A popular blog is what every blogger wants to have . Whatever the motivating factor behind your blogging activities, you will not want to be the only visitor to your blog. You want it on top of others' lists, mentioned everywhere, referred to as the perfect sample, discussed in seminars, linked to by others, etc. All you simply want is to be a successful blogger. Keep reading.
5 Crucial Steps to a Popular Blog
Let's quickly look at the 5 necessary steps you must go through to be able to build a popular blog
Step #1: Start with a short memorable domain name
Step #2: Have a premium and beautifully simple theme
I'm not in any way throwing words against free themes but the benefits of installing a premium theme on your blog are enormous. One of these is the positive impact on your credibility and brand name. Premium themes are highly customizable, responsive, documented, social media powered, SEO prepared, etc.
A second thought is to have a carefully planned, custom designed and expertly built theme for your blog. Ms. Ileane is using Thesis Theme and the Thesis Awesome Blogskin Genesis and Playcast Pro Child Theme from Appendipity, here on Basic Blog Tips and it's very attractive and easy to navigate as well.
To have a popular blog, you must think of giving beauty and comfort to your readers.
Step # 3: Useful Content
At this step of building an extremely popular blog, you must start providing top-notch content to your readers. Whether it is text or video, the material must be easily digestible. If your readers find your content useful and answers to their questions and problems, you win their trust and recommendations. They will link to and share your content and talk about your blog. That's how you are gradually building a popular bog. There is no way you can have a popular blog when your content is mediocre and does not provide any usefulness to readers. Consider inviting guest authors or conducting blogger interviews to add variety and different points of view and let others contribute their expertise to enhance your blogs content. These bloggers will be sure to spread the word about their guest posts and interviews which will help speed up the process of creating a wildly popular blog.
Step #4: Keep readers on your blog longer
Now this is another area you must pay attention to if you really want to create a popular blog. How much time visitors spend on your blog is dependent on quality and accessibility. While you may have top content for a popular blog, you must provide shortcuts for readers to easily navigate to the information they need. These include search tools, related articles box, most popular posts widget, etc. This will influence you page views and average time on site which are some of the signals search engines are interested in. Embed YouTube videos, podcasts, presentation slides and other interactive content to peak your reader's interests and make them spend more time on each blog post. Don't worry if you haven't started your own YouTube channel or podcast. Do a few searches in your given topic and look for popular content created by others that will help you get your point across.
Step #5: Encourage and attract repeat visits
Apart from grabbing a memorable domain name, installing a template that does not hurt the eyes of readers, writing killer contents, you must also develop other strategies that will keep your site visitors coming back. Some strategies you may apply to your blog that work like charm to keep your repeat visitors include:
- RSS subscription.
- List building
- Reply to their comments
- Install new comment notifications plugin
- Install comment reply notifications plugin
- Social media sharing enticements
- Building healthy relationships with other bloggers.
- Joining active blogging communities like BlogEngage and Social Buzz Club
You cannot have a popular blog without repeat visits.
How long does it take to have a popular blog?
Now, it will be wrong for someone to tell you 1 or 2 years. This is a factor of how much work you put and how consistent you are. If you provide top quality contents and are active and resourceful in the blogosphere, you may have a popular blog pretty soon.
Now let's talk. Do you think you have a popular blog? What are the clever things you did to make your blog popular? How long have you been blogging on that popular blog of yours? I really want to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below. Thanks for the conversation.