by Mike Flanagan | Internet Marketing Strategy |
Build A Blog And Attract Followers
If you’re thinking about starting your own blog, you must also realize that driving or attracting significant volumes of traffic is essential to maximize its’ popularity and build yourself a dedicated legion of followers.
In order to become a successful blogger, there are a certain number of qualities you should already have or be willing to learn.
This article outlines what I consider to be the top six qualities of a successful blogger. I do not claim that this list is definitive or exhaustive in any way, it is just based on my own experience, coupled with my own reading and research.
So here are those 6 Top Qualities:
Blogger Quality Number 1
Hardwork!
Sorry if that comes as a shock, but if you are serious and want to be a successful blogger you really have to “do-some-work”. You have to write content for your blog on a regular basis and acquire the essential values of “Persistency & Consistency”.
That means having to do some writing and making sure it is done at regular intervals and putting in some effort to ensure that you stick at it. Laziness doesn’t produce regular content and won’t enable you to get to a stage where your content is actively starting to pull huge volumes of traffic to your blog. To do this, you really must be prepared to spend some time writing your own unique content.
Of course, if you have the money, you can always pay someone else to write it for you. But, be aware that an article written by someone else will be structured in a way that will not properly represent you, or your own individual personality.
In the past, I have paid for high quality and unique articles and although they were good, when I read them they were not written the way I would write and “sounded” nothing like me . So I found myself re-writing to portray me and to suit my own personal style.
Blogger Quality Number 2
Publish content that is captivating, interesting and useful.
Research your chosen niche, know and understand which topics are not only important for your regular visitors to keep them coming back to your blog, but also know what will attract new visitors.
Profile the type of person who is typically interested in your niche, get to know their age range, gender and work status – are they employed; are they retired; are they blue collar employees; are they white collar employees; are they self-employed; are they professionals?
Take some time to really think about the niche you focus on and know what the needs, interests and issues are of people in that niche. From the profiling work above, create an avatar – an image and summary of your ideal target visitor – and give your avatar a name.
Look at some other existing blogs already serving the niche and think of ways in which you can inject some uniqueness into your blog without diverting too far away from the niche itself. As you write your content, keep you avatar in mind, or display what you have created about your avatar to remind you.
A blog that is unique and provides what your visitors want to see will become popular and very appealing to new visitors.
Blogger Quality Number 3
You don’t want your visitors to just be like “window-shoppers” on your blog and then pass on by.
Those visitors that have a real interest in your niche and spend their time reading all your blog posts, will be more than happy to give you their name or just email address to subscribe to your email list. A simple message, asking them to subscribe and receive email notifications when new content is published, may be all you need.
However, it is usual to give something away in exchange for someones’ email address and is typically something that is useful, like an ebook or a report. Again, custom written is always best and will help to promote your blog and uniqueness.
Blogger Quality Number 4
Providing unique and appealing content is important, but so is ensuring that you don’t overlook or miss any opportunities to make money from the blog.
A successful blogger knows that relevant and interesting content is the first and foremost function of a popular and growing blog. It is, in fact, over and above the monetizing aspect as it is the content that attracts visitors in the first place. And those very same visitors will most likely become your first customers, as they feel that they have already gotten to know, like and trust you.
Also, make use of the subscribers email list you build-up, to remind or inform them of the offers you have – and don’t forget to put some links into your free ebook or report as well.
So, ensure that you don’t miss out on any monetizing opportunities as there are many ways you can make money on your blog. For example, if you do have your own products and services, or become an affiliate and sell products that are relevant to your niche.
A blog that starts to get high traffic volumes could also provide you with another revenue stream by taking advantage of the high amount of traffic to sell advertising space to local companies or other marketers on the blog.
Blogger Quality Number 5
Driving more traffic to your blog will elevate the position of it and increase its’ popularity in the search engine rankings.
When typing a query into Google, most people will not look beyond the first page (or listing) of results and will only really click those that are near to the top of the listing.
To be both a successful and serious blogger, always be on the lookout for ways to drive more traffic to your blog. Get to know other bloggers in your niche and exchange traffic with them. You can do this by introducing and recommending their blog to your visitors, by either inviting them to write a guest post on your blog or by mentioning them in one of your posts.
Another way to do this, is to send an email to your list with a link to their blog. They will gain your visitors and of course, as it is a reciprocal arrangement, you will gain theirs.
Blogger Quality Number 6
Never quit!
It’s tough when first starting out, as visitors will not immediately come running to your blog. I know that feeling very well as will everyone else when they first started.
Yes, even those who are now famous and at the top of their game had to start somewhere.
You write page-upon-page of content, put in a lot of time and effort ……… and no-one sees it.
You feel as if it’s all for nothing, but never give up as everything does take time.
Don’t expect to be an overnight success as that very rarely happens.
As for those who appear to have come from nowhere and become “instant stars” – well, it’s most likely that you just hadn’t come across them before and weren’t aware of all the time, work and effort they have had to put in beforehand.
As in my number 1 point above, to be consistent and persistent is essential.
Keep at it and Never Give Up!
If you have some or all of these qualities, then just go and do it. If not, then Learn – and go do it anyhow.
So, what do you think of those six qualities? I’d love to read your comments.
by Mike Flanagan | Internet Marketing Strategy |
Finally – Revelation Of A Puzzling Stress Condition
It’s been quite some time since you’ve heard from me on here.
