Here's how you can build a great blog…
A concerted blogging effort is a terrific way to build brand awareness, boost web traffic and increase conversions. As many entrepreneurs have discovered, it can also be a viable business in and of itself. 
Regardless, it's incredibly difficult to build a distinctive destination blog that stands out and really pulls in visitors. In order to differentiate yourself from the competition and create a place that's a fountain of value, the following blogging tips are certainly worth considering.
Incorporate Expressive Images
Part of the mosaic that is a persuasive and compelling blog post is a collection of great images that add to the narrative you're trying to construct. Forget pedestrian stock photography; you need unique and iconic pictures to set your blog apart and add to the overall value of each post.
If you have to shell out a few pounds, bucks, Euros or whatever to do this, make it happen. Great-looking blogs make use of memorable images that enhance their content.
Elevate the Conversation & Network
First off, incorporate Disqus or CommentLuv into your blog framework to make commenting as simple and frictionless as possible. Above and beyond that, engage other prolific, high-profile bloggers by intelligently commenting on their posts. In the blogging world, one hand washes the other.
It's easy to discover great blogs to read, and it never hurts to develop ties to other opinion-shapers and leaders within your specific niche. The synergy gained from such efforts will help you immensely in the long run.
Cultivate B2B (Blog-to-Blog) Relationships
Commenting on blogs in your niche is all well and good, and you should make it a part of your daily routine. However, nothing beats guest blogging if you'd like to add true value to your blog, generate quality organic backlinks and create long-term traffic pipelines. The SEO benefits of guest blogging are tough to quantify, but they are very real and have a huge impact on the bottom line.
Skip the Filler
The notion that you have to post content every day to achieve results is completely false. Weak content that adds very little to the conversation detracts from the effectiveness of your high-quality posts. If you want to maintain a great blog site, but you've got nothing of value to say, don't say it.
Filtering the crap from your output will give your blog a reputation as a purveyor of only the finest, most relevant content in your niche.
Diversify Your Efforts
Blog posts come in all shapes, sizes and flavors, so don't be afraid to break the mold a bit and experiment with your style over time. Your audience appreciates, nay craves diversity. We all do, when you get right down to it. After all, variety is the spice of life. You don't have to be all over the map with your content, but throwing your readers a curve ball once in awhile keeps things interesting.
Invest in Viral Promotion
The absolute jackpot of blogging is a post or a piece of content that goes viral and makes your brand a household name or at least a web sensation overnight. You can basically buy visitors from social media sites like StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook through Paid Discovery, Twitter for Business and Sponsored Stories, respectively. Obtaining viral buzz via these social media giants is the quickest way to kick-start a web traffic bonanza.
Firing on All Cylinders
One of the first hard truths that many bloggers discover through trial and error is that there's no magic bullet or professional blogging tips that can guarantee success. You'll need to deploy all of the blog advice and methods described above and then some to have a fighting chance at making your mark on the wider blogosphere.
Doing so isn't impossible, but it will require a focused effort that few have the ability or desire to give.
Oh man, Love it!
Especially about the place where it talks about filler content!
I hate how bloggers talk about the same things and not really researching into what the Reader’s really need!
I put much effort into creating the best content in the blogging industry and try to provide exactly what they are looking for.
It is getting really boring in the blogging industry and I am doing my best to make that not happen!
Class act article by you Matt!
I agree also and just like everything else with “fillers” eventually you realize that you aren’t getting what you “paid for” and get to more solid REAL “food”. When I read blogs I can almost immediately tell which ones are for real and which ones are just filling the gaps from another blog. Filling gaps are fine, but if you are constantly stealing others content and just tweaking it a bit after awhile the loyalty dies.
Very interesting about the viral promotion part. I knew paid visitors from stumbleupon but the others were new to me. From what i know the stumbleupon traffic is untargeted. Another option is justretweet.com where you pay other people to retweet your tweets.
I agree with you, Rick. Even I’ve got some good about of visitors from JustRetweet. One good thing about it is that you don’t necessarily have to pay. You just retweet other’s tweet, get credit and promote yours 😉
True, Anup! Justretweet offers an option where you can gather credits by retweeting or G+ other people’s tweets. But it could be time consuming. The paid version is actually not very expensive and if you have a few dollars extra it could be worth it.
