You’re writing good content on your blog and starting to get some traffic, but now what? How do you make your blog stand out from the crowd? It’s easy! Give your boring blog content some ‘wow’ by incorporating the five tips below into your blogging efforts every day. Sometimes the simplest changes can have the biggest effects, so follow these tips to put yourself on the path to blogging success.
1. Set Your Personality Free
Does your blog content have a personality? Would you want to hang out with your blog content if it were a person at a party, nightclub, or other event? If your content would bore you to sleep at an in-person event, why would anyone want to take time out of their busy day to read it on your blog?
The first step to turning your dull blog content into blogging gold is to inject your personality into it. If you’d prefer, you can create a personality to match your blog content. That’s exactly what Perez Hilton did. On the other hand, Heather Armstrong found success by letting her own personality shine in all of her blog posts.
You can follow either route, but make sure you’re consistent in your personality. You don’t want to confuse people by writing blog content with multiple personalities. The exception is when you set them up from the beginning to expect to find those multiple personalities in your blog content.
2. Be Trustworthy and Consistent
Again, confusing your blog readers is a recipe for failure. You need to earn their trust by setting expectations for your blog content and meeting those expectations again and again. Your audience needs to trust that your content will consistently deliver on their expectations every time they visit. If not, they won’t spread the word to other people about your blog because they can’t trust that the experience their friends will get when they visit will be satisfactory. Eventually, they might stop reading your blog entirely.
A fundamental step of building a brand is being consistent. That’s because confusion is the number one brand killer, and it certainly can be a source of blog death, too. With consistency comes trust, which leads to loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing. This is a step you cannot skip if you want your blog to grow and be successful.
3. Write with Authority
No one will read your blog if your blog content is filled with uncertainty. Be confident in what you know and think, and write with authority. If your blog topic is about something you’re highly experienced in or educated about, then you should continually demonstrate through your content that you’re an authority in your subject matter.
If you’re not an expert on your topic but have confidence in your content, that’s enough to generate a perception of authority. If you believe in yourself, write in an authoritative tone, and can back up that authoritative tone with knowledge or experience, you’re on your way to turning dull content into great content.
4. Show Your Passion for Your Topic
As mentioned above, it’s okay if you’re not an authority in your blog’s subject matter. If you’re passionate about your topic, then let that passion show through in your blog content. Passion can be contagious! It can also set your blog content apart from the boring content found on other blogs about your topic.
There is a reason why hosts of infomercials are so animated and passionate about the products they’re hyping. That passion gets people interested. Even if you never think you’ll purchase a Snuggie or Sham-Wow, it is hard to turn away when one of those infomercials comes on the television. Imagine if you can inject the same level of passion into your blog content. It’s likely word would spread and even people who never thought they’d be interested in your blog topic will visit to see what you have to say.
5. Build Relationships, Not Followers
If you really want to set your blog up for success, write content that builds relationships, not just follower numbers. This extends to your blog post writing as well as to your blog comments and any other interactions related to your blog, such as email messages, Twitter updates, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and so on.
The most successful blogs have a powerful community of people behind them. Those people aren’t just “followers.” Instead, they interact with the blogger and other visitors to the blog.
You need to focus on interacting with people and truly connecting with them by engaging them through your blog content, comments, and so on. Acknowledge them and talk to them online just as you would if you met in person, so you have a better chance of building a lasting relationship that will ultimately translate into loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.
