The Blogger

Writing about something you love is never difficult. However finding something you love to write about can be harder than you’d think. But once the creative insight and content is in place, you’re still only 40% of the way there in creating a successful blog. Here’s a quick guide written from my own experiences on how you can become a better blogger.

I started the Leadership-Expert blog in early 2009. And from working in my spare hours on it, Leadership Expert was receiving hits at the rate of half a million a year within 6 months of its inception.

In my opinion, there are actually 5 crucial steps you need to achieve to have a successful blog.

1. Good, efficient design.
2. Quality and ‘magnetic’ content.
3. Brand and Authority.
4. Traffic
5. Call To Action

1. Good, efficient design.

Good websites should run quickly and look simple to the eye. You need to realise that most web users are not going to arrive onto your blog and look around in awe as if they were visiting a Cathedral. Most surfers will make a decision in a couple of seconds as to whether they should stay on your page, or click ‘back’ in their browser. Only when you experience how fickle web users are, will you realise that the less you put on a page, the better.

2. Quality and ‘Magnetic’ Content

The best type of content is what I label as ‘magnetic’ content, which naturally draws people in, almost by magic. All of your content should be ‘magnetic’, whether it’s the title, body or even your ‘about me’ blurb. Here are some good examples of magnetic titles: “The Seven Worst Movies”, “A Sheep That Surfs”, “Dangerous Ideas: Getting Started is Overrated”. Magnetic titles are those that compel you to click on them.

3. Brand & Authority

If you want your blog to achieve anything, be it convince your reader of something, or encourage them to sign up to your list, you’ll need authority. When building a reputation for your blog – it’s incredibly hard to fake it. If you’ve got $20,000 to give to a web designer, you could probably trick most users into believing your blog is popular by having a slick interface, but in reality, you’re going to want to go about this the proper way. What’s fantastic about a good reputation is that people will visit you because they remember you, and not simply because you show on Google higher than everyone else. It’s that kind of loyalty that creates the type of visitors you really want – those who will listen, sign up, and/or buy whatever you’re selling.

4. Traffic

If you want a successful blog, there’s no question about it – you need the traffic. If, af 3 years of hard work, your blog still isn’t receiving over 200 hits a day, then you’re doing something wrong, (or you’re blogging for an audience that is small or doesn’t exist). Getting traffic will usually make or break a blog. And what’s great about traffic, is that it can just about make up for a defficiency in one of these other blogging elements. If your blog lacks authority but is getting 500% more eyeballs, then that will in some way go to solve the problem. Also, the more people read your blog, the faster you will be able to build a brand and reputation. The two go hand in hand. With reputation will come traffic, and traffic will build your reputation. But how do you jump onto this happy circle in the first place?

The answer is SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and is your first and best option for getting traffic when you’re just starting a blog. I spent several years becoming an expert in SEO which allowed me to attract over 500 people to my blog each day within just 6 months! See the results for yourself, search for ‘Leadership Styles’ in Google and see where my leadership blog ‘leadership-expert.co.uk’ appears. It is usually in the top five. This search term receives 74,000 searches per month. So you can begin to see how SEO can mean the difference between a website that is overflowing with visitors and interaction, and one that is a ‘dead’ wasteland.

If you’d like to hire me to help you achieve page 1 rankings in Google for your blog then please contact me at si_oatis1000[-at-]hotmail.com. I provide my work on a pay-on-results basis only, so you know you’ll be getting a great deal.

5. Call to Action.

Every blog needs to clearly call upon its visitors to do something. I don’t care whether you’re an e-commerce company selling clothes, or a fan-fiction author promoting their free-to-read works, you will be wanting your visitors to be completing one form of action. A common desire for bloggers is to build their email list, as this will help them attract repeat visits over the following months. If you haven’t made it beyond-obvious that you want your subscribers to sign up to your email list, then I promise you that less than 1% actually will. Therefore, a simple and clean design as suggested above, will aid in focusing your visitors behaviour on what it is you need them to do.

Finally, I’d also like to share with you my favourite blogging resources, that either inspired or helped me become a semi-professional blogger:

Lillie Ammann – Writing & Editing (And Blogging) Tips
ProBlogger – The Authority on Creating Income from Blogging
Steve Pavlina – My Favourite Personal Development Blog
Joost De Valk – Yoast ‘Tweaking Websites Guide’