Hello Matt,
Some great tips you have discovered to make a blog established and popular. I greatly appreciate the tips about B2B relationship. All the important things you have covered on this article.
Thanks:)
I am actually tired of reading the same stuff about ‘blogging tips’, but this one is ridiculously good. Investing time and effort on ‘ Viral Promotion’ is a must. Give a ridiculous catchy headlines for every post, and then you are done for this viral thing.
Good post Matt Beswick!
Skipping the filter is very important point. Unfortunately most of the newbies are told that in order to build a great blog they have to post daily which really kills the quality factor.
Matt as you also shared the importance of expressive images do you know any affordable way of getting unique photos? any software? I don’t think that fiverr platform can provide quality images.
Hi Adil,
I have a shutterstock.com subscription which, although fairly expensive, means that I can download up to 25 images each day… I use it for both my own projects and also client work so saves me a lot of time and effort looking for good, free, images 🙂
Hope that helps,
Matt
Thanks Mat
Hi Matt!
I enjoyed reading your post.
Lately, I haven’t had time to write articles like I want to and I was very concerned about that, but after reading your post, I am more at ease. I like what you say about filler content, it makes me feel better, because I have done filler post and they get ignored. It is when I have something of value to share when I get the most conversation. I’m learning!
Great read!!
Take care,
Evelyn
Very interestingly written. I liked some of your ‘custom phrases’ like one hand washes the other, or the new definition of B2B and also the suggestion ‘firing the all cylinders’! It was nice reading and worthy points to agree quick!
very nice articles these tips are really awesome thanks for sharing !
That woman smiling can be called an “Expressive image”. Nice tips, I think i will use this to improve my blog. Thanks.
Top of the range tips here. I like the idea of breaking the mould. It does work. Another point is being a bit daring and doing something different. I recently wrong an article called things you will hate about India, and it created a bit of a flurry and got a bit of attention. I think you should not be afraid to say what you want. A little hype or controversy can be helpful. As you say, its all trial and error.
I agree with the point of not adding filler content. But hands up, guilty has charged.
Am new in blogging so i hope this tip definitely help me to increase rank in search engine. Thanks
very nice tips to become a good blogger that very useful for newbie thanks for sharing..
Nice post for all bloggers 🙂 I agree about using great images in your blog posts as i find a post with a better image gets more clicks on it. Using CommentLuv is a great way to increase comments as well and the part about viral promotion was useful.
Thanks
Really content is the king , when it comes to build a great blog. If you’re good at your thing , i.e., content people will yourself link to you , and definitely someday you’ll go popular.!! Hard Work Pays oFF.
Hi Myles,
To a point that’s true, but it’s really important not just to think about the ‘King’ (your content) but also the kingdom. I probably spend as much time marketing content as I do actually creating it… just something to consider 🙂
Matt
I’ve always wanted to do a test run with StumbleUpon traffic. I’m curious as to how it might convert for my IM site versus my future bodybuilding site.
Anyways, images are killer for increasing clicks to my site, especially with blog networks and Facebook marketing. I’ve been using a meme generator to add some humor to my site, while retaining the intended message. It’s been successful so far, however I might switch that up in the future.
Thanks for the great post!
-Gabe Johansson
I have considered using commentluv for a while but I keep putting it off.I really should stop putting filler post but I heard so many times that begginers need to post everyday that I feel I am doing something wrong if I wait for inspiration to strike.So I panic and write whatever
Great tips for building a nice blog. Thanks for such an informative post.
This will help many bloggers.
Having a good presence online and on social networks is a good idea for any blog or business. I have used Facebook ads several times and I obtained encouraging results. The main challenge is to target the right persons and to promote products that satisfy certain needs.
All your Blogging Tips are indeed Wonderful. But I noticed One difference than others which was “Going Viral”. I guess this is great way to Promote as People are never Tired of Being Happy
I will like to add to your points, be entertaining. When your blog is entertaining people will always want to hang around your blog. To accompany images is a good design. A great blog should have a good design with clean coding.
Moreover filtering the waste from your output will give your blog a reputation as a purveyor of only the finest, most relevant content in your niche.
Yep, filtering the UN useful and risky content.
I previously lost many blogs just because of short post length, not focussing on anything, just writing , writing and writing.
Nice post btw, Thanks for sharing.
Creating strong relationships with bloggers in same niche can do the half of your job to make your blog popular. It helps in guest blogging approvals as well as social promotion as well.
