A guest post by Kelly Estes – coauthor of Online Business Elements. Image by Storm Crypt.

If you’re trying to impress a date, nothing does it like a romantic multi-course meal. In the blogosphere, you’re not trying to romance anyone, but you are out to impress — and snare — prospective readers.

Intrigue, Don’t Bore

So impress; don’t bore them. Think of it like serving up a multi-course meal. Don’t freak out~just like you don’t eat that type of meal all at once, you serve up the most fabulous food by planning out a menu, making your grocery list and scheduling the cooking. You work behind the scenes like a fiend, perhaps sweating a bit in the kitchen. And then you present a scrumptious, mouth-watering meal to guests, making it look easy.

Serve Up A Memorable Experience

The reason customers return to a four-star restaurant is not just the quality of the food. It is the attention to detail. It is the personal greeting when you arrive. It is the escort to your table with a beautiful view. The pulling out of a chair so that you can easily sit….you feel the personal attention taking your experience up a notch. With a flourish, the maitre’d places a napkin on your lap. The waiter arrives and gives a polite introduction, inquiring what you would like to drink, acting as if you and your date are the most important customers in the restaurant. Meanwhile, the background music plays on, unobtrusive and elegant.

These actions add up to a beautiful experience. When someone visits your blog, you want them to have and remember a great experience.

Maybe you’re not going for an elegant impression. Perhaps you’re aiming to titillate and showcase your wide writing range and expertise, or to combine hilarity and blog tips. These are bloggers who leave a lasting, good impression on their readers, and have sticky blogs.

How do successful bloggers do it?

1. Whet the appetite with a perfect appetizer.

Set the stage with a creative and professional banner that showcases your brand. It’s the first thing a potential reader sees, and if it looks like an amateur did it, your readers might just click away.

If you go into a restaurant, and the ambiance is that of fine dining, complete with mood lighting, your expectations are set high. When the waiter starts describing the delicious, fresh buffalo mozzarella on heirloom tomatoes with basil chiffonade, drizzled with Italian balsamic vinegar, it ‘fits’ with the branding you’ve experienced to that point. You’re looking forward to eating what the chef whips up.

Just as some restaurants use candlelight with tablecloths and china (not Chinet), creating the right ambiance for a nice dinner, so too should you think about the first impression you give a reader with your banner. Does it reflect your brand well, and is it professional looking?

2. Stand out with a Salad

Hold the not quite ripe tomatoes, and stay your hand on the tasteless bagged carrots. Get out the awesome stuff that is really good.

The headline to your post should not be boring (duh). It should be creative and offer help or information your readers need. Here’s one headline that caught my eye on Yahoo….”Checking Out of the Grocery Store Faster, and With More of Your Paycheck In Hand.”

Now that’s definitely a hot headline. Do I want to check out of the grocery store faster? Yes. Do I want to leave the grocery store for less money out of my pocket? Heck yeah! So I click to find out how to accomplish that goal. Voila. The headline did its job.

Remember, the headline that people see on Twitter, Facebook, or Google can determine whether they click on that link to read it. So entice them. Get click savvy. You can get your potential readers to ‘order’ your blog post.

3. Serve a memorable soup, not thin gruel.

What I mean is, make sure your opening paragraph isn’t dry as sawdust. Keep your reader’s interest by being unique, and engaging them with a targeted question. If you’re writing about dieting or nutrition, you could open with ‘Why do some nutritionists advise eating five small meals a day to lose weight? Does this work for you?”

Sometimes, adding just a few choice ingredients makes all the difference between so-so tomato bisque, and the most awesome, creamy, and delightfully different tomato bisque ever. There’s the tomato condensed canned soup made with milk, and then there’s the French chef’s secret recipe to knocking your socks off tomato bisque. If I’m going to order tomato bisque at a restaurant, I don’t want the ordinary. I want the extraordinary.

When people arrive at your blog and read your first paragraph, they’re going to decide whether to keep reading or not. Make sure they keep reading because you’re serving up the knock your socks off tomato bisque topped with crème fraiche.

4. Provide Entrees that Satisfy.

Would you rather have a perfectly grilled steak, baked potato and salad, or a microwave meal? They both fill you up, but one satisfies the senses more than the other.

It’s the creative analogies and cool stories to inform and entertain that people remember, and come back for more. There are so many ways to make boneless, skinless chicken breast into a meal, but there are a ton of ways to prepare and serve it.

Enlighten readers with your unique perspective on your topic of choice, impress them with how much your blog helps them (it’s your content strategy) and you’ll gain their gratitude and readership.

5. Dessert: Sweet Success

As your traffic grows (through your sweat equity online), and you’re getting to know more bloggers through networking, you’ll start to feel like you’re making progress.

Tasting the sweetness of success as a blogger only comes after a lot of hard work and long hours. In the beginning, you might feel like you’re only getting a lick out of the cookie dough bowl.

