The advent of blogging has given millions of people around the world an opportunity to become publishers in their own right. People from all walks of life have taken advantage of this platform to do just about anything they want: express whatever they feel, espouse ideologies, indulge in personal passions, connect with people and for many, make some money.
Whatever your reason for blogging, you should know by now that your blog is just one among millions upon millions of blogs around the world. As of last year, there are an estimated 200 million active blogs. Being heard or noticed is simply getting harder by the day. This is why many bloggers resort to quick and dirty ways to get to the top.
Always post quality content
Still, dirty tactics or not, the odds of your blog becoming as popular as, say, WebMD or The Huffington Post are stacked against you. Then again, take a look at the aforementioned websites, and you’ll see that they have something in common: they are both reliable and thoughtful sites loaded with very useful information which add more value to their readers.
That should tell you a thing or two about how you can get your content off the ground running in a legitimate way. You can engage in all manners of tricks all you want, but it’s always better to post quality content. By that, we mean posting interesting, meaningful, informative and in many cases, entertaining articles on your blog.
Sure, there’s no assurance that your traffic is going to hit the 1 million unique visitors a day mark anytime soon, but if you post quality content on a regular basis, you are demonstrating that you are working real hard to add more value to your audience’s lives, and that is always a mighty fine place to start if you want to make your blog matter.
To help you in your quest to make your blog matter, here are some tips we’d like to share with you.
Find your own voice
One thing that will separate your blog from the rest in any given niche is that you should write everything in your own, unique voice. That is, if you’re the only one maintaining the blog and posting all the content. Your blog, after all, is an extension of yourself, and should therefore reflect everything that you stand for. However, if your blog is being maintained by people other than yourself, we recommend that you set some guidelines among yourselves and have just one person editing everything before they get posted.
Be consistent with your blog posting
The downfall of many a potentially great blog is the inconsistency of its owner when it comes to making blog posts. Many bloggers thought they could just stop posting when traffic rises. If anything, you should continue posting consistently when traffic surges. It’s the only way to keep your audience around and make their numbers grow over time. Stop posting for some time, and you’re bound to lose whatever audience you have built over the months.
Apart from keeping your audience around, posting regularly also proves to Google that your blog is active, which makes for a sound SEO strategy. Posting blogs on a regular basis also gives off the impression that you are a professional who is dedicated to your craft.
Engage your audience
When someone leaves a comment on any of your blog posts, the only thing for you to do is to comment back, even when the comment is negative. A response from you means you actually care what they have to say, and that their points are all being heard. Comments are good, because that means your audience is interested in the things you’re saying.
As stated above, there is no assurance that your blog is going to make it to the top of the blogosphere, but if you just stick to what you know and what you’re good at, you will be able to build a reputation for your blog, and with it will come respect and readership. You can make your blog matter even if it doesn’t have readers in the millions.