogs are being created each day, the numbers of users reading blog are on the rise, bloggers have started making a modest sum for their hard work, and popular blogs are ranking well in search engine results.
But what's sad is that 90 percent of them will witness a sad demise because of simple things they did not know (not did not do) when they started blogging. Around 8 percent of blogs will never be read, and 1 percent will give up after a year of hard struggle. Well that leaves 1 percent of blogs that will have any hope for survival, let alone success.
Now don't get discouraged, blogging is most fulfilling, but rather look within to see the reason why you want to blog and about what? Answering those questions honestly could mean the difference between success or the demise of your blog.
In the animal kingdom, it's the survival of the fittest.
In the blogging world, it's the most persistent, innovative and passionate bloggers that will survive. It will not be just about what you do, but what you feel, and how you perceive the world you so write about that will make the difference.
Great Tips for blogger survival:
1. Write about something you know, and are passionate about. After all you will not want to write 3-5 times a week on a subject that you are unfamiliar with, or are not passionate about.
2. Add your complete profile with a nice photograph. Readers like to know a little about you.
3. Be persistent in your writing, your readers expect something new each time they visit.
4. It's not about quantity, but quality. Write clean good copy, use humor and examples with nice visuals.
5. Innovate, don't give the same content rehashed, do things differently, give your blog a distinct voice.
6. Make your blog customized, attractive and easy to navigate.
7. Add a search to your blog.
8. Allows your readers to interact with your blog (polls, comments, social bookmarking).
9.Your readers are your customer's; get to know their likes and dislikes, pay attention to their comments and always answer right away.
10. Create links within your blog posts, to your other blog posts.
11. Create links from your blog post to your website (if you have one) and from your website to your blog. Also give links to other external reference sites that might add value to your reader.
12. Build links from other blogs, and popular websites to your blog.
13. Register your blog on blog search engines and blog directories.
14. Announce your blog to the world on press release sites.
15. Submit your blog posts to popular article submission sites. Don't overdo it.
16. Register your blog feed (Atom/ RSS) with content feed syndicates.
17. Track the visitors on your blog using services like Google Analytics.
18. Monitize your blog with adwords and select affiliates that adds value for your readers.
19. Track and read other blogs in competition with you. What are they doing different?
20. Track the most popular blogs, see what they are doing (how often are they posting, the titles, the quality of content, do they use graphics and videos, do they answer comments etc).
21. Leave interesting comments for other bloggers. They will notice you!
Nevil Darukhanawala, SEO Expert Mumbai, SEO Services Mumbai |
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