I recently discovered blogging contests, blogfests, blogchains – all sorts of fun ways to express oneself and discover new blogs to become addicted to. And, of course, opportunities to expand one’s own readership.
I’ve participated in a few now. My favorites were the AW Musical Blog Chain – because I both love and write to music – and the Bad Boy Blogfest, because, well, you know…
But early on in my discovery of this new facet of blogging I decided to hold my own contest (Roh’s Character Contest #1). I dilligently constructed the rules, purchased the prizes, and notified the few bloggers I know that I was doing such a thing.
But what I failed to do was get the word out adequately, and my entry numbers were less than I’d hoped for.
I’m still learning this blogging thing, and have finally figured some of what the successful bloggers have in common:
1) They post every day
2) They all have a great sense of humor (or at least a wry wit)
3) Their posts are almost always educational or devoted to information sharing in some way
4) They frequently pose questions to their readers that encourage further information sharing
5) They link to other blogs that they reference – and they almost always reference other blogs, especially if they’re doing #3 above
6) They participate in blogging events (contests, blogfests, etc) to a degree – some more than others
7) They acknowledge their commenters in some way – via individual or group thanks, blog references, etc.
So, in analyzing these commonalities, I can see where I need to focus my efforts. Item #1 is pretty critical and has been a failure of epic proportions on my part. I’m going to skip the rest, because it’s pretty obvious I need to work on these (although I’ve been doing #7 as much as possible).
As for today’s post, I’m going to Item #4 and pose a question:
What other elements have you seen consistently in successful blogs? Which ones do you have trouble implementing and which ones do you currently use?
(And yes, I realize my posts need to be shorter. *snort*)
Something I have seen is that most successful blogs come from people who work in the same field as their blog, or are unemployed. I know that is a overgeneralization, but it seems to hold true more often than not. I rarely see successful blogs about sports from teachers, or successful blogs about writing from newscasters, etc.