Contents
By now you know that quality content is not enough to give you the edge over other blogs out there. Fact is anyone running a blog these days is determined to provide quality contents.
So you’ve got to be smarter than quality content to make your blog stand out. Below are 7 personal ideas that will increase your chances of success very quickly than the regular blogger.
1. Well Defined Theme
When I became a blogger I was first confused on topics to blog about. By virtue of my training, exposure, profession and what I read online daily I found it extremely difficult to know my niche. I thought I knew so many things and wanted to talk about everything. I was writing and creating content on virtually many fields, until I knew that wasn’t gonna get me anywhere.
So I drew the line.
It has taken me time to really know what my theme should be and what my contents should revolve around. If you check out my blog and read the about page,you’ll see that I’ve drawn a theme for the blog,even though most of the contents in there right now still seem too broad for my liking.
You have to find out what your core passion or THEME is and build your content creation and stuff along that line. This way, you’ll draw the audience that you really need and that really needs you with time
2. Don’t Shout Your Need For Money Too Loud
Let’s not pretend about money. We all wanna have it, and its among the reasons we are blogging and taking the pains to create quality content, else we will be copying and pasting from everywhere.
That’s a fact.Don’t tell me “No, I just want to follow my heart.”
The truth is, we are all hoping that our blogs will eventually get us to making 5,6 or even 7 figures someday.
Agreed,making money is one of our major goals, but we don’t need to announce that on every spot on our web blogs. Our readers know we want to make money too.
If you check out most successful blogs,you’ll notice they’ve even thrown out all manner advertising on their sites. While, we may not have to trash ads on our sites at the moment, we need not monetize every spot in such a way our readers will keep getting distracted and thinking, ” hey! where’s the content”
3. Work on Your Site Loading Speed
Who has time to wait 30 seconds to one minute for a site to load. By the time it loads, the visitor is somewhere else.
At this time Pingdom says my site loads in 17 secs which is not too good compared to others like zenhabits that loads in 4 seconds
Did you notice that some of the biggest blogs out there do not have all the beautiful design images and slides,so to say, that keeps sites from loading very quickly?
There are actually a few things you can do to optimize your site load speed. Find it out and do it. It’s one tweak that can make your site stand out
4. “Uniquify” Your Blog Look
We all know that site acceptability is not as a result of flashiness. But it also pays to have a unique look peculiar to your blog alone. Something, crazy, cool, different from what’s in vogue is NOT bad . But more importantly, let your colors find agreement with your site’s main theme. I am sick of browsing around to get same look with all blogs everywhere.
5. Be Real, Simplify or Amplify Your Writing Style
Its okay to do a lot of research before a post but you’ve got to be real, be yourself, and as much as is necessary, short and to the point.
Endless paragraphs become boring and get people to walk away without getting your core message. Images in posts easily simulate blog post readership, so always have an image for your post.
6. User Friendliness and Follow Up
You know, I’m just being careless including this because I know you already know about this.
When folks drop comments on your blog, be kind enough to reply and / or thank them for dropping by. If they have a blog, check out theirs and drop a comment too if you have 1 minute. According to Jon Morrow, successful blogging is not actually what you know, but who you know and how many people you network with.
7. Go Mobile or Go Broke
You don’t need anyone to shout in your ears that this is a mobile era. This means there are more people using mobile devices to do stuff online than those using PC. If you doubt it, ask your local computer merchant how many laptops he sold last week and ask a phone seller how many he sold.
Look at my Zemanta graph below. I actually installed it a few days ago and thank goodness I did. Its pretty obvious that my site is getting a better click through from mobile users than PC users.
It’s compulsory that we bloggers make our blogs mobile ready. At least, if you cannot get an app about your blog now, get a responsive theme to start with.
Conclusion
Last time I asked I was told there are over 200 million blogs online and counting. If you want to be heard, you have to do everything you can to stand out from the crowd.
To your success.