One year old today. 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, or 8,760 hours. It feels like so much longer, I’ve done so much over this short year – met so many cool people, blogged about so many cool things, and had a lot of fun communicating with the people who matter, you!
July 22nd, 2006 stated the opening of this blog. Since then, I’ve published 270+ articles, collecting 4,641+ comments. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed meeting so many new people, creating so many new friendships, and further developing my writing in a community atmosphere.
1. Quality Content Pays Off
One thing which has really worked for me over the past year is writing quality content on a regular basis. You need to personally be able to see value in the writing you’ve done, if you can’t, chances are no one else will either.
Write for a reason. Are you writing this post because you haven’t blogged for four days and feel you need to post something? You don’t. Only post if you have something to say, chances are, if you wait till it gets to this what you have to say will be valuable, and will be formed as quality content.
2. Establish Reader Relationships Early
See people regularly commenting on your blog? Get in contact with them, reply to their comments, listen to them, and most importantly, communicate. It’s important to know what your readers want from your site – the only way to do this is keep the avenue for contact open and respond to all emails you receive. A few words in reply can go a long way.
3. Keep Focused On A Niche
Pick your niche/s and stick to them. Try not to sway off too far as you could lose your focused readership. Pick something you know a lot about, no one is going to listen to a blogger blogging about a topic they know nothing about.
This should be done in the early days of blogging, if not even before starting up the site. Make sure you know your stuff about what you’re writing about. Keep focused, and keep your readership.
4. Forget The Stats
I’ve seen too many blogger focus on stats in the early days of running a blog, sure, they can be exciting, but soon you will reach a stage where you need to step away from them and set some goals, think about exactly why you’re looking at stats – shouldn’t your main goal be to create great content? Visitors will flow in over time, don’t over scrutinize or analyze them before you need to. Keep writing about what you love, it doesn’t matter if 20 or 2000 people are reading, just keep at it.
5. Read More Than You Write
What do you think of when you hear the word “Blogger?” I think of writing, I’m sure most of you do too. However, there’s more to becoming a successful blogger than just writing, you need to keep in the “know” about general happenings in your niche. I would estimate I read 50 fold what I write – not a small amount. Subscribe to sites, blogs and magazines and just start reading content, it’ll ultimately help you write/blog better.
Thanks For Your Encouraging And Vocal Support
Last but not least, thanks for all your support over the past 12 months. It has been great to have an audience as vocal and encouraging as you! I can’t wait to see what’s in store in the future, one thing I know for sure is that I will not stop blogging anytime soon – I love what I’m doing here. Thank you all!