Beside of this, Great and useful content will help to make blog popular. I love your idea of investing for social promotion. I am definitely gonna use this.
Thanks
Hi,
It was pretty much helpful to me on building blogs effective and powerful. I am having quite errors on blogging lately on how to make it viral.
Pretty nice tips Matt…
I like your point that “there’s no magic bullet or professional blogging tips that can guarantee success.” and also agree with your words in viral promotion… every minute invested there can turn out sending huge web traffic overnight if the post goes viral.
I believe one of the best things to do to have a great blog is to be more personal with the content.
Some great points here Matt – one thing though, for other readers that run image-centric blogs (like ours… it’s a cartoon blog), Having a good image alone is also not enough – one needs to write some good supporting content to make it more indexable and have the right kind of keywords to ensure decent organic rankings… cartoons and images alone are generally not enough to help the blog rank.
Really great and easy to follow tips! Thanks for sharing! I also try to make my social presence more effective and do research to come up with new content for my readers and the efforts pay off!
I never really understood the whole “include images to make your blog better” approach and avoided using images for many years, but after a recent update on my main blog I started using images and I have seen a nice size of traffic coming from Google Images. 🙂
Great Tips matt! One thing I would add is to build a list. EVERY blogger should focus on building their list which in turn builds their repeat traffic.
Also your list can help you to grow your blog even faster.
Excellent post but i think that blog requires list building as well, A blog should have a lot of readers in Email list and it can bring a lot of traffic.
Thanks
Hi Matt,
Awesome tips you have shared with us. First you need a good design of your blog, then write high quality content, then promote it on social media sites. Comments on same niche blogs is a way to engage with other bloggers.
Thank you.
Some great points here – one thing though, for other readers that run image-centric blogs (like ours… it’s a cartoon blog), Having a good image alone is also not enough – one needs to write some good supporting content to make it more index able and have the right kind of keywords to ensure decent organic ranking . cartoons and images alone are generally not enough to help the blog rank.
This article points to some great tips to start a blog. Found the views to be quite informative and useful. Your post is perfect for helping many people improve in their online marking endeavours. Thanks for sharing.
Trying to diversify my efforts nowadays and creating some blogs apart from my main blog ,which is already popular.
Great tips! I have been considering using Disqus but I thought it might be too much work for my readers and keep them from commenting. Maybe I will take another look at it.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for sharing the awesome tips. I have a question about regular postings. I have a tech blog and as you know, there are numerous tech updates happening all over the world daily and tech bloggers need to crack them in their blogs. So does “Skip the Filler” rule has an exemption for tech blog owners?
Hey Matt,
Awesome post with great information and I really enjoyed it while reading and I think all the newbies surely got some important information after reading this post. I think for building a great blog we must update our blog regularly, comments on other blog daily and also guest blogging is the most important part. Thanks for sharing this post.
Great tips there, these are things that we need to be reminded over and over.
There are many ways to make great blog and this posting give me complete guide to do that. One of the most important thing in blogging is cultivate blog to blog relationships. By making relationships in our niche there are many benefits that we get. Guest posting, backlinks and reputation are great benefits that we get by cultivate blog relationships with others.
i like the part that you are mentioning blog to blog relationship, make it a habit to comments or interact with other bloggers by commenting their blogs, and you are building reputation and solid traffic for your site then.
Hi Matt
You have given 6 tips to make a blog better.Thank you for writing in a simple way,which is easily understandable. Iconic picture is one of the important thing for blogger because it represents him.No doubt creating a network with other blogger mostly high profiled blogger is useful you mentioned.And have to be connected with the reader.
Thank you very much for the nice sharing.
I am really enjoyed to reading your articles and gain some knowledge from it.
Great. Thanks again.
Nice Blog. Actually at last meeting of my company we planned to create some blogs which will helps us for promotion because the website that we have is very much complex and not able to handle all the links together.
Thanks for the tips.
Hi Matt, love your point, I haven’t been commenting around blogs for a while and really need to do it while guest posting is also another great strategy that gives blog true value.
Thanks – Ferb
Even though commentluv is a pretty good plugin; I’ve been using disqus since I’ve started my blog. I don’t think I could ever live without some of its feature such as “discovery”. Also, unless you have something unique then investing in “viral” marketing might not be worth it. Sure you’ll get hits from people clicking on your campaign but for something to go viral it needs to be unique, funny, or interesting. A promoted piece of content isn’t worth much when it’s not being shared.
