You probably decided to start blogging to speak your mind, share your opinions, and to interact with others. However, anyone with blogging experience will tell you that creating an online community doesn’t end with a domain name. To reach your goals, you must cultivate a loyal and returning audience.
Many novice bloggers fall into the trap of thinking that creating a popular blog can be achieved simply with SEO. While I could easily go on a “content is king” diatribe, I’ll spare you what you have already heard. You can build all the links you want, but if your content isn’t up to snuff, you will ultimately fall short.
Become a quality content producing machine
To become a quality content producing machine, you must be flexible and use your time wisely. You must understand that there will be days when you experience writer’s block, and you must plan accordingly. There will also be some days when you are on fire – you are full of ideas and can crank out multiple articles. There will also be days when you feel like everything under the sun has already been covered and you have nothing to contribute.
Make the most of the “good” days by writing as many articles as possible, and holding them in your queue to publish on a later date. While it may be tempting to publish them all at once, you risk setting reader expectations too high.
There are many steps you can take on the “bad” days
I write a baseball blog, and there is endless news and information to cover between March and October. However, once November rolls around, news changes from the World Series to minor league coaches interviewing with other teams – also known as boring.
I’ve found that a trick you can use is to try to write diverse content about an entirely unrelated topic in the context of your niche. If your focus is sports, you can write about travel by laying out the sports venues you’ve always wanted to visit. If you write a travel blog, you can write about music by listing your favorite songs to listen to on a road trip. By showing your audience that you’re not just a one-dimensional bore, you can expand your horizons show some personality that can help you connect with your readers.
This keeps content interesting, and also helps your blog index for long-tail keywords.
Encourage Audience Participation
When you are faced with writer’s block, there is no better way to produce content than to let your readers do it for you. To get the ball rolling, you should actively solicit opinions from your readers. Once you’ve shared your opinion, ask readers for theirs by ending your posts with open-ended questions.
In the early stages, there will be relatively few comments logged.
It is essential that you respond to every comment. This will tell readers that you actually care what they have to say, and will encourage them to come back and comment again. You may also find that their comments give you ideas for future blog posts.