The first steps on the road to success are paved with small victories. Gaining loyal readers. Racking up Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Guest posting on a bigger blog in your niche. Before you know it, you’re further and further along toward achieving success.

You’ve planned your ‘menu,’ served up successful ‘meals’ (blog posts), and are continuing to network with readers and bloggers alike.

Cyberspace is interesting, though. Even meeting someone online doesn’t quite measure up to the real thing.  Face to face networking still rules.

Why bother networking offline, like at a convention such as the upcoming BlogWorld Expo? Consider what your goals are as a blogger.

Are you going to be able to achieve a huge level of success without meeting and talking with other bloggers in the ‘real’ world? Will you be able to enjoy a decadent helping of success, like a Hawaiian chocolate Kona soufflé, or will you keep sampling the cookie dough as you celebrate little victories?

As you consider your game plan and your goals, map out how you will taste the sweetness of success. Of course, getting there will be its own reward.

Kelly Estes is a food blogger and former print journalist who blogs at Hot Cookin‘ ~ She is also a co-author of Online Business Elements.

A guest post by Adam from Things To Learn.

I’ve been blogging for over two years now and I will be the first to admit that I haven’t been the best blogger in the world. Far from it. There were several stretches where I didn’t blog regularly or I wrote posts that just didn’t cut the mustard.

The blog that I was maintaining was in the ever crowded personal finance (PF) niche. Frankly, I know a lot about financial planning (I have a master’s in it) and I thought that I would thoroughly enjoy writing about it. Man was I wrong. If you ask any expert in the field, they will tell you that everything PF has already been written. In order to separate yourself from the hundreds of PF blogs out there, you have to put your own spin on the topics or just talk about your personal experiences. Well, I wasn’t that great at putting a spin on the topics and my wife and I don’t really live a fascinating financial life.

So, I slowly continued the blog. I stuck to it for about 2 years and decided that I just wasn’t having fun with it. I still enjoyed writing, but I was just burnt out writing about personal finance. I knew it was time for a change but I just didn’t know what. I don’t really have any hobbies and everything else just seemed so saturated already.

Blogging On Something You Don’t Know

As I was enjoying a nice walk around Washington DC with my wife, something caught my eye. None of the buildings were tall. I wondered what the deal was and figured that plenty of other people may have thought the same thing. I did some quick research at home and found out that there is some crazy law that doesn’t allow the buildings to be tall in the city. Weird.

After I learned about the topic, I had other random questions/things pop into my head and they just kept coming. An endless supply of blog posts! I wrote them down on a piece of paper with the title “Things To Learn”. I knew right then and there that I needed to create a blog on the topic. I was going from writing about things that I knew inside and out to something that I had no clue about. Why would I do that?

Why Should You Blog In a Niche You Know Nothing About

You Have An Almost Endless Supply of Blog Posts

Many great bloggers started writing about things that they wanted to know more about. For example, J.D. from Get Rich Slowly started his site when he was $35,000 in debt. Obviously, personal finance wasn’t his strong point at the time but he started the blog to learn more about the subject and it has now grown to one of the most popular blogs on the web. Heck, even Darren started this blog because he wanted to learn more about making money on the web.

Personally, I have been thinking about my new blog for weeks now. To date, I have approximately 100 “things to learn” in my WordPress drafts. You know what, the ideas keep coming too. Whether I am reading a book or having a conversation with a stranger, the thoughts keep flowing. You can do that with any niche too. Especially if you are constantly trying to learn more about it.

It Never Gets Old

Most new bloggers fizzle out after a few months because they feel like no one is listening. Hey, it happened to me a few months after I started. But, I stuck with it and my blog has made a few bucks here and there.

Believe it or not, I don’t really care if my new site has readers. I mean, there is a small part of me that likes the interaction but I am doing it more for me. I want to learn and blogging about things I am interested in gives me pleasure. The place that I want to get my interaction is from other sites like this one. I am saving some of my better posts for other blogs and I will be interacting with the readers here.

I think that by blogging in niche you know nothing about, it will be difficult run out of things to write. I mean, I bet it may get a little old after a while. If I had to guess, I would say that many of the bloggers that have been around for a long time will tell you that it’s starting to get old. I imagine the thought of quitting has crossed their mind. Even though they started out knowing nothing about the niche, now they do and it would get old. However, they are now probloggers and are making good money. How many small bloggers that burnt out posting about what they know can say that?

* * * * *

How many of you started blogging in a niche you know nothing about? Have you seen the same results that I mentioned? What other positives can you see with blogging in a niche you know nothing about?

Adam spends his time finding out what the closest city to the north pole is or what the largest country is. He enjoys learning new things every day and sharing them with those who are willing to listen.

A Guest Post by Glen Allsopp from ViperChill.

There’s a ton of advice in the blogosphere about how to increase the size of your blog audience and become an A-lister. There is far less advice though on how to deal with such a large readership and the changes that come with it.