I know this is not the way a blog is supposed to be run, as it does absolutely nothing to increase readership or popularity and goes against the teachings of my mentors in iPro. There are no excuses for deliberately avoiding tasks that should be done, especially those tasks that are associated with an ongoing business strategy, especially as that very same strategy is supposed to fulfill my goal of establishing a solid and financially secure business.
The only explanation I have for things that I have or have not done, either recently or over the past few years, can only be associated in some way with the breakdown I suffered at work back in 2010.
In fact, August 2nd was the sixth anniversary of its occurrence.
Anyone who has endured trauma – whether mental or physical – will know just how difficult it can be to explain, or to justify or even apply logic to their subsequent actions or indeed their lack of action following in the wake of a major traumatic event. I still have no real clue as to why I choose to do or not do certain things. For people with no experience or understanding of a breakdown, the actions of those afflicted may seem hard to understand, even erratic, pointless or maybe downright bizarre.
Over the past six years I know that I am slowly getting better, although I don’t really know how “better” can be truly defined as a specific end-point and I guess that it is probably in the same category as to what actually determines someone or something to be “normal”, that is, if there really can be any true definition of it.
All I really can say is that I seem to have developed some form of defence mechanism, which has the effect of switching my mind away from things that appear to be threatening in some way, although I have no clue as to why my blog should suddenly start to show signs of becoming something that could induce a high amount of stress.
I’ve recently returned from a two week stay with my sister, which included the wedding of her eldest daughter – my niece – to a college professor and research scientist (he also holds a number of doctorates). He was also in the middle of writing a grant application and research submission for publication in order to secure his continued tenure for the coming year.
Talk about everything happening at once in his life!
My sister lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and the last two weeks away from my own life and environment is something I needed – although I didn’t really know it at the time. The last time I saw my sister and her family was at my own daughters’ wedding in 2015 and the time before that was in 2011 at her other daughters’ wedding.
So, it’s now back to my own life and time to get things back on track with my own business.
The title of this post is “Can My Stress Become A Business Advantage?” and when planning it, I had intended for it to be just a revelation of what I had discovered about my own condition when in Canada. I’ve heard it said that in order to find yourself, you first need to get away from your own familiar surroundings and environment, in order to avoid those distractions that can so easily cause your attention to refocus on something else.
Although not totally unfamiliar to me, the surroundings I have been immersed in and the people that were around me have been sufficiently different for me to realize something that has most probably been there for quite some time. Also, I mentioned above that I had originally intended this post to be about a revelation I had discovered, but ‘Synchronicity’ has also played a part in those plans.
If you are unfamiliar with Synchronicity, it is a phenomenon of the Law of Attraction and is stated that there are no such things as chance or coincidence. They do not exist and their occurrence is not random. Synchronicity is the law of unity and arises from the deepest source of our destiny. And so it was that this article from the Harvard Business Review popped into my Inbox; ‘How to Use Stress to Your Advantage’ Clicking the link will cause it to open in a new tab, please take the time to read it.
In my particular case, my breakdown has left me with an enduring and overpowering fear of crowds. With everything I have gone through, this has been the most stubborn and consistent fear. Most of the time, I will appear to be perfectly fine and it’s only when I’m within a crowd of people that things become very confused and frightening for me. I’ve always explained it as the closeness of everyone and their unpredictability – people really do not look where they are going and will often just stop or suddenly change direction!
My revelation happened the morning after an event we had all attended the previous evening. It was a cultural event which was part of an annual celebration called Folklorama, which takes place on the first two weeks in August. It’s a festival of global culture, with individual pavilions’ for each of the countries where people have migrated from over the years into the Province of Manitoba.
I experienced the usual feelings of confusion and fright in the pavilion, the sound of all the people talking merged into a chaotic and overwhelming confusion of noise, obliterating anything my family tried to say to me. As is usual in these situations, my wife took my hand to guide me along.
It is said that we all dream when we sleep and that a large proportion of us rarely remember what the dream or dreams have been about. I also rarely recall dreams, but that night I did remember a dream, very vividly. The strange thing about the dream is that it was not about me or anyone I know. It was as if I was being shown something that had already happened, although I don’t know when it happened.
It involved a man, a woman and a boy and was extremely disturbing. When thinking about it the following morning, it suddenly struck me that the feelings of confusion and fright I suffer in crowds actually has very little to do with verbal noise or the unpredictability of people. I now realize that the feeling of fright; noise and crowds are all associated with some type of emotional absorption, which I am unconsciously trying to avoid.
Now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you are wondering what any of this has to do with using my stress as an advantage in business. Well, if you have read the article I referenced above ‘How to Use Stress to Your Advantage’ on the Harvard Business Review website, you will have seen that a certain level of stress is actually necessary for us to achieve goals and fulfill our potential. If it wasn’t for stress, we wouldn’t have an automated response to danger, which has ensured our evolution and survival. When used consciously and by acknowledging its’ power, stress can provide us with the ability to judge situations and to form balanced assessments of them.
I know that I will need time to gradually accept the realities of my new discovery. but finding out what the fear is about does give me a great sense of progress and begins to provide me with some answers to a fear that just won’t go away and until now, has made no sense. So, an understanding of this apparent new ability I appear to have acquired should provide a kind of non-verbal access, rather like a peek directly through a customers’ eyes and hopefully be able to ‘tune-in’ to them.
I’m convinced that the disturbing dream I had came directly to me from one of those people in the crowd at that pavilion. I don’t know if it will only work when I’m among people, but it will be a huge step-forward in enabling me to properly reconnect with people again at social and business-focused gatherings.
