The following piece was submitted by Rica from Online Business Opportunity at Home as part of the habits of highly effective blogging group project.
An Effective blogger is a one whose blogging efforts prove to be effective and attract a lot of traffic. People blog for different reasons. Some people use their blog to earn some money through google adsense while some people use their blog as a marketing tool. What ever be the reason behind your blog, unless people visit your blog, it is useless and will not serve any purpose. Below I have listed a few habits of highly effective bloggers. Dictionary meaning of the word ‘habit’ is a pattern of behavior acquired through frequent repetition. (Source: www.hyperdictionary.com).
Thus if a person follows these tips consistently, every time she writes a post on her blog, soon these will get incorporated into her lifestyle and it will become her habit to definitely use these tips while blogging. When this point is reached the individual will become a successful and an effective blogger and will be able to attract a lot of traffic to her blog.
These habits of an effective blogger are:
1. An effective blogger is dedicated, sincere and hardworking: she does not ignore her blog and spends some time on her blog daily. It could be for writing a post or submitting her blog to various directories or using optimization techniques in order to optimize the posts for search engines.
2. An effective blogger sets up high goals and strives hard to achieve them: For e.g.: set up a target like,’ I will have at least 50 visitors on my blog by end of month’. An effective blogger will work hard to achieve her set targets.
3. An effective blogger maintains consistency in posting: An effective blogger keeps submitting fresh, interesting and informative content on her blog. This will help the blog to be indexed quickly by search engines. An effective blogger may not submit a post everyday but chalks out a suitable schedule and sticks to it.
4. Writing style of an effective blogger:
– Gives an honest opinion, does not copy and paste other people’s work.
– Makes the posts informative and interesting.
– Adds a bit of humour in her posts to make sure that she does not bore her visitors.
– Uses a casual conversational tone in her posts.
– Does not get too technical or mechanical.
– Focuses on quality and not quantity. A short and sweet article to the point is much better than a lengthy article which strays away from the point.
– She makes sure to checks the spellings and grammar before publishing a post.
– She does not irritate his/her visitors by making controversial statements.
– If using her blog as a marketing tool, she makes sure not to convert her post into a downright advertisement or a sales copy.
5. An effective blogger stays updated and well informed: Before being successful in any field you need to be knowledgeable about that topic. Starting a blog in itself is no big deal. In fact you can start your blog in about 5- 10 minutes. More important is to remain well informed and up- to date regarding the topic about which you are writing.
6. An effective blogger does not indulge in comment spam just to promote her blog.
7. An effective blogger checks her blog daily and responds to comments on a regular basis.
8. An effective blogger handles any rude comments about any of her posts in a mature and an intelligent way: she does not answer back rudely to a person who has posted an adverse remark or comment. Instead she takes criticism in a positive manner and tries to get to the root of the problem.
9. She maintains a back up of her blog. This way if her blog gets accidentally deleted (a common occurrence with www.blogger.com) her hard work does not go down the drain.
10. An effective blogger never clicks on the google adsense ads on her own blog. She knows very well that she can be banned by google for doing so.
11. An effective blogger will convert the information in his blog into an RSS feed and then add his/her own RSS feed to ‘my yahoo page’ or ‘my google page’. She also submits the RSS feed of the blog to various article submission directories.
12. She uses good SEO techniques in order to optimize the post for search engines. He/she makes proper use of key words and key phrases.
13. An effective blogger pings her blog when ever she updates it.
14. An effective blogger builds links to her blog.
15. Last but not the least, an effective blogger is patient, persistent and does not give up. In the beginning one is likely to get frustrated as it takes time for traffic to build up on your blog. Most people quit in the early stages, however an effective blogger is patient and persistent and does not give up.