Needless to say, the presence of blogs has dramatically increased on the internet! WordPress.com alone boasts 367,111 blogs that were made through its hosting. And that’s just one. Tumblr, blogger, etc all have several thousands of blogs, with new additions every day!
So what’s to make your blog catchy, interesting, and most of all, influential?
Well, here are a few things to consider:
1) Know what you are talking about: Also known as Gain CREDIBILITY
Nothing is worse than reading a blog that seems as though it was either a) written by a 5 year old b)written late at night half asleep or c) written…although the author has no clue what they are discussing about!
The true credibility comes when you have followers who not just read what you have to say, but actually give you credit for your insight, and share it with others. I’ve come across numerous financial blogs that talk about an XYZ financial security and derive random conclusions based on poorly founded, unrelated, or irrelevant information. Clearly I either stop reading all together, or read the blog for the sake of amusement and nothing more.
To gain influence, the idea is to attract, retain, and impress the target audience.
2) Know your target audience:
Be informative. Give them the latest. Old news, is not news. Know what they want, read and respond to their comments, and understand what they are looking for. Quite often, I see a moderately-written blog on a great topic that leads to a fascinating discussion by its readers below in the comments section. But what could be worse than the author not taking part in the discussion at all, and writing a new blog post that totally disregards everyone’s comments like nothing ever happened!?!
3) Give it personality
Giving a blog personality is equivalent of creating a character in a story–make it something that your audience can relate to. Make it consistent. Is it formal and distant, is it friendly and personal, is it based solely on research or first-hand experiences? Whatever the style and technique, the blog needs to depict consistency and originality.
4) Create a ‘community’
Do you have regular commentators on your blogs? Acknowledge them! The personalization and feeling of knowing ‘each’ other—the author and audience, and audience-to-audience interaction helps create the community. It also generates additional leads through existing contacts and help buid the ‘readership’. Of course, Brian Solis makes a good point in his blog of diferentiating influence from popularity.
Here are a few links that I really recommend reading:
Brian Solis’s: Please Repeat: Influence is not popularity
Nicholas Cardot’s: The 15 Most Influential Bloggers in 2010
Meredith Farkas’s: What makes a blog successful?
Dave Taylor’s: What Makes a successful blog?
