Written by:
2009/08/11 11:04 AM 

Content is King

Before you write the first word in your blog, you need to determine the theme of your blog. What is you niche market? Who are your targeted audience? What do they need from you? How can you help and be of service to them? Once you figure that out, you're ready to start brainstorming content. If you don’t have a clear idea as to what your blog is all about, you want have anything of value to write about.

First and foremost, you need to make sure that your content is of good quality, interesting and relevant to your readers. We’re all constantly reminded of this, so there shouldn’t be any excuse for not having quality content. All over this blog you will hear me repeat this. Content is king. There is no substitute.

A Successful blog is built on Good content

Content needs to be relevant. No point in me blogging about gardening or plumbing when my theme is about programming, websites and blogging. My content needs to be relevant to my chosen them and niche. If you seriously want to blog about something else, you have two choices:

1. Create another blog and run both blog simultaneously.
2. Create another blog and quit your current one.

How do you get great content? Well the web is littered with some great ideas. Here are a few to get you started.

• Keyword popularity tools – Things like SEOTools and Google adwords, use these to find out what people are searching for, and how popular your topic actually is. You can also check to see if your chosen keyword is popular or if there is a more popular synonym. Good keyword choices will put you on the path to a successful blog.
• Networking groups and forums – Find a few in your chosen niche and join them. You can spend some time "lurking" and not participating, but participating and helping those in the forum will put you in good stead. Never join to just promote.  Pay attention to hot topics and questions that remain unanswered. You will have a successful blog if you participate
• News alerts - Create Google alerts for your top keywords and watch for news, press releases, blog posts, etc., surrounding your topic of choice.
• Related blogs - Find blogs that cover topics similar to yours and subscribe to their RSS feeds to keep an eye on what they're discussing. Read their blogs. Comment in the comments section. Link to their blogs. If you want you blog to be successful you will find other successful blogs and learn from them

Promotion – Get the word out.

Once you’ve got great content, its time to get the word out.A successful blog relies on Promotion. People will not know your blog is alive if you don’t promote it. There are many free effective ways of promoting. Things like networking on Twitter and Gatorpeeps, writing LOTS of guest posts, and when you get large enough, promotion through eBooks and freebies. Read 11 Free ways to get visitors to your new blog.

Here are some other ways to promote your blog.

• RSS Feeds – Create a RSS or Atom feed of you blog. Make that visible on your site and blog. Submit it to Feed burners, like Google Feedburner. Here is my RSS feed if you would care to subscribe.
• Blog directories - Submit your blog to various blog directories. Here is a list of 20 Blog Directories to submit to.
• Blog aggregators – Submit your blog to various blog aggregators like Afrigator, Google, Blogarama, Feedcluster
• Blog promotion - Submit your posts to blog promotion tools like Pimpthisblog
• Email signatures – How many emails do you send out in a day? Put your blog address in your signature, use feed burner to publish your last 5 blog posts.
• Offline promotion - Don't forget the importance of off-line promotion like print media, word of mouth or paid advertising. Here is a list of different ways to promote your blog offline.

Sounds simple enough, but remember a successful blog takes a lot of hard work. But don't forget, Content is King.

It’s all about the reader.

When you start writing about things that are only of interest to you, or putting things on your blog to make money but not benefit the reader, or linking to things because you hope it’ll help with networking efforts ... you’ve forgotten the reader. When all you do on Twitter or Gatorpeeps is promote your blog, but never interact with other people ... you’ve forgotten the reader.If this is all you do, if you forget your reader, then the reader will soon forget you.

Everything you do should be for the reader. You need to build up a relationship with your readers. With out readers your blog is just bits and bytes in cyberspace. Take care of your readers and you’ll be rewarded with great readers. When you make a connection with your readers, it’s a magical thing. It’s something that can change your life, and theirs. A successful blog will never loose site of its readers. They will support your through thick and thin. They will spend time with you, because you spent time with them. It’s what blogging is all about, and it makes all the hard work more than worth it. Remember Content is King

Related reading:

Top 10 tips on what types of posts to write that will increase your blog readership and traffic.

A successful blog takes hard work

Blog Post Ideas

Your comments make content more valuable

Promoting other blogs will help promote yours

10 Things to help make Twitter work for you.

Twitter - tweeting can bring much needed traffic to your blog or website.

How to make Gatorpeeps work for you

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