|
 
 
|
 About me Contact me |
|
|
About me Contact me |
|
Articles recently commented on:
Follow Mar Matthias on Twitter Follow Rev. Mother Theresa on Twitter
Website thumbnails generously provided by ShrinkTheWeb |
Building a successful blog by Mar Matthias Darin I get asked how I made my blog a success quite a bit. I'm going to share some of the things I do and have done to make this blog a "success". I put success in quotes because everyone has a different idea of what being successful means. That being the case, here is how I define "success" in the context of this blog: I measure success on the
basis of the content, flow, commentators, and responses I receive. I
did not make this blog with the intentions of turning it into a
supportable income vehicle. I do make a few bucks here and there, but
money is not my focused goal. My focused
interest is the content I put up. The fact that I have a dedicated
group of readers is my success. Nothing else matters to me.
Now that I defined how I consider this blog a success, I will describe the steps and methods I use to accomplish that goal. Design and layout are crucial. I've ranted on this many times... Nobody likes to read a blog where the color combination is so hideous it give you a headache. Building a blog layout is just like being an interior decorator or in the real estate business. In fact, the space on a blog or web page is often referred to as "real estate". Why is this? Simple, because advertisers look at a page in the same manner as a prospector would, where are they going to get the best visibility is the foremost question in their mind. Like the real estate market, everything revolves around location. The blog desing is where you will spend a lot of time. If you don't, then your missing the big picture. Design your blog like you would a house by picking good color combinations and by organizing the content. I made mention several times that I have rebalanced my columns. Why? Because just as no one likes a lop-sided room, no one likes to spend any real time on a lop-sided blog. Unbalanced columns are a distraction from the content. If the visitor is not reading your content, they are not going to come back. Also, nobody likes clutter. Clutter makes the page look trashy. How long would you stay at a trashy looking house? The answer is the same when it comes to a blog or web page. This also applies to all the fancy thing-a-ma-giggies that seem to populate faster the two horny rabbits on viagra. Keep your design flowing, sleek, and smooth. The next element is content. I've said this before, content is king. If you've got nothing to say, no one is going to visit. Bloviating only goes so far. You content must be unique and original. This is perhaps the worst area a new blogger can get stuck in. When I started this blog, I thought about the type of content I wanted to cover. I wanted a place where I could rant, rave, vent, or just blow my mouth off. So I chose the personal or mixed bag style. Simply put, this blog is about me, what I might be thinking, my opinions, and so on. I'm not limited to a particular focus or topic because what ever I put up is from my point of view. The is the easiest type of blog for a newbie like me. Its also the only type of blogging style that allows unorganized, random, and disconnected thoughts to work together harmoniously. This is also the type of blog I prefer to read. There is only so much real estate, technology, celebrities, or whatever other topic you can read before the "been there, done that" boredom factor hits home. As a part of the content, what you write about must be attractive to your readers. Not to many people aren't going to give a rat's backside to read a hundred and ninety posts about a dumb dog chasing his tail all day. The dog has got to do something else to keep the visitor reading. You got to captivate, interest and grab the reader by their ... (you get the idea) for them to want to return. You also must update your blog frequently. There's nothing worse then visiting a blog only to find out the it hasn't been updated recently. Blogs should be updated at least once a week as a minimum. Any longer and most people will never return. Thats really it. Putting up a blog and maintaining it is not hard to do if you spend a little time in the beginning thinking about what you want your blog to achieve, just don't set your expectations too high in the beginning. Also, start slowly. Trying to maintain any large number of blogs is insane and sooner or later one or more of them is going to show the lack of attentiveness. 
Top tags: blog, content, success, real, estate, likes, page, type, beginning, blogs
PermaLink Home
Please share your thoughts on this article. |
|
![[Valid RSS]](http://matthiaschronicles.tanaya.net/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