While I don’t consider myself an A-lister, my blog is closing in on the 10,000 subscribers mark after less than a year since launch, and quite a few things have changed from when I had a much smaller audience.

Some of these are good, some are bad, and others are completely what you make of them. This is simply my guide on the things to expect and possibly watch out for.

Growth which Snowballs

The first few months with blogging are generally the toughest. If you’re not learning how to tweak your design and implement good on-site SEO you’re trying to establish yourself in your niche and build relationships. Growth at this time can seem slow or even stagnant.

Thankfully, it does get much easier. Once you have built an audience you have more people to naturally share your posts for you, buy your products, and help spread your brand. When I grew my old personal development blog to 500 subscribers it took me 7 months of non-stop hard work.

Yet, in the next 5 months after that, thanks to this snowball growth effect, the blog had over 4,000 subscribers. The bigger you get, the bigger the growth spurts tend to become as well.

Public Criticism

I’m very fortunate to have built a following of people who are very positive and thankful for the effort that I put into my articles. However, as with any project that grows large, I’ve faced public criticism as well. This didn’t seem to happen based on anything I did but came about when my audience hit a certain threshold, resulting in feedback that was seemingly random.

Some people say things like “you’re just trying to be like X blogger”, “you’re scamming people” (even though I have no ads or affiliate links) or they may claim I’m lying when I write about certain figures, even after posting screenshots of everything I do.

At the end of the day, criticism is something you should come not only to expect, but forget. If there’s something negative out there about you that you agree with and can change, then do so. Otherwise, leave the internet trolls to do their thing and continue doing what you do.

It’s not just in the blogosphere where this happens of course, but in all areas of life. Look at the launch of the iPhone 4 as an example. It was Apple’s most popular product launch in their history and has less refunds than any other iPhone by far, yet every tech blog is jumping on the bandwagon about the issues it appears to have.

Whether you believe Apple should be scorned or not, you can’t deny that it seems that the more popular a person or company gets, the more people want to take them down. At certain times I like to remind myself of a quote my Sean Stephenson which is quite relevant to this situation: “What people say about you is none of your business.”

A Rise in Reader Communications

As much as I didn’t want to do this, I’ve had to make it significantly harder to get in touch with me over the last few months. First of all, I stopped returning follows on Twitter and went from following over 3,000 people to less than 100. If you follow someone they can send you a direct message (DM) and I simply couldn’t respond to even half of them. I can’t imagine how other people who have much bigger audiences deal with it.

I then had to create a new Skype account as people were using the ‘find by email’ feature and adding me personally. As I give away my Skype address frequently when buying new websites, I would sometimes be flooded with support requests because I couldn’t tell if someone was a blog reader or they were selling a website I was interested in.

Finally, I made my contact form much less inviting and put my email address right at the bottom of the page. I hate that I had to do this one the most, but I think people would rather find it harder to contact me than spend time writing a request for help that I simply can’t fulfil.

Of course, I still respond to many emails and I try to reply to every single blog comment I receive, which can take hours each week, but I can’t keep up with the other communication channels. Similar to my last point, people can be very vocal on social media platforms if they get in touch with you and you don’t reply — even if it’s just a day or two later.

If you have time to respond to everyone then that’s great but make sure you’re prioritising tasks (writing posts, tweaking your site) and not trying to be everywhere to please everyone. My simply philosophy is that I would rather spend a few hours writing an article which helps thousands of people than spending hours in my inbox helping only a few.

Higher Expectations from your Audience

When I said there would be points which you can view in your own way, this is what I was mostly referring to. This may just be a personal feeling and not something other large bloggers can relate to, but I definitely think people have higher expectations of the information and ideas I share after following my work for a while.

I personally see this as a good thing as I don’t want to stand behind work which I believe to be mediocre so I’m reminded to produce valuable content. You may see it as added pressure to publish only your best articles but realise that your audience just wants the same great value that they’re used to. When asked how he dealt with the pressure of his fans, rapper Lil Wayne simply said:

“I would rather have the pressure of fans wanting me to do well then the pressure of running from police or something like that. Fan pressure is good pressure.”

When you start out you can make “mistakes” you wouldn’t normally do like fill your site with ads, write reviews just for money or publish guest posts which are of a far lower standard to the content you usually put out here. Once you grow though, the reaction to those kinds of mistakes can be a loud voice in the online space.

I love growing my audience for the obvious benefits such as:

• Having more eyeballs on my content
• Having more people who can share my content
• Connecting with a bigger audience
• Being able to make more money
• Having a bigger influence

These are all great advantages to becoming a bigger blogger, so definitely don’t just focus on the points that I’ve highlighted above. Just become aware of what you may have to deal with as your site does begin to grow. At the very least, if you do experience these things, now you know you’re not alone.

Glen Allsopp is the author of ViperChill, a blog on Viral marketing. If you’re interested in guest posts like this one here, you may enjoy his guide to guest blogging.