photo credit: Patrick Hoesly
Dedication
What do I mean by “Blog Like An Olympian?” I mean to achieve the success you desire as a blogger, you will have to work at it. You need to be dedicated to your blog’s success. Olympic athletes spend years honing their athletic skills, and while it doesn’t take the same length of time to succeed, you need to have the same passion for your blog that an Olympian has for their sport. Without it you won’t be able to keep yourself motivated to continue developing new ideas and content for your blog.
Training
Olympic athletes train themselves for top performance in their sport. How does that translate to blogging? Just as an athlete has a set of skills they must develop, you as a blogger have a set of skills to develop too. There are two basic blogging skills. They are writing, and promotion.
Writing
Most bloggers refine their writing skills simply by writing. If necessary there are courses available to help develop your writing skills. Here’s a link that should prove useful, if you are looking for online writing courses. It’s a link to 10 universities that offer free writing courses. Most bloggers won’t avail themselves of these resources, and that’s fine. There is no requirement to be a great writer as a blogger, but it doesn’t hurt either.
Promotion
The other basic skill that bloggers must master to be successful is promotion. Websites need promotion to be found by readers or customers. Finding readers is the lifeblood of a blog. Without readers a blog has no purpose. So what are the promotion skills that must be developed by the blogging hopefuls? Bloggers use the following methods to promote their blogs.
Bloggers find other blogs on which to leave comments. They hope that by reading the comments that they leave, the readers will be curious enough about the writer of the comment to use the link provided in the comment to come and investigate the commenter’s blog. Two basic criteria are generally used to determine which blogs will be used to leave comments.
Size Matters
Most often a blog with the largest readership is desired. It’s like sales. A numbers game. The more readers who see a comment, the more readers will be curious enough to come look at the comment writer’s blog. It’s a matter of percentages. Let’s say 5% of a comment’s readers will follow the link. 5% of 10,000 is a lot more than 5% of 100 readers.
Niche
Another factor to be considered is whether or not the blog is in a similar niche. That is to say, does it have similar interests to the commenter’s blog. It is pointless to leave comments on a blog which has nothing to do with the interest of the blog which the commenter writes about.
Some rules about comments
There are some guidelines that should be followed when writing comments. Comments should add value to the blog post where they are being written. There is nothing to be gained by either the blog or the commenter unless the comment is interesting to the readers. You can say anything you want, agree or disagree with the post, but make sure whatever you write is absolutely fascinating, as a radio host I used to listen to used to say. Comments are sometimes like mini-ads for the writer as a showcase of writing skill, or a way to express a viewpoint that maybe wasn’t obvious.
Another way of promoting your blog is to write guest posts. You will want to write an interesting article for another blog to get exposure for yourself. The same criteria are usually employed in choosing the blogs where you will submit your guest post. It is best to check with the blog owner for whatever rules they may have concerning acceptance and publishing of blog posts.
Another reason for guest posting is to get backlinks to your blog. These will help with ranking in the search engines and aid in getting readers from that source.
So there you have it. A set of skills to develop that will boost your readership. As I said in the beginning, blog with the attitude of an Olympic athlete. Know that it is going to take hard work and dedication to succeed. But then, that’s true of any endeavor, isn’t it?
As always, comments are encouraged.
How To #2 – Effective Promotion
Here’s number 2 in my series of “how to” articles for bloggers.
What should you know about effective promotion of your blog? You are probably already familiar with the usual litany of blogging. Write posts, comment on other blogs , and guest post. But is there more that you could be doing? Funny you should ask. Now let’s talk a little about what you could be doing to promote your blog more effectively. (Here’s a little freebie piece of advice. Make sure you hit “save draft”, and not the “publish” button when you’re writing in the wordpress editor. heh)
New Posts
This one is not really promotion, but you need to add fresh content to your blog regularly. It doesn’t have to be an every day thing, but try to update, and add new articles on a fairly regular basis. Think about it. How many times are you going to keep coming back to aq blog if the content never seems to change.
Comments on other blogs
This is always on everyone’s list of promotional activities. There’s a reason for that, of course. It works! As has been said already a hundred times, this does not mean making meaningless noises abut how helpful this post is. Leave something with a little meat on it (Sorry vegetarians, but if God didn’t want us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat? I’m sorry about that. I couldn’t help myself. It’s one of the funniest things I ever saw. As a public service, here’s the truth. The China Study proves that meat really is not very good for you. The consumption of animal protein leads to all kinds of health problems. End of health lesson.) As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, when you leave comments, be sure you are contributing to the conversation, and not just leaving noise. The point of the exercise is two-fold. One, you want the backlink, which is important to traffic. More backlinks = higher rank on the search engines = more traffic (=more money if you are monetized). Two, you want to leave a comment that has valuable content and is so well-written that readers feel that they just have to go see what your blog is all about.
Guest posting
Guest posting, like commenting has two purposes. One is the backlink, and two is to gain readers. Always check the blog you want to submit a guest post to for any rules or guidelines that they want guest posters to abide by or follow. Since you’re trying to generate more backlinks, and traffic with your guest post, and you are using another bloggers site to do it, you owe them your very best work. Your article will reflect on them as well as you. Make sure you show them the respect and gratitude they deserve by offering only your best writing.
Build Links
There are a number of ways to get links. Blog carnivals, where a number of bloggers with a similar interest get together and list there latest offerings can be effective. Get your blog listed in directories. Find forums and take an active part in them.
Social media
Twitter and Facebook are changing the internet. They should be an important part of your campaign to get people to be aware of your site. Create accounts and talk.
SEO
Before I go I should probably mention something about SEO or search engine optimization. In the comments and guest posting sections I briefly touched on backlinks. They are the principal criteria for ranking. There are different levels of backlinks. The more authoritative the source of the backlink, the more weight it carries. You also should be aware of keywords. Keywords are not just single words either. They are the words and phrases people put into search engines. The higher your page ranks in the search engines for any particular term, the more likely it is that people will click on the link to your page. This is especially critical if your site has something to sell. This one does not…yet. It also helps your site to link to your own articles within your site, so don’t overlook that source of links. I find it helpful to go through my posts after they are written to inspect them for keywords to use as tags, and to look for any terms I may have used that are well-suited to use for links.
Conclusion
The basic concept is simple. You want your blog’s name to appear in as many places as you can possibly find. The more places on the internet it shows up on, the more people will see it. See, effective promotion isn’t that hard.
If you enjoyed what you read here please send a link and share it with others, and as always comments are encouraged.