The Secrets Behind A Fantastic Blog

This is a guest post by Katie Belliveau.

Blogs are a brilliant way to communicate with your target audience and create a go-to source for your chosen niche. Running a blog does have challenges in itself, but when you know what to put in place and where, you can be sure that everything will run smoothly. We’ve picked out five of the most important secrets that every great blogger should keep in mind.

• Great Content

  For anyone with a basic understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO), you’ll already know that producing content is the key to success. There are a lot of bloggers out there, however, that don’t understand the importance of how compelling your posts are. Writing little and often isn’t the way to go about it. 

  The thing to remember is that you want your articles to have power. Awesome content will create this! Whether this be power in terms of SEO value, the ‘shareability’ factor which encourages your readers to recommend others to take a look, or simply by being a brilliantly researched and written piece will make your blog stand out a mile compared to others. Regularly posting exciting posts that you’ve obviously gone out of your way to create will please Google, your readers, and most importantly - yourself. Once you engage in the right ways of producing content you can be sure that your conversion and traffic rates will fly through the roof. 

  We’re not saying that you shouldn’t post short posts throughout the day if you want to, but make sure that you do this sparingly. This makes sure that all of your posts are attractive and maintains a consistent level of quality. If you feel you may have gotten into a routine of bad habits, or simply need a little brain-refresh, there are plenty of sites that can help you keep in mind what is needed.

• Great Theme

  The appearance of your blog plays a big part in how professional you seem. Having great content on an ugly site can often lower the value of your blogs potential. Take into account what you want your visuals to say, and consider various colour themes as well as branding. 

  You need to be aware that you should keep the theme of your blog consistent throughout your site. This makes it easy for your readers to get around the site, and also doesn’t leave random pages seeming out of place. Once you pick a theme, stick to it. Regularly changing the way your blog looks will ruin chances of building up a memorable appearance, which can often pop into people’s minds.

  If you feel like you aren’t quite sure about what designs and themes you should pick for your blog, all you need to do is get a few ideas in mind. You can then build upon them and make the right choices.

• Great Plugins

  Most people have made the decision to use a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress and Blogger to blog through. As well as offering those with little experience with web development set up a great blog, it also allows users plugins to easily edit the design and functionality of the site. 

  From social sharing buttons to sleek, stunning sliders there are thousands of plugins to choose from on all platforms. Be careful that if you choose to use them you understand how to edit them and strip them of their basic set up pages. For example, installing certain video plugins will create an example page for your benefit. You don’t want your readers to end up accessing it, it will look very unprofessional.

  Always be vigilant with plugins, and especially keep an eye on where you download anything that involves e-commerce solutions or shopping cart facilities.

• Testing

  Once you’ve got a good idea of what you want your site to look like, and how you are going to communicate with your readers, you are almost ready to kick off. However, if you’re looking to make money from your site, or even engage readers to the fullest amount, you will want to optimise your blog for conversion. This means you want the layout of your text, images and media to have as much impact as possible on drawing people to click on them.

  By looking up ways of testing certain elements on your page (for example, you may want a banner but are unsure if you should choose yellow or red), you can squeeze the most out of your blog. A/B Split Testing and Multivariate testing can be lifelines if you rely on your blog to generate your sole source income. 

• Time & Effort

  You get out what you put in when it comes to blogging, and they are most definitely ongoing projects. You need to be ready to be committed to writing, engaging and improving your blog. Letting there be large gaps between content or not replying to comments are all signs of a poor blog owner.

Put in the effort and you can be sure to reap the rewards. Good luck!

Image credit: buzzoutsource

About the author
Katie Belliveau loves blogging and helping people make the most of the world of online marketing. For anyone looking to improve their blog or website and its conversion rate, take a look at the software that Camo has to offer.