As a blog post and informative article you have done a great job, but in reality it is not that simple and everyone know that, you are swimming with millions of other fishes and you need to find the way to stand out and have something unique from others. I still have no idea how to do it 🙁
These are some awesome tips!
Thanks for the great article.
With all the valid and important points and factors I would like to add one more factor and this is “CONSISTENCY”.
Yes consistency is the most important factor in any field. Sun is consistent, Rivers are consistent and keep cutting big mountains on regular basis so the wind.
So if you want to be a successful be consistent in your field.
Wow! Just the information I needed, I will recommend to my followers! Thanks for such a detailed view.
I am pretty new to blogging and personally, I don’t understand the meaning of a “Great Blog”.
Is it the one which gets huge traffic, or the one with high backlinks or the one with huge amount of income?
Very good advice. I need to work on my B2B strategy. Thanks for pointing that out.
Great post, and very useful for someone like me who is trying to get their blog going but doesn’t know where to start. I particularly took note of the points about enabling comments and including expressive images. Being involved in web design I already have membership of a few stock photo libraries so just need to make better use of them!
nice tips matt
building a great blog takes hardwork and much more than just writing and publishing. but if you do these steps carefully , you will definitely succeed in creating a great blog.thanks for the post
Thanks Matt for this post, it is very helpfull for someone who wants to start a blog and make money with it someday!
Thanks again,
Jean
I agree with your tip about writing valuable content. I also think that you do not have to write a blog entry everyday just to have a quality blog. Great Tips!
Very interestingly written. I liked some of your ‘custom phrases’ like one hand washes the other, or the new definition of B2B and also the suggestion ‘firing the all cylinders’! It was nice reading and worthy points to agree quick!Thanks,,,,,,!
I greatly appreciate the tips about B2B relationship. All the important things you have covered on this article.
Thanks:)
Making a blog is very nowadays but making it great is very tough !! Hope these tips will help me.
it is a marvelous article, it learns me more,
keep sharingf.
Really great and easy to follow tips! . Thank you for writing in a simple way,which is easily understandable.
Hey Matt, This was really kind of helpful.
I actually loved your point of use expressive images.
You made me to think about it which I was missing somewhere.
Hi,
hey Its a great and Unique Post ,this Post is very useful and informative
I am moved by your blogging skills and find your posts attractive.
I am a new blogger and would like to learn from you.
Thanks for such a nice post.
Very useful tips, I actually think that the most important of all is to anticipate what your users are searching for. Once you found the right niche, it’s actually very easy to do that.
I have a Question on #6 (buy SM visitors):
After the initial buzz settles down, won’t the page/blog fall back to a much, much lesser rank?
You are right about skipping the filler. All over the Internet, people just keep giving the advice “post regularly,” but the important thing is that what you post should be worth posting and that is relevant to your website. To make a blog successful, it is very important to have a specific topic and then never deviating from that topic when writing on the blog.
really very cool i m always getting something new from your each article thx for sahring.
Great post. It’s quite a useful piece for upcoming bloggers. I really love this.
These are great practices that can help you establish a strong blog. I agree that developing a blog to blog relationship is necessary in promoting your blog. Participating on other blogs and guest posting can be really helpful. But, make sure that you really add value to their content.
Some of the best ways to get your blog ruled on search engine thanks for sharing effective ways
Good post Matt. I like to add here that we also have to focus on on-page seo like seo friendly url and other stuff. It really helps a blog to get traffic from search engines.
Hey Matt,
I think today there are lots of seo experts who knows the basic SEO and they just keep building links. But now situation has changed. Only those websites will get top ranking in search engine who pass the search engine filter. So try to build quality backlinks with a good speed (like 10-15 backlinks daily) from high pr website. And keep use more keywords as anchor text.
well done, Matt, you’re really doing a great job with your blog, I’m sure this post will help a lot of new bloggers learning about SEO.
Hey Matt,
I think today there are lots of seo experts who knows the basic SEO and they just keep building links. But now situation has changed. Only those websites will get top ranking in search engine who pass the search engine filter. So try to build quality backlinks with a good speed (like 10-15 backlinks daily) from high pr website. And keep use more keywords as anchor text.
Thanks for sharing these tips
Brian