Mar
20
There is lots of advice about making your blog a success. Much of the advice focuses on the content you write, monetization strategies and building links with other bloggers. But I’m not going to talk about those. Instead, I’ll focus on three things within you that will help you to be successful as a blogger. I call them the three Ps – personality, passion and persistence.
Personality
When you write content for a blog post, the actual content is of course important, but how you write it is even more important. Everyone has a unique voice, and you can let that shine through in your blog posts. It may not be quite the same in every post, as you might change your tone depending on the subject matter, but in general your readers will be able to tell that it’s you. Some people are great at letting their personality show on their blog. With those bloggers, you feel like you’ve dropped by for a chat with a real person. If your readers are ready to brew a coffee and stick around to talk to you, then you have probably put your personality on show.
Passion
Passion is about showing that you care. It doesn’t mean that you have to care equally about every topic you blog about. That would be unrealistic – and hard to sustain. However, when you blog about things that you’re not interested in, the lack of passion shows and readers may opt to stay away. (As an aside, don’t assume that your writing lacks passion just because readers don’t comment. You may have to spend time building up readership before you get regular commenters.) Most of the things I blog about are things that have affected me, and therefore I care about them. When I review something on this blog, it’s something I have used. When I write about freelance writing, it’s an experience that I want to share. The more passion I have for a topic, the more people read.
Persistence
This is all about staying power. After you’ve been blogging for a while, you may feel like you’ve run out of ideas. With more than 1,000 blog posts under my belt on my main blogs, and hundreds more on other blogs, I feel like that sometimes. This is when you have to show what you’re made of and pull something out of the hat. One of the things I opted to do on my freelance mentoring blog was to release myself from the daily posting grind. Instead, I try to post longer, better thought out posts a few times a week. In between times, there’s always link love to fill in the gaps.
I firmly believe that these three personal qualities are part of the recipe for blogging success. Have you got any qualities to add to the list?
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You definitely need all three of those in your blogging. Especially the passion one. Blog readers can definitely tell if there is passion or not in each post or if the blog is just a waste of time. Thanks for the reminders!
You could probably add another ‘P’ also. “Participation” in other blogs is absolutely essential to blogging.
Good addition, Tim. If you don’t join in with what’s happening out there, no one will visit your blog either.
The first item the most important. It is possible to write about very interesting things, but nobody will be interesting, if the author will not have a style
Hi videos, that’s why some blogs have a great following. It’s not just the content, but how it’s presented.
I would say that those three P’s apply to just about anything in life, not just blogging! The last two especially…
You’re right, Caroline. Someone’s already pinched this idea to write a post about advertising.
I am just new visiters from Nepal. But I am really enjoying the reading the blog of different people. Thanks for your great post I really like it and hope the same in future as well.
Very true. For me, the first point is the most important when I view a blog. Dry posts with no flare bore me.
One blogger I read regularly is Lee Lofland’s, “The Graveyard Shift”, a former cop writing about police procedure and share his ideas with writers. His posts are very interesting. His photos, oftentimes tongue-in-cheek, give his posts such personality. And the content and photos stand out because he uses the default WordPress template. No distractions.
Thanks for the link to Lee’s blog, Chris. I’ll check it out.
Persistance is a major key!! If you are sproradic nobody really cares to come by in hopes that you have actually posted.
You’re right, seotracy. People have to know when they can find yourself. Even if it’s once a week, you have to set a schedule and stick to it.
All three of them are of imoportance for sure, but I think the personality is number one, without it it doesn’t matter what or how good you write. on the other hand, passion and personality usually goes hand in hand, one comes with the other.
Looks like we have a consensus on the important of personality, WD.
After you’ve been blogging for a while, you may feel like you’ve run out of ideas.
Always. I hope after reading this post that feel will gone. FOREVER.
All three PS’s are major, but I think to write the blog like this You need to be even an “Pasionate Person”
And persistence… You need that quality everewhere if You want to reach something somewhere.
love your blog. would love to know more about your free-lance mentoring posts.
lalita
Glad to hear it, seodewaji:)
@N4News: I try to inject that into everything I write; it’s the only way to get people as excited about your topic as you are.
@lalita: Check out my profile; there’s a link to my freelance mentoring site.
Need to keep moving forward – that is the most important part!