PureBlogging

When trying to grow a blog it only makes sense to pay attention to successful blogs to see what it is that is contributing to their success. Of course you don’t want to copy other blogs, but many times you can learn a lot and pick up some other ideas that can be adapted to fit your blog and its audience.

Most bloggers who are trying to learn from others will look around at other blogs within their niche that share the same target audience. However, there is potentially more to be learned by studying blogs that are outside of your niche.

Why Should You Pay Attention to Blogs Outside of Your Niche?

1. Creativity

Blogs in certain niches tend to be very similar. Many bloggers read each others blogs and share some of the same readers. Sometimes this leads to less originality and creativity. By branching outside of your niche you may see many new ways of doing things that you wouldn’t see within your own niche.

2. The Borrowing Factor

If you find something that you like at another blog and you want to borrow the idea and adapt it to your own blog, it will probably work better if that other blog is outside of your niche and has a different audience. If your readers have seen the same thing at another blog that they read everyday and you are executing things the same way on your own blog, it obviously won’t look very original. If you are borrowing ideas from blogs that your readers have never seen, it may come across as more unique.

3. Objectivity

Sometimes it is difficult to objectively look at other blogs within your niche. Most likely you have visited these blogs many times before and you probably have already formed opinions. It may be easier for you to visit blogs that are successful outside of your niche to get an objective look at what makes them successful. You will be less attached to the topic and the audience, so you can give it more of a fair evaluation.

4. Variety

By observing only blogs within your own niche you are seriously limiting the variety that you will find. By evaluating blogs from any niche you can open yourself up to opportunities to learn a lot from a far greater number of bloggers.

Some Tips for Learning from Other Blogs:

1. Find Common Ground

Look at blogs that share something in common with yours or that share something in common with where you want your blog to be. If you are the only author and you have no intention or interest in adding other writers, don’t spend too much time evaluating large blogs that have an entire staff of writers.

2. Pay Attention to the Community

You can also learn a lot from observing the readers and the community of a blog. How does the blogger improve interaction with the community? How many comments do posts generally receives? How many stumbles or social media votes do posts receive?

3. Beyond the Blog

Pay attention to other factors besides the blog itself. Does the blogger leverage a network that he or she has built be running other websites or blogs? Do they use a free giveaway like an e-book to draw readers? Does the site include features such as a forum in addition to the blog?

4. Design

Try to get a feel for how the design of the blog has factored into its success. Does it use a custom design, a premium theme, or a free theme? How does the blog design stack up in comparison to other blogs.

5. Other Factors to Observe

There are any number of things you can look at to observe what has led to the blog’s success, including posting frequency, post length, post quality, writing style, social media integration, ads and monetization, branding, focused or general, the about page, ease to contact, navigation, featured content, page load speed, use of the sidebar, services or special features, etc.