10 QUALITIES that will make your blog successful

OHMYGOSSIP – Just starting a blog is the easy part. Within a few simple steps you can own  a blog. But you need to have certain qualities to make your blog successful and grow visitors numbers. In this blog post I will give you 10 qualities that are an absolute must for bloggers.

1. Feeling for Language
It is not just about writing, and grammar. You will need a flair for language. You need to play with words, to write in a way that will seduce people, be manipulative to make them interact. You must give them the feeling you write specially for them and for them only.

2. Time Management
Blogging takes time, a successful blog needs updates, preferably every day, but at least once or twice each week, Before you start a blog make sure you know you have that time to spare. And it’s not only the blog, it is also promoting it. Interact on social media. If you are not sure how much time you will spent for blogging, get yourself a Time Management Sheet, it shows clearly how much time you spent per week on blogging and blog promotion, and it helps you to make a careful personal planning in your calendar.s

3. Focus
Writers are creative minds, creative minds have a problem with focus. It takes a lot of discipline to focus on your writing, planning, social media and subjects as: quality content, seo, niche market and style. An easy way to help you te keep your focus is make to-do-lists and plan them in you calendar. Build yourself a daily routine and stick to it.

4. Distinctiveness
There are a lot of bloggers out there. In order to grow visitors you will need authenticity to distinguish yourself from the crowd. Before starting a blog make sure you own a certain distinctiveness whether is it in blog style (writing) and/or professional specialism (niche). Combine that with your unique personality.

5. Social Skills
Remember those days writers would hide in cold and tiny attic rooms and gloomy write their mysterious books? The day’s I started blogging it was a bit like that. A blogger could sit behind his screen all day, typing till his fingers bled and talk to no one. Those days are long gone. Bloggers need to mingle. In order to promote your blog and have interaction with your visitors you need to answer email, respond to comments and on social media you need to interact as well, find out what your visitors like and dislike, and amuse them to keep them interested.

6. A Thick Skin
Because of the visibility you create on the web and interacting with your audience, you also will need a thick skin. Bloggers can be jealous, visitors can be mean and pretty straightforward in their opinions. You need to cope with a lot of criticism and total idiocy when it comes to interpretation of what you have written and visitors responding on that.

7. Patience
It takes time to grow a successful blog. Lots of time. I’ve mentioned it in earlier posts: I work 4-6 hours per day on my blog and social media to have my name out there before I’m leaving the Netherlands and have a reasonable amount of followers, likers, readers. And much  interested visitors that pass by because they found me in the Google Search Results. It takes a lot of time to grow reasonable visitors numbers and you will need to spent time gaining them.

8. Perseverance
When times get though because you lack inspiration, or your website theme will not function the way you want it to, keep on going! Learn from your mistakes, learn from your successes as well. You can work days on a blog nobody reads, which will be very disappointing, and one day you simply type a blog that is a hit from day one. What’s the difference between those two? Look for lessons learned and keep going, do not give up easily. If you are the kind of person that is easily discouraged, don’t frustrate yourself with a blog.

9. Planning
To keep the faith in what you are doing a planning might help. You need a planning to keep your blog going. Blogs need maintenance, updates every day or two times a week the least, to keep you in the reach of Google Bots. So plan. Specially when you have a niche market or a business, combine your blog with sales, deals, new products to arrive and thing coming up. Planning will help you to keep your focus, manage your time and it helps with your writing discipline.

10. Fun
Last but not least: you should have fun. The day you wake up on your (new) blog and you think it is really not fun any more, take time to think it over and decide. Life is too short to frustrate yourself over such a minor thing as a blog. And your readers will notice it, believe me. I took several time-outs on my Dutch daily blog, just because I had no inspiration to entertain the mass. I communicated my time-out to my readers. Took the risk of loosing some of them and placed my website on hold, available for everyone to dive in the archives and a possible date of return. With setting a dat for your readers you also make an appointment with yourself.:To get back in the fun ride within reasonable time or take a hike and quit blogging. But remember: it must be fun, even when blogging is about work.

Source: leavingholland.com